covering the week's top textbooks like
Linux bias at long last Amazon Prime
video is catching up to competitors like
Netflix Hulu and Disney Plus with with a
key feature user profiles the feature
began rolling out in the mobile and
set-top box versions of the prime video
app beginning Tuesday the feature allows
multiple people sharing on Amazon
Prime's Prime subscription to maintain
separate watch histories and watch lists
additionally Amazon has made a
distinction between user profiles for
kids and profiles for adults with
different rules users can configure up
to six profiles in any mix of children's
and adults profile profiles all this is
rolling out immediately but it will take
time to reach all users multiple user
profiles were supported in India and
Africa previously and they are only now
making their way to the rest of the
world including the United States the
rollout brings Amazon closer to feature
parity with Netflix and other big
streaming partners players the bulk of
major apps in this space offered this
feature but there are some outliers who
still don't like CBS all access some of
those other streaming services offer
robust parental controls so Amazon is
leaning into that with these changes as
well individual profiles can be flagged
as a kid's profile that profile will
only see recommendations or search
results of TV shows and films that are
age appropriate 12 and under and kids
won't be able to make purchases Amazon
is including a number of other options
for filtering content like this
including the ability to restrict
content on a per device basis Amazon is
making these changes at mist rising
competition Disney Plus has seen massive
growth in the recent months and Netflix
seems to be faring well also large new
entrants to the market with massive
libraries of exclusive content like HBO
Maxx and peacock are also hitting the
scene which puts pressure on prime video
to offer competitive features and
content in terms of content Amazon is
working on a lord of rings TV series and
it just released a new season of Hanna
the industry giant is also developing
TV series based on the video game
franchise fallout from some of the
writers of behind HBO's from some of the
writers behind HBO's Westworld what I do
like about Amazon Prime video is as an
Amazon Prime member I have it right so
while it kind of seems like okay well
these there's all these services you've
got to subscribe to ten different
services in order to get the shows that
you want well Amazon Prime is part of my
prime service right which I get for free
shipping yes and priorities and stuff
like that on Amazon so it really is cool
what I don't like about the profile
system on Netflix because there was a
time when even Netflix didn't support
profiles
yes relatively new with like in the last
six months two years and uh it's been a
couple years isaetjef yeah I remember
reporting on it when it was new but what
I don't like about it is that there are
no pins there are no there's no
protection on the profiles mm-hmm so
I'll give you an example when I first
set up profiles on our family Netflix
account I had one for each of my
children and then one called parents
right and I had it set up so that it was
like adult can't not adult content that
you know what I mean
grown-up shows yes for the parents and
the kids were limited to stuff that was
age-appropriate well it didn't take long
before I started hearing from our our
child that oh so-and-so changed my name
to Butthead you know instead they
changed my avatar to something like
whatever so and then it became like
fighters moment that was you doing it at
night wasn't it yeah you got me know so
now it's like our pro I've given up our
profiles are all ridiculous yes but I
really wish that Netflix and Amazon
Prime maybe they'll maybe someone will
clue in and say okay well the parents
should be the only ones who can set
those settings yes the parents should be
the ones who can configure them and
maybe they have a pin based system so
that my like each child could make
changes to their own profile like
changing their avatar changing their
name but not allow trolling
within the family so that's the only bit
that I have with it it's it's a nice
feature that that they're rolling it
with because that's been one of the
challenges we've had like we have we
have an Android box at home for the
purpose of being able to get Disney Plus
and Amazon Prime TV on our home TV
because it's not a Smart TV or anything
like that so we needed a way to put all
those kind of in there and and and one
of the things that I've struggled with
is whenever we've gone to Amazon to
watch their content there is no way to
separate between the kids and the and
the adults and so this is a nice feature
they're rolling out but up until this
point I've not allowed our kids to go on
to the Amazon content because I don't
want them just opening up something and
be like oh that's that's different
yeah or there's the other side of it
where okay well
each of the three kids is watching The
Office but they're watching it at
different places right right messes up
this cue so yeah so one of the nice
things about online content and
streaming video is that you can keep
track of which episode you're on well
you lose that if you don't have profiles
yes