Not so very long ago, Amazon caused controversy when they added LoveFilm® into their Prime service, and pretty much doubling the price in the process, at least for Prime-only customers. What of those who didn’t want LoveFilm? What of those whose internet would not be up to streaming? What of those who could not afford the price hike? Well, as it happened, I was for once in a good position. My Prime subscription had renewed about a week before the price hike, and so effectively the new service would be free for almost a whole year, the best possible trial I could hope for.
And so I gave it a go. Our internet here in the flat is not the best. We have an 8Mb ADSL service, since we’re not in an area that BT have blessed with fibre yet (and have no plans so to do according to their website) and I was concerned that it would work at all, but to my surprise, the streaming is pretty good most of the time, although the service degrades very rapidly in the evening prime time, with frequent freezing and drop-outs. I also see that although the service will run on a Kindle Fire or an iPad, it claims my Nexus 7 isn’t capable. An odd thing, since it’s perfectly capable of streaming other HD services quite happily. I foresee this changing soon, with either a client for Android or back-pedalling from Amazon.
They appear to be adding content regularly, but that may be due to the initial content being so pitiful. New movies are being added with additional cost however, with rental costs being between 30% and 50% of the cost to buy a Blu Ray disc. A little expensive for my taste. For older movies and/or TV however, it’s great. Again however, their content isn’t as good as some other services. We can only hope it improves over the course of the next year.
Yesterday, Linden Lab announced an official mobile client for Second Life™ called SL Go streaming through OnLive, which caused some amusement in the community. The client is free, but they’re asking $2.50 per hour for connection. It’s main competitor, Lumiya is a one off payment of about the same amount and while perhaps not quite as polished, is perfectly adequate for those times when one is away from the usual machine.
Nothing much on the job front this week. Two recruitment agents said they would get back to me the same day, and I am still waiting several days later. A third did get back to me quickly, so I have more hopes that something will come of this. The job on offer isn’t offering as much as I was hoping, but I suppose if I can impress, then that could change. Still, let’s not get previous. I have still to get an interview yet, let alone a job offer.