Amazon has begun selling TV episodes for 99 cents a piece, just hours after Apple announced that they would begin offering 99 cent rentals on recently aired shows.
Disney and Fox shows, such as “Glee,” “Lost” and “Bones” are now available via Amazon Video On Demand for 99 cents.
When you purchase the episodes, they are yours to keep. You can download them and they never expire. You can also stream them indefinitely.
Shows from other broadcasters, such as AMC, still cost $1.99, however.
The ability to download is only available on Windows PCs and TiVO HD boxes, but you can stream the shows on Macs, HDTVs, Roku boxes and more.
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Later this year Netflix will be expanding their Watch Instantly streaming video service, making it available to Canadian residents.
In addition to being the first service offered by the home video rental giant outside the US, it will also mark the first time they have offered streaming by itself. To date their streaming video offering has been an add on to their popular rent by mail DVD and Blu-ray service.
That’s not likely to be changing any time soon for US customers. When the plan for streaming outside the US was first mentioned last October, CEO Reed Hastings was clear that it was purely due to the logistical issues of shipping discs internationally.
And selling the exclusively online service to Canadians isn’t a sure winner either. Although Netflix has made some headway in licensing new releases and increasing their selection of recent TV episodes for streaming, such arrangements are still the exception.
Canadians interested in the service can go to www.netflix.ca and sign up for email notification when the service launches.
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GearLive, citing a source close to Microsoft that is “never wrong,” has reported today that the Microsoft Xbox 360 will be the first console to get native Hulu support, with the announcement coming at the E3 event later this month.
Microsoft will show off a subscription-based Hulu, says the source, at E3, which begins on June 14th.
The rest is speculation, but the site says Hulu will be integrated into the Xbox 360 dashboard, just like Netflix and other Xbox Live services are currently.
The subscription fee is still unknown, but it seems improbable the monthly fee will cost over $9.99.
As speculated in the past, a subscription-based Hulu would include full access to all seasons of TV episodes. Users using the free ad-based Hulu normally only getting the last 5 trailing episodes of any given season.
