Depth of catalogue is awful. But there are some excellent Amazon Original shows in there: Expanse, Fleabag, Star Trek: Lower Decks, The Boys. Other shows that I’ve enjoyed: Good Omens, Wheel of Time, Picard, The Tick.
I continue to subscribe in part because there’s a free monthly Twitch subscription, which I use for Critical Role. (I’m probably about twenty years too old to write that sentence!)
I’d say if you have a use for a Twitch subscription, it’s worth it. Otherwise try to rotate subscriptions. Sign up for a few months, watch the catalog, and cancel.
None of the above applies if you’ve got a VPN. I assume that gives you a lot more, but I may be wrong.
Re: Lower Decks: yup, it’s on Amazon prime here. Season 1 aired on a delay. And then it disappeared from prime here for a while. It came back when Season 2 started, and that one was live. It’s still there now, but who knows what will happen in the future with all the Trek going to Paramount Plus.
I think Lower Decks is by far the best of the three new Trek shows I’ve seen; I haven’t seen Prodigy.
Re: Critical Role: right now is a good time to get into it. They’re only seven or eight episodes into campaign three, so you can get “live” without going through a massive backlog. I started at the beginning of campaign two and loved the ride, and if you enjoy what they do, I certainly recommend listening back through it, but whoah, there’s a lot. Podcast and YouTube are free but delayed several days. Some say you want to watch the video feed, and sure, that adds something, but I listen more than I watch. It’s great material for a weekend afternoon of cooking.
Just saw a story about Lower Decks being in a Strange New Worlds S02 episode, so am reminded that I cannot seem to easily subscribe to Paramount Plus, despite being an Amazon Prime Video subscriber with a VPN.
What I would really like to do is sign on to Paramount Plus Essentials. I don’t mind seeing US commercials and would prefer to avoid the monthly fee ($11.99). When I tried to sign up for the 7-day free trial for Paramount Plus, I am confronted with the error message that I need a US payment method: address and credit/debit card. What I was hoping to do was sign up for Paramount Plus, then download the Paramount Plus app to my FireTV device and, I think, select Paramount Plus Essential there. Is this the way to do it?
I have an Ally Bank account (US online-only bank) associated with a US address. Could I get a debit card from Ally Bank, have it sent to a trusted friend in the US, and then use those details in my Amazon Prime account to sign up for Paramount Plus? I am hoping that by using the Paramount Plus app, I can select the commercial-supported option.
EDIT: I thought Paramount Plus Essential was free, but apparently it isn’t
Sorry, I don’t know about this. As far as I know Lower Decks is still on Amazon Prime in Taiwan, and I hope will still be so when the next season starts in September; I’ve been watching Strange New Worlds through, arr, other means.
Paramount doesn’t seem to be doing well, so I’m hoping they’ll return to just licensing their content to other streamers that are more easily available. But that doesn’t help with this year.
So, I’m interested in watching the new Fallout series which I’ve heard is on Amazon Prime. I’m not sure if I want to pay for the service if that’s the only show I’m interested in. So, is there a way to see a list of shows available before signing up?
I tried searching for the answer but didn’t see it. The Amazon site itself says I must sign in first to see what’s available, but of course then I must sign up for the service before I can sign in.
My sister ended up giving me her password for Amazon in America so I’m not sure if the availability is the same if you buy prime video here vs if you are using a foreign account and are on traveling status.
The catalog available for traveling are only shows made by Amazon.
Some decent stuff in there though
The expanse : still watching it
The boys: but the second season is much worse than the first. Ignore their spinoff called gen v, it’s truly awful. Third season is pretty good, mich better than the second
The terminal list
Reacher
The man in the high castle : seen a few episodes but haven’t dived in that deeply yet
Patriot- dead pan dark comedy. It’s pretty good
Invincible - a really good animation about superheroes, well written
Carnival row - it’s alright but not my favorite. O finished the first season
Goliath - really great lawyer show
Good omens- first season is amazing but the second sucks big time. I hated the second season
Hana- pretty good action spy thriller
Jack Ryan - great show but inconsistent
The tick- pretty funny show making fun of super heroes
Searching JustWatch Taiwan for Amazon Prime Video seems to do this, but I don’t know if it’s accurate. I’m not currently an Prime Video subscriber, so I can’t double-check:
I’d say Prime’s like all of them. Plenty of shows at the level of “Oh, I should watch that one day”, but somehow I never get around to them. I’ll sign up again at some point, probably when Wheel of Time (middling-at-best first season, much better second season) and/or Rings of Power (very disappointing first season but I’m a Tolkien addict) return.
If you like sci-fi, The Expanse is about as good as it gets for a TV show, even if it ends a little too abruptly (i.e. at the end of Book 6 - wrapping up the first two trilogies in the nine-book series, but leaving out the final trilogy).
I signed up for Prime in Taiwan, with a Taiwanese credit card; when I was briefly in Canada, I used the same account, and when I logged in I saw a quite different catalogue from what I saw here. (Same with Disney+ and Netflix). So I think with Prime, your location matters more than the address on the credit card.
Well what I see here is the full catalog from America, but when you click on anything not Amazon made it will say “not available in your location” so that’s why I’m not sure what it looks like if you buy it here
Perfect! I see Fallout is there (called 異塵餘生) as well as some other shows I’d like to watch.
EDIT: I can download the season on my phone?! Now I can watch while I’m on vacation (I know, bring on the “OK boomer” comments)
I’m afraid I don’t remember how it works anymore. I do remember the interface sometimes being deceptive: click through to watch something, oh, you can’t, not unless you pay for it. That sort of thing.
I gather Prime Video recently introduced ads at their default tier. I don’t know if that’s also happened in Taiwan.
Just like Netflix, pretty much 98% of Amazon’s content is rubbish that I can’t even get through the first episode of. If you see something that looks good, chances are you actually have to pay a fee to watch it.
The Expense is brilliant, and only because the show started out off Amazon, they only picked it up for seasons 4-6 and fortunately didn’t screw it up.
Fallout is also pretty good, but that’s more thanks to Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy in spite of Amazon.
