It was first reported back in March that Amazon is thinking of developing a new video and music streaming service that wouldn’t require subscribers to pay a monthly fees, instead they’d have to put up with advertisements to stream the content for free. The service was rumored to launch within the next few months but there’s no sign of it as yet. A company spokeswoman later confirmed that Amazon has no plans to offer a streaming music service. However the latest update for its Amazon Instant Video app makes it seem like the company might just be dipping its toe in the water.
Those who use the Amazon Instant Video app on iOS will now be able to see first episodes of select TV series absolutely free. The only catch is that these episodes will be ad-supported so viewers will have to sit through them as they run before and during playback.
Interestingly though this isn’t the first time that Amazon has adopted this strategy. This feature is already available on Amazon Kindle Fire tablets, a similar feature is also available on Roku.
Many of these select shows are already present in the Amazon Prime catalog so if any Prime subscriber wants to check out these titles they will not have to sit through ads. Don’t expect to see the first episodes of recent hits, the list primarily consists of older shows, which were popular back in their time.
Today’s update for the Amazon Instant Video iOS app also brings HBO content to Apple’s mobile devices, Amazon recently inked a deal with HBO to stream the cable giant’s content which generally keeps its content close to its chest.
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