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   Amazon Instant Video Comes to Apple TV via AirPlay

   Josh Centers

   Amazon has finally added AirPlay support to its [1]Amazon Instant Video
   app for iOS. Now, you can use AirPlay with an Apple TV connected to
   your big-screen TV to display digital videos from Amazon. That includes
   videos purchased or rented, as well as content from Prime Instant
   Video, which is a Netflix-like service included with $79-per-year
   Amazon Prime memberships. Note that Prime Instant Video is available
   only for the main Amazon Prime account, not for accounts that share
   with the main account.

   [2][tn_Amazon-Instant-AirPlay.jpg]

   This is good news for Apple TV fans, as Amazon Prime's video service
   has been snatching [3]a number of exclusives away from Netflix,
   including Under the Dome, Downton Abbey, Grimm, Justified, Falling
   Skies, The Good Wife, and Workaholics. Parents will especially be
   pleased, as Amazon has a number of children's shows that have vanished
   from Netflix, including Yo Gaba Gaba, SpongeBob SquarePants, Dora the
   Explorer, and Blue's Clues.

   But don't get too excited just yet, as there are some drawbacks to the
   Amazon Instant Video app. The first, of course, is that you can't
   purchase content from within the app itself, thanks to Apple's
   restrictions. However, any digital videos you've purchased from
   Amazon's Web site should appear in the cloud tab, where you can either
   stream them or download them to your device for offline viewing. Having
   both options is a big plus over iTunes, which perplexingly requires
   downloads and doesn't offer video streaming in iOS, and Netflix, which
   offers only streaming and not offline viewing.

   The Amazon Instant Video app's other major liability is that you can't
   lock your device while streaming a video with AirPlay. If you do, the
   video shuts off, which is supremely annoying. Plus, in my testing, the
   video quality wasn't nearly as good as Netflix.

   However, despite these problems, Amazon Instant Video has long been
   missed on the Apple TV, and while using AirPlay via the iOS app isn't
   as seamless as an Apple TV app would be, it's better than we had
   before.

References

   1. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/amazon-instant-video/id545519333?mt=8&at=10l5PW
   2. http://tidbits.com/resources/2013-09/Amazon-Instant-AirPlay.png
   3. http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=sr_aj?node=6938769011&ajr=0

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