Amazon Takes on Netflix Offering Movie Subscriptions

Amazon Takes on Netflix Offering Movie Subscriptions

Those interested in immediate gratification have made Netflix a popular choice for movie viewing.  Amazon has now taken on the challenge of competing with Netflix.  Amazon’s “Prime” subscription program costs $79/year which includes their 2-day shipping on purchases.  Prime also includes more than 5,000 video-streaming movies and television shows.  Most of what they offer includes older television seasons and movies.

Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” program costs $7.99 a month and video-streams over 20,000 titles.  This brings their price to over $95/year.  Many of their movies are newer, but their TV shows consistent of previous seasons.

Amazon is entering this market in hope of increasing their digital business.  According to the Wall Street Journal, “The streaming-video offering could lead customers to buy or rent the 90,000 movies and shows that Amazon already offers on an a la carte basis.”

In an effort to compete, Netflix has entered into a two-year deal with CBS to provide television shows.  WSJ reported, “Netflix will pay CBS hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of the nonexclusive, two-year licensing pact, which gives CBS the option to extend it for up to two years and add more content in return for higher compensation.”

How will this affect the cable and satellite industry’s relationship with TV networks?  That is something that TV executives must consider as more than $30 billion a year comes to networks from subscriptions.

Netflix is no stranger to competition.  Netflix’s competition with Itunes, led to their removing limits for streaming of video. PCworld reported, “Previously the amount of streaming content subscribers could access was dependent on their subscription level. For example, the $16.99 membership allowed for 17 hours of streaming movie content. With the new unlimited plan, all subscription levels, with the exception of the lowest $4.99 plan, will be able to stream as many Netflix movies and TV shows as they’d like to their PCs.”

Itunes has been tough to beat in movie downloads.  As Forbes pointed out, “ITunes already dominates the world of movie downloads. In 2010 the service accounted for 64.5% of all movie downloads and rentals.”

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Free Online Education vs. College

Bill Gates says the best college education could soon be available online and for free. At a tech conference, the Microsoft founder said that in five years the best lectures in the world will be available for free on the web. And he thinks that will make the Internet “better than any single university.” Gates also thinks there needs to be a way to get credit for what you learn, no matter where you learn it.

via abcnews.go.com

Looking for Free Education . . .Click on the above link to hear Bill Gates’ opinion on what will soon be available. In my book How to Reinvent Your Career, I list a lot of great free resources that are already available. Check out some of my favorite free educational sources:

1. iTunes U: http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/ – iTunes have their university courses as well as regular podcasts available. Be sure to check out all of the free things iTunes has to offer.
2. ‘Stuff you should know’ podcast: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/stuff-you-should-know-podcast.htm
3. MIT Open Courseware: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm
4. Computer training: http://www.gcflearnfree.org/computer/topic.aspx?id=140
5. How to use APA for writing papers: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/
6. Source for a lot of educational videos that help you to be on the cutting edge: http://wimp.com/
7. Grammar guide: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/
8. Online tutorials: http://www.librarysupportstaff.com/ed4you.html#Online Tutorial
9. Source for many educational training videos: http://websearch.about.com/od/imagesearch/a/education_video.htm
10. Career training resource: http://freecareertraining.org/

Free Education

If you are thinking of changing careers but don’t think you have enough training or education  . . .  in my book How to Reinvent Your Career, you will be able to find some suggestions about how to learn things for free.
 
One of my favorite new ways to learn things is through iTunes’ program called iTunes U (the U stands for university). Some very well respected universities participate in iTunes U, and offer many free video downloads that you can access to learn about almost anything. Even if you aren’t considering changing jobs, I highly recommend checking out their free lectures.

You can also learn a lot on iTunes through their podcasts, which are also free. A podcast is a recorded audio program that you download onto your computer, iPod or MP3 device. There are excellent podcasts on just about any topic you can imagine.

For a list of some great free educational sites, check out the following:

1.    iTunes U: http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/ – iTunes have their university courses as well as regular podcasts available. Be sure to check out all of the free things iTunes has to offer.

2.    ‘Stuff you should know’ podcast  (the hosts Josh and Chuck are great!): http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/stuff-you-should-know-podcast.htm

3.     MIT Open Courseware: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm

4.     Computer training: http://www.gcflearnfree.org/computer/topic.aspx?id=140

5.      How to use APA for writing papers: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

6.      Source for a lot of educational videos that help you to be on the cutting edge: http://wimp.com/

7.      Grammar guide: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/

8.      Online tutorials: http://www.librarysupportstaff.com/ed4you.html#Online Tutorial

9.      Source for many educational training videos: http://websearch.about.com/od/imagesearch/a/education_video.htm

10.    Career training resource: http://freecareertraining.org/