"Much of PBS Kids programming . . . will be REMOVED from rival streaming sites like Netflix and Hulu, and will be available only on Amazon Prime."
Oh goody.
So now instead of being able to use Netflix via Apple TV to watch her favorite PBS show my 5 year old is going to have to figure out how to bring up Amazon Prime through the shitty Samsung TV interface.
Or better yet maybe I'll have to buy another device that will be obsolete in a year.
This Amazon / Apple bs war of not supporting eachother's devices has got to stop, it sets a terrible precedence which seem to be aimed at protecting the devices which are so incredibly commoditized!
Apple - please just let us have an Amazon app on Apple TV. Is it such a protective move when I can just airplay prime from an iphone / ipad / macbook to apple tv?
While we are Amazon Prime subscribers, the hassle of actually watching anything on Amazon Prime Instant Video means we never bother. I think we have a BluRay player that is technically capable of it, but it's a couple minutes worth of annoying menu navigation to use it...
My three year old has an old android phone that she has no trouble casting from. Fortunately, it seems the PBS Kids app will still work.
Having had the unfortunate experience of using one Amazon app (xbox), I wonder if PBS will see viewership decrease, simply because of the buggy garbage interface their viewers will have to use. To me, it's actually that bad. I have AP for free, never use it.
Apple isn't preventing an Amazon app from existing! Amazon is just not willing to create one under the current terms-and-conditions.
The terms are the same as iOS: if your app allows in-app purchase of digital goods, then you have to use Apple's payments system and Apple gets their 30% cut.
On iOS, Amazon Video works fine, Amazon works around the 30% by not allowing signups within the app, and by not providing a link to the Amazon website for signing up.
Amazon is using the AppleTV as a test case for fighting against this policy. They can afford to do that because so few people have AppleTVs compared to iOS devices.
I refuse to use Amazon video for this specific reason. Their "prime instant" is really just a teaser; it is very difficult to search for stuff that you don't have to pay for.
It's designed to get you to buy/rent from the Amazon digital store, and hardly much else.
My children will simply not watch those shows. Zaboomafoo will be a big loss, but not much else was interesting to them.
As far as I've read and understand, Apple isn't preventing Amazon from releasing a video streaming app on the AppleTV. Amazon is the one that has been playing hard ball, removing other streaming devices from their store and not releasing a video app (just like they have on iOS) for AppleTV.
edit: I should add that I believe the reason Amazon isn't releasing on AppleTV is that Apple won't allow people to subscribe for Prime via the App without requiring their 30% cut. All the other streaming services (and there are dozens if not hundreds) on AppleTV require users to subscribe via means outside of the AppleTV app itself.
For what it's worth, PBS has an app[1] for Apple TV, and it has much of PBS' content.
With that said, the general problem of certain services being restricted from/to specific platforms is extremely frustrating, and will only get more painful as exclusives become common.
We're basically witnessing the unbundling of cable providers networks and rebundling of content on different platforms and companies. Two steps forward, one step back.
My feeling is that since PBS is largely funded by taxes and donations, all their content should be available freely just about anywhere. They really ought to publish directly to YouTube as well.
IMO, there is a large gap between taxes and donations. Taxpayers would be better served by open access, but donors may feel funding for PBS is a better option.
As taxpayers are only 15 percent and this may reduce PBS's funding needs it's probably a good approach to licence the content widely for a reasonable cost.
It _was_ widely available, on Hulu and Netflix. Swapping those two ubiquitous services our for Amazon Instant Video is a dramatic decrease in availability, given the limited number of devices that Amazon allows access on (i.e. no Chromecase, no Apple TV, etc).
Only because they are very successfully at monetizing their content which was originally bootstrapped by tax and donations. After this exclusive deal that percentage may drop further.
The problem isn't with Amazon having to pay to serve the content. It's that Amazon now has an exclusive deal and this content is being removed from Netflix and other streaming services.
As others have noted, this isn't a great deal for consumers who also happen to already pay for some of the content via taxes.
I think that Mister Rogers' Neighborhood should be mandatory viewing for all children throughout the world. The show at its core teaches empathy, unlike a lot of children's programming these days that have the primary goal of selling merchandise.
Daniel Tiger's neighborhood is also a great show that takes a lot of the music and lessons from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, but is an updated and animated version of it.
I've always been very impressed with the music and talent of the musicians he had on his show - they actually played live during most of the shows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peDn6XQ3bjI for an example.
Also, +1 on Daniel Tiger's neighborhood. One of the few shows my 2.5 year old is allowed to watch, since the vast majority of them are trying to sell something, or promote disturbing body image messages, etc.
I can't help but imagine a future where every single resource that we consume will provided by one of a small number of megacorps (gigacorps?) and branded, right down to the home that you live in, the people that teach your children, the food you eat, the water you drink, and the air that you breathe.
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I really hope that either a) the PBS Kids app on the Apple TV still has a couple shows or b) Amazon and Apple work out their differences and get Amazon Video on the Apple TV, because my 16 month old gets to watch TV the only time a day for 15 minutes of Daniel Tiger everyday before his nap. He's such a creature of habit that I'd probably have to go get a Fire TV Stick or make significant changes to my home network so AirPlay worked with that TV, otherwise my wife have a month of struggle to get him adjusted to a new routine.
I love Amazon. I like Netflix. I haven't tried HBO go yet. Here's my problem with this... which may not be the actual point of this article. Amazon is going to remove PBS shows from competitors (like Netflix). I understand why Amazon would want to do this, but from a consumer aspect, it sucks having to get Orange is the new Black from Netflix, Silicon Valley from HBO, and Elmo from Amazon. To see shows fragmented across different digital providers is what bothers me. I wish they all could have access to all of them. So I could pick my provider and know that everything I want to watch is at that provider. This allows me to switch between Dish Network and DirectTV without too much inconvenience. When providers get shows to blacklist other providers, that fragmentation would cause me to have to now purchase multiple providers. I (as a consumer) do not like this.
I appreciate that they made a "deal". While there are reasons for giving it all away because it's public and paid for with taxes and donations, I think this just means that they will be able to produce more and better content for a longer period of time.
That being said, there are a few moments in parenting that are especially magical:
1) When the kids don't need diapers anymore.
2) When they stop wanting to watch these kid shows.
I've gotten to the point where I don't care if Netflix or Hulu get an exclusive for series or movies, but it really annoys me when Amazon does. Exclusives are a way for them to sell subscriptions and I get that. For Netflix and Hulu, they both work really hard to basically make their content available everywhere. I think nearly every one of my devices capable of playing video down to Nintendo 2DSs can have Netflix and Hulu.
The problem with Amazon that they seem to be more about pushing the hardware by limiting where the service is available. Amazon Instant video was unavailable on Android tablets for a very long time because Amazon wanted to push Kindle Fires and now we're seeing the same thing for Chromecast and AppleTV to push FireTV devices. And then there's the auxiliary complaint with Amazon instant video where when you do actually have a device that supports it, the subscription content is mixed in with rent and purchase content.
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Oh goody.
So now instead of being able to use Netflix via Apple TV to watch her favorite PBS show my 5 year old is going to have to figure out how to bring up Amazon Prime through the shitty Samsung TV interface.
Or better yet maybe I'll have to buy another device that will be obsolete in a year.
This Amazon / Apple bs war of not supporting eachother's devices has got to stop, it sets a terrible precedence which seem to be aimed at protecting the devices which are so incredibly commoditized!
Apple - please just let us have an Amazon app on Apple TV. Is it such a protective move when I can just airplay prime from an iphone / ipad / macbook to apple tv?
While we are Amazon Prime subscribers, the hassle of actually watching anything on Amazon Prime Instant Video means we never bother. I think we have a BluRay player that is technically capable of it, but it's a couple minutes worth of annoying menu navigation to use it...
My three year old has an old android phone that she has no trouble casting from. Fortunately, it seems the PBS Kids app will still work.
The terms are the same as iOS: if your app allows in-app purchase of digital goods, then you have to use Apple's payments system and Apple gets their 30% cut.
On iOS, Amazon Video works fine, Amazon works around the 30% by not allowing signups within the app, and by not providing a link to the Amazon website for signing up.
Amazon is using the AppleTV as a test case for fighting against this policy. They can afford to do that because so few people have AppleTVs compared to iOS devices.
It's designed to get you to buy/rent from the Amazon digital store, and hardly much else.
My children will simply not watch those shows. Zaboomafoo will be a big loss, but not much else was interesting to them.
edit: I should add that I believe the reason Amazon isn't releasing on AppleTV is that Apple won't allow people to subscribe for Prime via the App without requiring their 30% cut. All the other streaming services (and there are dozens if not hundreds) on AppleTV require users to subscribe via means outside of the AppleTV app itself.
With that said, the general problem of certain services being restricted from/to specific platforms is extremely frustrating, and will only get more painful as exclusives become common.
[1] http://www.pbs.org/anywhere/connected-tv/apple-tv/
As taxpayers are only 15 percent and this may reduce PBS's funding needs it's probably a good approach to licence the content widely for a reasonable cost.
Only because they are very successfully at monetizing their content which was originally bootstrapped by tax and donations. After this exclusive deal that percentage may drop further.
As others have noted, this isn't a great deal for consumers who also happen to already pay for some of the content via taxes.
If anyone is interested, there's a wonderful 4.5 hour interview with Fred Rogers: http://www.emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/fred-rogers#
I've always been very impressed with the music and talent of the musicians he had on his show - they actually played live during most of the shows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peDn6XQ3bjI for an example.
Also, +1 on Daniel Tiger's neighborhood. One of the few shows my 2.5 year old is allowed to watch, since the vast majority of them are trying to sell something, or promote disturbing body image messages, etc.
"Amazon Air. For a lighter, purer you."
That being said, there are a few moments in parenting that are especially magical:
1) When the kids don't need diapers anymore.
2) When they stop wanting to watch these kid shows.
The problem with Amazon that they seem to be more about pushing the hardware by limiting where the service is available. Amazon Instant video was unavailable on Android tablets for a very long time because Amazon wanted to push Kindle Fires and now we're seeing the same thing for Chromecast and AppleTV to push FireTV devices. And then there's the auxiliary complaint with Amazon instant video where when you do actually have a device that supports it, the subscription content is mixed in with rent and purchase content.