Until now, Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet has been hampered in the UK, by an inability to download movies for offline viewing. The addition of Instant Video means you'll soon be able to download movies and TV shows to your Amazon tablet. Prime Instant Video will compete with Netflix for your streaming-video cash. Netflix recently kicked off series two of its acclaimed House of Cards series -- Amazon has vowed to offer customers another round of exclusive pilots , the most popular of which will be made into a fully-fledged show.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Be respectful, keep it civil and stay on topic. With the two squaring up, we paid up for ringside seats to watch the pair slug it out.
Read on for our round-by-round score card. The pricing of Netflix couldn't be much simpler. Lovefilm also operates a disc-by-post service in the UK, so there are various subscription packages available. In this review, we're only looking at Lovefilm's streaming as it's the option that most closely matches that of Netflix.
These are movies the studios have put in their pay-per-view 'window', so they won't be on Netflix at all. One thing we really like about both services is that they don't tie you into a contract. You pay per month and if you want to cancel -- so long as you do so before the end of the month -- you won't be charged again.
Both sites make it easy to cancel. Unlike some services that demand you send a long-hand letter by carrier pigeon before cancelling your account, you just log into your Netflix or Lovefilm account details and click a button. There seem to be no sharp practices at work.
The web interfaces for both services have their strengths and weaknesses and we weren't overly fond of either. The Netflix interface tries to simplify things too much by relying on its matching engine to suggest stuff for you to watch.
The problem is that due to the currently limited library, a lot of the categories are filled with the same titles. It feels like the library is being hidden from you as there's no way to simply browse through it. Instead, you have to perform direct searches to find what you want.
Lovefilm, on the other hand, makes it easy to browse its library. However, it annoyingly lumps everything together, so discs by post, pay-per-view movies and streaming titles all show up in your searches.
It means every time you do a search you have to wait for the results, then click the With Package option to see which you have access to. Also, it doesn't group TV shows together by series, so you have to look for each episode individually, which is a ridiculous oversight.
The good news is that both services seem to have plenty of server capacity, so you don't get five minutes into a film and then have to wait for it to buffer for 30 seconds before it continues to play.
That may be a faster connection than many people have access to, but what it shows is that if there is a bottleneck in the system, it's going to be your own broadband connection rather than the Netflix or Lovefilm servers. When it comes to picture quality, there is a clear winner between the two -- Netflix. In part, this is because Netflix is the only one to offer HD streams in either p or p formats on some of its content. These streams often include surround sound.
Even its standard-definition streams look pretty crisp and sharp and are largely on a par with what you'd expect from a DVD. But there were a hardy few of us who stuck with it throughout.
My pile of Lovefilm envelopes recently became a running joke among my friends. This morning, the bell finally tolled. It feels like a step backwards. It offered something no one else was at an affordable price: specificity.
They struggle to cater for people with specific tastes, who are into Korean horror or screwball comedies from the s and 40s. But Lovefilm did. This is how I discovered that Citizen Kane was gripping and crazily fresh, not some tedious old fossil you had to watch out of principle. Are all these films available from streaming?
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