With the cost of living continuing to rise, it is more important than ever to ensure that the streaming services we pay offer the best value for money.
For its part, Amazon is doing its best to keep Prime Video subscribers enjoying watching movies and TV shows with others by expanding support for the platform’s popular Watch Party feature to a range of additional streaming devices — including Roku’s smart streaming devices. TVs and game consoles.
The feature, which allows up to 100 people with a Prime subscription to view content at the same time, was previously only available on Fire TV devices, desktop web browsers and the Prime Video mobile app. Its expansion was first reported by Take Crunch (Opens in a new tab).
For now, Watch Party remains exclusive to US subscribers and is only compatible with library content included with a standard Prime Video subscription – viewers cannot host a group session of rental movies, live sports, Freevee movies (formerly IMDbtv) and TV shows.
This feature gained popularity during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, when friends and families were confined to their homes but still wanted to enjoy entertainment content with each other remotely. Other streaming services, including Disney PlusAnd the hollow And the HBO MaxSimilar features were launched around the same time.
Unlike Prime Video, Netflix does not have an in-app group viewing function, and during the desktop version of the latter service he is Compatible with the Teleparty browser extension, the streaming device’s lack of proprietary sharing software is a missing feather in the feature stack.
Of course, the newly expanded Watch Party feature in Prime Video Amazon doesn’t make an inherently better streaming service. In fact, the ability to enjoy content with others is unlikely to have any significant impact on consumers’ decisions to keep or cancel their broadcast subscriptions.
However, Prime Video’s expansion of a feature its biggest competitor still hasn’t implemented properly can only improve the health of a streaming device whose content offering continues to progress from strength to strength.
For more information on the state of Amazon Prime Video in 2022, check out our upcoming recap of the platform Lord of the Rings program and the The mystery surrounding her most famous series.
