Online retail giant Amazon.com on Thursday updated its video-on-demand service, which improves on its Unbox, allowing customers to watch movies and television shows on Macs or PCs.
Amazon’s video on demand offers service similar to that of Netflix, iTunes, or Hulu, with rental prices ranging $3 to $4 and movie purchases $10 to $15. A TV series can cost $2 on average per episode, with full-season packages also available.
“The ability to watch content instantly without downloading first was among the most requested features of our customers, and now it's live,” Roy Price, director of Amazon's video on demand, said in a statement.
About 40,000 movies and TV shows are available in Amazon’s library that can be watched on Mac, PC, Sony BRAVIA TV, TiVo box, Xbox 360, but full downloads for offline viewing is not available for Macs or Apple TV and will not play on iPods or iPhones.
Netflix DVD rental service, which launched a box to connect to the TV and deliver videos over the Internet this year, announced in July that it will make the same service available over the Xbox 360.
The video on demand sector is evolving quickly with new players including Akimbo, Sezmi, and Vudu.