A Review of Amazon’s Prime Membership Free Movie Streaming  – Not Ready for Prime Time

First take on Amazon’s attempt to compete with Netflix comes up short, especially on its search features. We are already Prime Members, and we have a Roku, so it was no hassle linking our Roku to our Amazon account. However, we are greatly disappointed for two reasons:  movie selection and search features.

First of all, the available movies for free streaming download are not nearly as extensive as Netflix’s offerings. Amazon has all the first runs, but they are not free. Which brings us to the second problem. The search feature in Amazon cannot be set to only search the free  Prime Membership offerings, so what happens is you find the movie or show you want to watch, but when you click on it, you find out it is only available if you pay for it. This makes Amazon’s “free” offerings more frustrating than satisfying.

Now, the search feature at Amazon.com has finally improved so that you can select Amazon Instant Video › Movies › Prime Eligible, but trying to search on Roku is an entirely different matter. It does not as yet have this ability to exclude Prime ineligible. Perhaps it will improve with time, but I would not pay for a Prime Membership for the movie offerings at this time.