The Grand Tour...Is AVAILABLE NOW on Prime

slowride wrote:

Fueled by Caffeine wrote:

Brian wrote: Between this and High Castle I want to borrow a login.

High castle started awesome but the later episodes where a chore. A total chore. I'll bet they don't do a season two.

I haven't watched that show, but I did see that season 2 premieres next month.

so... when does this crazy ass spending on TV shows start to weigh on the Amazon stock price.. Cause the ending of that show was like walking through waist deep mud.

I agree with this review. Well shot. poorly written. NYTIMES review But apparently noone believes the NY times anymore. maybe I should find some meme based review cause you know.. that'd be real..

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine:

I feel that the celebrity bit and references to the differences to TopGear weighed it down, but they should be gone by the second episode as they've now been addressed.

As for stock price. Let's assume that a number of gearheads, say 100,000 or so joined prime to view the program. A percentage of those new prime members will now likely search amazon for car parts prior to ebay driving automotive related sales through amazon. (This was the case for me once same day shipping became available, I stopped bothering with advance online order for in store pick up).

Fueled by Caffeine wrote:

slowride wrote:

Fueled by Caffeine wrote:

Brian wrote: Between this and High Castle I want to borrow a login.

High castle started awesome but the later episodes where a chore. A total chore. I'll bet they don't do a season two.

I haven't watched that show, but I did see that season 2 premieres next month.

so... when does this crazy ass spending on TV shows start to weigh on the Amazon stock price.. Cause the ending of that show was like walking through waist deep mud. I agree with this review. Well shot. poorly written. NYTIMES review But apparently noone believes the NY times anymore. maybe I should find some meme based review cause you know.. that'd be real..

I thought TMITHC was good enough to keep me interested. The Nazi and Japanese characters are by far the best part of it. The Americans, particularly Juliana, were so bland and so stupid it was hard to even root for them. I must admit, I'm a WW2 and sci fi fan, so I was predisposed to like the show anyhow.

In reply to Tom_Spangler:

Tots agrees. Juliana should die in a fire.

Jerry wrote: So what are the odds that the Prime membership I'm using from SWMBO as a family add-on will let me watch this weekend?

Woo hoo it worked! It was good, but not perfect. Or even great if I'm honest (& this is coming from someone that has all available DVD's of Top Gear).

They obviously have the chemistry of the trio working, so that's a great starting point. But there was quite a bit I was like "ok, can we move on to the next bit?". The dead celebrity thing just kinda kept on going, and the fake fight with the audience? Thankfully that seemed like a one-off thing. And the driver on the test track...I think I remember reading plenty of comments here hoping for someone different later (although if they want the scoreboard to be consistent...)

I liked the old challenge bits, like buying cheap Porsche's or $1k cars in Miami to drive to New Orleans, so I'm hoping they do something similar again.

Watched this last night. I was thoroughly entertained from start to finish. I really dug the whole thing, including the RAF and celebrity bits. You could tell they had fun with those. I like the new test track and all of it's features. Can't wait for next week!

captdownshift wrote: In reply to Fueled by Caffeine: I feel that the celebrity bit and references to the differences to TopGear weighed it down, but they should be gone by the second episode as they've now been addressed. As for stock price. Let's assume that a number of gearheads, say 100,000 or so joined prime to view the program. A percentage of those new prime members will now likely search amazon for car parts prior to ebay driving automotive related sales through amazon. (This was the case for me once same day shipping became available, I stopped bothering with advance online order for in store pick up).

It was kind of rhetorical question as Amazon has noted that their recent profit miss in Q3 was partially due to their heavy investment in video... I expect this trend to continue as they try to grow prime coverage.. (hint: they already have heavy prime coverage... the incremental cost to get more people is now going to be exponentially more expensive in the future.. I also expect prime to go to a $150 or $200/yr cost soon).

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine:

I think people will baulk at $150-200 per year. The big issue with Prime is that other than their original content, almost everything they have for free and a massive amount of what they want to charge you money to watch is already included for 'free' with the basic Netflix steaming. Netflix still seem to be the 1,000 lb. gorilla of the streaming content world and are way ahead of everyone else IMHO with original content.

I saw it last night too. I was satisfactorily entertained. I thought RAF fight was funny, but dragged on a bit to long, same with the celebrities. Those bits would have been just as good at half the length, especially the RAF part since they said they would edit it to suit thier own point of view.

I like the Eboladrome track, but I'm not so sure about the pro driver, but maybe he'll loosen up with time.

BTW, I guarantee that somebody is getting blown up by the "unexploded bomb" near Old Ladies ' house.

What was up with big windows behind the stage? The view kept moving around and it sort of made me seasick.

HappyAndy wrote: What was up with big windows behind the stage? The view kept moving around and it sort of made me seasick.

Just big screen to drive the gag line. I'm sure they'll grow into their use of them over the season. Remember how long it got for the 'original' 2002 revamp of Top Gear to find it's legs? We've seen one episode so far this year. Definitely worth continuing with

Adrian_Thompson wrote: In reply to Fueled by Caffeine: I think people will baulk at $150-200 per year. The big issue with Prime is that other than their original content, almost everything they have for free and a massive amount of what they want to charge you money to watch is already included for 'free' with the basic Netflix steaming. Netflix still seem to be the 1,000 lb. gorilla of the streaming content world and are way ahead of everyone else IMHO with original content.

I will respectfully beg to differ as far as Netflix goes. Sure, their viewer numbers may be going up and they have the head start on original programming. BUT the stuff they have available is crap. Utter crap.

I've cancelled my subscription, as have most of my friends. The selection of non original programming and movies is just pitiful compared to prime. Even Netflix originals that are "good" are few and far between. It takes longer to figure out there is nothing to watch, while prime just has everything. And if it's not free, $1-$2 to rent for a week is better than Redbox, the video store, and Netflix who don't even offer the option.

It could be that I've only had prime a month and am still searching through it, but I've managed to find far more I actually want to watch instead of settling on something I've already seen, which makes a big difference.

Of course I quit pirating movies not because I grew a conscious(berk Hollywood) but because there isn't anything worth downloading for free let alone actually paying for coming out anymore, if that gives you a better picture.

Going through the prime video app, I have seriously considered dropping my garbage comcrap subscription. The free 2 day shipping is just a bonus to having things actually worth watching. And considering I spend thousands of dollars a year to be advertised at and annoyed by comcrap, I may very well cut the cord thanks to prime.

Sorry for the rant, I've just been thinking about it a lot lately, and every time I find a hidden gem movie or tv serious it reinforces too me how garbage cable/movies have become.

Ninja edit: I crunched some numbers. Prime is cheaper per year than Netflix, and includes music and 2 day shipping on top of quality movies, tv, and original programming.

Adrian_Thompson wrote: In reply to Fueled by Caffeine: I think people will baulk at $150-200 per year. The big issue with Prime is that other than their original content, almost everything they have for free and a massive amount of what they want to charge you money to watch is already included for 'free' with the basic Netflix steaming. Netflix still seem to be the 1,000 lb. gorilla of the streaming content world and are way ahead of everyone else IMHO with original content.

Nope. I will not balk at $200 a year. $100 for the free shipping, $100 for Grand Tour. The music streaming is gravy.

But I've already cut cable.

In reply to RevRico:

Let's agree to disagree.

mtn wrote:

Adrian_Thompson wrote: In reply to Fueled by Caffeine: I think people will baulk at $150-200 per year. The big issue with Prime is that other than their original content, almost everything they have for free and a massive amount of what they want to charge you money to watch is already included for 'free' with the basic Netflix steaming. Netflix still seem to be the 1,000 lb. gorilla of the streaming content world and are way ahead of everyone else IMHO with original content.

Nope. I will not balk at $200 a year. $100 for the free shipping, $100 for Grand Tour. The music streaming is gravy. But I've already cut cable.

They tried a $400 subscription fee per year for Amazon Fresh. That has now been rescinded for a monthly dollar amount now. We shall see where the resistance is...

I cut cable in 2007 and only just went back to cable due to no other proper internet provider available. The deal I got allowed me to cut my Hulu and Netflix subscriptions.

Prime also has all the HBO stuff (a year old, granted, but I haven't had HBO so it's all new to me)

Netflix has recently stated that they want 50% or something of their content to be original programming. I have not found their original programming to be all that great so I cancelled. Between Amazon and the library I don't feel I've missed much.

However, if Prime goes over $100/year I'll have to seriously reconsider it.

What works for me with Netflix is we don't have cable. It's not so much as we're cord cutters, we semi never had it. In the entire time I've lived in the country (1994) I had cable for about 18 months in the 90's and about 9 months when we tried it a couple of years ago. There isn't a single series anywhere that's worth sitting through 10 mins of adverts plus a further 5 mins of 'coming next' and 'before the break' recaps meaning you get at best 15mins out of 30 mins actual content. I don't need to watch Walking dead, Z NAtion, the Blacklist, Whitcollar, this year. I just wait 12 months and can binge watch them ad free. Occasionally something will come out that we will try at watch on free to air, we never make it past the first ad brake before deciding to wait for it to come out on Netflix or DVD through the library for free.

P.S. Netflix are getting into the one hour stand up comedy special scene with a load of new content now available. We've watched a half dozen or so and clicked off anther 4 or 5 after 10 mins of not digging the comedian.

$200+ year for Amazon? Nope, I'd be out. I've enjoyed Netflix since...before it was even popular (a friend clued me in, maybe 2005?). ~$10/month for a lot of stuff, and more every day. And the interface between the two services, no comparison.

We have netflix and prime, and no cable. I consider them equal, but I do like the way on prime if you click on a show or movie it gives you similar options, netflix could use that.

I give GT a B- I laughed out loud when they said the nascar driver thought every car was communist, and also at the drivers greasy string comment. But yeah all the sliding got old. Really, you can drift a 900 hp car, thats unbeievable.

GT was entertaining as far as TV-esc shows go. I think it'll end up going pretty well for the trio.

I'm on the fence about the whole original content thing as far as Netflix and Prime go. Yes it draws in new viewers and allows the service to survive uncoupled from contract deals with studios (once critical mass is achieved) but it takes resources away from the original reason the services exist in the first place: rebroadcasting. Then feeds the "nothing to watch" beast as your catalog dwindles.

I'm a dork so I enjoyed:
Knights of Sidonia
Kuromukuro
Seven Deadly Sins
Grand Tour (naturally because I'm posting here)

Otherwise the original content of both Prime and Netflix has been... iffy is the best I can come up with.

Well it was better than a lot of the late Top Gear episodes, even if parts of it were too slow-paced. I just hope the pro driver is going to be a different character every time because this one was a dud. Even as a non-American, to me that was worth two giggles tops, depleted before he even got out on track.

gearheadmb wrote: But yeah all the sliding got old. Really, you can drift a 900 hp car, thats unbeievable.

But I guess if we're honest a really fast well-driven smooth lap might look boring to anyone who doesn't know a lot about driving. The great thing that made Topgear successful was a broad audience. A lot of non-car people (like my mom) liked the show just because it was entertaining and well done. I'm assuming their going for the same thing with the new show. Hence the drifty dramatic shots.

Industry estiamates put the cost of the grand tour to be around $200 million. Amazon made a profit of $400 million on $100 billion of sales in 2015. Or there abouts.

Craz y.

The next 5-10 years should be very interesting as far as streaming services as various content provider contracts start to run out with cable and satellite services. IMHO, the big elephant is live sports. Right now, most have contracts that limit how much they can stream live.

While I've had Netflix for a number of years now, I rarely watch the original content. I did watch The Crown recently, which I thought was well done, although I'm sure some historical liberties were taken in the name of the story.

The Grand Tour was literally the first Prime video I watched. I'll have to dig around and see if anything else is available.

I'm a bit bummed that SyFy has hoarded all of their content (BSG was available on Netflix for awhile, but was removed a few years ago). None of the Stargate series are available anywhere but on their own site (maybe on Prime?). They were streaming some content (I tried watching The Expanse, which seems to have some promise), but the steaming engine was so choppy and unreliable, I gave up.

Mostly, I watch a ton of YouTube. Although if there's one thing I don't like about YouTube it's how the videos are organized. Trying to watch a series of videos in sequence or chronological order can be a real PITA.

Ian F wrote: The Grand Tour was literally the first Prime video I watched. I'll have to dig around and see if anything else is available.

They have a series called Bosch; it's a cop show about a homicide detective named Harry Bosch in Los Angeles, based on novels written by Michael Connelly. I've read a number of the books so I was familiar with the character, and I think the Amazon Prime series does a pretty good job with it.