Amazon Launches Updates to Its Prime Video User Interface

Amazon is rolling out a redesigned Prime Video app for Android and connected living room devices, including Fire TV for customers worldwide, with iOS and web to follow. The company says the new interface will make discovery and navigation much easier. Among the visual enhancements are a Top 10 Chart showcasing trending Prime Video content and “Super Carousel” displays with “poster-style artwork” for Amazon Originals. Also emphasized is graphical distinction between content included with Prime memberships versus that which is available for general purchase.

“Prime Video hasn’t received a significant overhaul or rethinking in many years,” writes The Verge, adding that “compared to Netflix, Disney Plus, and other major streaming services, Prime Video has never been the most elegant or intuitive app.”

The new experience will also affect connected home devices by Roku, Apple TV and Android TV as well as game consoles, according to The Verge, which concludes the result “looks a whole lot like Netflix.”

The main Prime Video navigation has been moved to screen left, as a vertical column of icons for six main areas: Home, Search, Store, Free TV, Live TV and My Stuff. Customers will also have sub-navigation options to more easily browse by content or offer type, such as Movies, TV Shows and Sports on Home, and Channels or Rent or Buy on Store, Amazon says in its announcement (with the caveat that users may have slightly different experiences based on device or region).

Prime Video’s redesign has been 18-months in the making, with the final mile overseen by Ben Smith, Amazon’s VP of product for Prime Video and Prime Studios. “Smith is the same executive who led Hulu’s radical redesign in 2017,” notes The Verge. Prime Video’s redesign is the result of “extensive usability testing” and the result is “deliberate, calculated, and — as the parallels with Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney+ demonstrate — far less audacious.”

TechCrunch details likes (the Sports tab, “a completely new addition to Prime Video that will help you find live sports, replays and highlights of recently concluded matches”) and dislikes (“While Amazon has a sizable catalog of sports documentaries — including its own ‘All or Nothing’ series — there was no easy filter or button to find the related content.”).

Streaming analytics firm Conviva reports in a May study that “big screens represented 77 percent of globally streamed minutes” during Q1, concluding “in mature markets like the U.S. and Europe, viewers are upscreening from small devices to Smart TVs, setting the foundation for streaming to overtake linear TV on the big screen,” TechCrunch writes.

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