Amazon’s subscription-based video streaming service Amazon Prime Video goes live today with a free 30-day trial on its website, iOS and Android platforms. Existing Prime users in India will have access to unlimited video streaming with their Rs 499/999 annual Prime membership. Users can pay via Credit/Debit Cards, Netbanking, Gift Cards and Cash on Delivery. Prime Video will let users control the maximum bitrate for videos being streamed or downloaded at four different video quality levels. Note that Prime Video’s rival Netflix also allows users to download and set quality levels for videos. Last week, Amazon released the Prime Video app accidentally in India. At that time MediaNama took a peek into the app to discover that Prime Video features subtitles and dubbing in Indian languages like Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Bengali. More on this here. Content Library and original programming Prime Video has a local language collection of Bollywood and other regional Indian movies (Tamil, Telugu, Marathi), Hollywood movies, a library of US-based TV shows, and kids’ programming as well. The library will have video content from Amazon Original Series which including titles like Transparent, Mozart in the Jungle, The Man in the High Castle, The Grand Tour with Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May among others. Amazon has partnered with local content producers, authors, writers and directors for adding Amazon Original Series in India. These include titles like: -‘Bodhidharma: Master of Shaolin’, featuring Ram Madhvani, Prasoon Joshi and Sunil Doshi; -‘Breathe’, starring R Madhvan and Amit Sadh; -‘The Ministry’, featuring AIB and OML; -‘Vishpuri’, featuring Vikas Bahl, Vikramaditya Motwane, Anurag…
