Another nail in Blockbuster's coffin: Amazon is adding 40,000 TV shows and films to a new service called Video on Demand from today, reports the New York Times. Amazon's strategy is to better Apple by providing a one-click fast streaming experience, cutting out the delay while content downloads.
Most of the major film and TV studios are signed up with Amazon, though notably not the very Apple-inclined Disney and ABC.
Amazon will have to go some way to prove that this service has longevity; its former Amazon Unbox offering wasn't a great hit because it asked users to download a dedicated piece of software, and was only Windows or Tivo compatible.
One nice touch here: users keep their shows or films in a library, but that lives online so you could split viewing between, say, home and work.
Amazon has also done a deal with Sony Bravia, with other manufacturers in the pipeline, so that anyone with a Sony Bravia Internet Video Link can watch video straight from the web - and that not insignificant bit of $300 kit will soon be built into the sets.
Photo by Jonas B on Flickr. Some rights reserved.
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