Amazon Prime Video Now Streaming In India & OMG It Only Costs Rs 42 Per Month!

Netflix, Hotstar, Spuul and other streaming, paid video-on-demand services in India -- watch out! Ending weeks of speculation, Amazon Prime Video finally went live in India earlier today, promising to change the game with one fell swoop and offer consumers unmatched entertainment value.

1) Prime Video is the cheapest high-quality VOD service in the country

Where Netflix¡¯s streaming service costs Rs 500 per month and Hotstar¡¯s premium content sits behind a paywall of Rs 199 per month, Amazon Prime Video is offering an inaugural annual price of just Rs 499 for one full year. You read that right. That¡¯s Rs 42 per month!!! To sign-up for a 30-day free trial of Prime membership, just visit www.PrimeVideo.com or download the Amazon Prime Video app right now.

JUST. TAKE. IT!

That¡¯s just nuts! And of course, this is also music to our money-conscious Indian ears. With Reliance Jio sending a shockwave through cellular providers¡¯ systems, forcing everyone to cut prices across the board, this is just the right time for Amazon Prime Video to capitalize on the trend. Great timing, eh?

2) Faster streaming over 4G

There is no doubt that India is a wireless Internet and telephony country, with the highest 4G Internet adoption rate anywhere in the world. We know Netflix pumps its video through H.264/AVC High codec for iOS users and VP9 for Android users, achieving as much as 36% saving in bandwidth usage.

We asked Amazon¡¯s Tim Leslie -- VP, Amazon Digital Video International at Amazon.com -- about how Prime Video will shape up in India¡¯s still low-bandwidth, slow broadband speed scenario. He said that it¡¯s an evolving problem and Amazon will innovate solutions to tackle the problem, and a lot will depend on optimizing Amazon Prime Video for cellular 4G video consumption.

3) Offline viewing FTW!

Maybe you have a 2G plan (in which case, WTF?!) on your smartphone or you have erratic cellular connection where you stay, but you still want to watch Amazon Prime Video. Do you swallow your tears and curse at your misfortune? Nope. You fight!

Just connect to a Wi-Fi connection you trust or bribe your office IT helpdesk guy with allowing you to queue up Amazon Prime Video content. To save space on your smartphone, select a lower quality preset from the Prime Video app (so content also downloads faster). Click on the Download button and start downloading. Once the download finishes, you¡¯re now free to watch it anytime at your leisure and you don¡¯t need to connected to the Internet to do that. Offline video rules!

4) What about Amazon Fire TV?!

Now that Amazon Prime Video¡¯s finally in India, our next big demand is to be able to turn on our Fire TV, log in and start streaming Prime Video. There¡¯s only one small problem in this yet-to-be-realized-dream -- Amazon Fire TV still doesn¡¯t sell in India.

What¡¯s Amazon Fire TV? It¡¯s like an Apple TV device with a cute little remote that you can hook up to your HDTV and Wi-Fi and start streaming Prime Video like a boss. We asked Tim Leslie about the Indian availability of Fire TV in the near future. ¡°We hope to launch it in India soon,¡± is all he said. Oh well.

5) Screw everything else, The Grand Tour is here!

What¡¯s great about Amazon Prime Video officially coming to India? No more illegal pirating the latest episodes of The Grand Tour -- Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May¡¯s brand new car show. The holy trinity from BBC¡¯s Top Gear! Here, look at us downloading the show right now¡­

No doubt, Amazon Prime Video offers a whole host of exclusive content, but for everyone who hasn¡¯t fully moved on from the catastrophic demise of Top Gear (and of those quite a lot of fans reside here in India), Amazon¡¯s Prime Video finally offers sweet solace. No no, not solace. Serious cause for celebration!!!