Amazon launches free movie streaming service for Prime members

Amazon has thrown down the gauntlet in the video on demand market, making a massive selection of movies and TV shows available for on-line streaming – and for free, if you’re a member of discount shipping club Amazon Prime.

Announced today, the service allows all Amazon Prime members to watch any one of over 1,600 titles completely free of charge – providing they keep up their membership, which attracts an annual charge in exchange for free expedited shipping on all orders.

Amazon’s Prime service has proven popular, even as the company lowers the limit at which the traditional three to five day ‘free shipping’ threshold kicks in – and this latest move will certainly get film buffs interested in signing up to the service.

More importantly, however, Amazon’s decision to make the movies free for Prime members seriously shakes up the video on demand market, sending a message to industry incumbents such as Hulu and Netflix that the game is on – and Amazon intends to win.

Titles available at launch including Food, Inc, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Red Cliff, Hairspray, Analyze This, and even shock-horror gore-fest The Human Centipede. For fans of classic smut, the R-rated edition of Caligula even makes an appearance.

All the titles made available to Amazon Prime members are also available to regular Amazon users to rent or buy, with most attracting a $3 or $4 rental charge, or up to $15 to own in digital form – meaning that if you watch a large quantity of movies, a subscription to Amazon Prime could save you a not-inconsiderable amount of money.

Many people in the industry see digital content as the next big thing: Steve Jobs of Apple fame has even gone so far as to refuse to put Blu-ray drives in his Mac Pro desktop and MacBook notebook machines, claiming that the days of physical content distribution are over. With broadband speeds – and coverage – growing at an ever increasing rate, it’s easy to see what he means.

Watching a film in a digital format means never having to worry about scratched discs, or forgetting to return a rental. Digital formats take up no physical space – or, at least, only that of the hard drive they’re stored on – and you don’t have to wait for them in to arrive by mail.

On the flipside, however, those who pay a per-gigabyte charge for their Internet connection are increasingly left cut off from such services – and the quality of a streamed movie, even in HD, can’t touch that of a well-mastered Blu-ray.

Amazon’s latest move in the market is interesting, but it remains to be seen if downloads and streaming are truly the future of entertainment.