# Amazon Instant Video Credit



## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

Hello All,

This morning a got an email from Amazon in part it read:

"Because you may not have been able to playback one of your rentals or purchases in HD quality, we have issued you a one-time Amazon Instant Video credit of $1 for each of the HD movies and TV episodes you have purchased from us for a total amount of $14. In order to apply the credit to your Amazon Instant Video account, please click here..."​
Does anyone know what is going on? I have purchased some videos in the past mostly all in HD but I do not remember any real problems.

Not that I am complaining I will certainly take the $14 credit but don't really understand why I am getting it. The email was real I typed the URL location into my bowser instead of clicking on the link and it was too amazon and I did get the credit.

Thanks,


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## terpfan1980 (Jan 28, 2002)

I think someone (or several someone's) of a lawyerly type complained very loudly that they were ripped off in purchasing what they thought was supposed to have been an HD video and instead found that they got something less than HD because Amazon had "optimized" the delivery stream for performances purposes rather than maintaining an HD stream even if the content may have had to buffer a few times along the way.

So Amazon is giving customers credits to make up for these facts and changing their terms of services so that customers can clearly tell that they may not get HD streaming at times just so no one can complain that they didn't know or weren't informed of these things in advance.


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## TishTash (Jan 24, 2008)

terpfan1980 said:


> I think someone (or several someone's) of a lawyerly type complained very loudly that they were ripped off in purchasing what they thought was supposed to have been an HD video and instead found that they got something less than HD because Amazon had "optimized" the delivery stream for performances purposes rather than maintaining an HD stream even if the content may have had to buffer a few times along the way.
> 
> So Amazon is giving customers credits to make up for these facts and changing their terms of services so that customers can clearly tell that they may not get HD streaming at times just so no one can complain that they didn't know or weren't informed of these things in advance.


Um, Amazon doesn't stream, does it?


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

TishTash said:


> Um, Amazon doesn't stream, does it?


Yes, they do. Just not to tivo....yet.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

I thought they were actually handling my complaint about the VOD download I never got.

Still no chance of that.

F* em. I'd like to remove Amazon VOD from my Tivo, please.


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## Jeeters (Feb 25, 2003)

Yeah, Amazon streams to my Roku box.

But I don't think it adjusts the bitrate based on my connnection's bandwidth capabilities. i.e., if I buy an HD video, then I get HD. If my internet connection is having bandwidth issues, then it just stops and buffers; it does not (as far as I've never noticed) lower the quality of the movie in the way Netflix does.

I thought that this may be been the result of TiVo HD and Premiere owners that see the weekly Amazon movie promotions show up on their TiVo, and they 'rent' a promoted movie, but then it turns out that it's SD quality instead of HD. If you have an HD capable TiVo, then Amazon should offer the HD movies by default, not the SD movies. IMO.


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## djwilso (Dec 23, 2006)

netringer said:


> I thought they were actually handling my complaint about the VOD download I never got.
> 
> Still no chance of that.
> 
> F* em. I'd like to remove Amazon VOD from my Tivo, please.


If you had an issue with a video download, I would suggest contacting them by phone by doing the following:


Go to Amazon home page http://www.amazon.com.
In the left navigation menu, go to Unlimited Instant Videos / *Prime Instant Videos*.
Click *Get Help* in the upper-right corner of the page.
Click *Contact Us* on the right side of the page.
Log into your Amazon account (if not already logged in).
Click the *Phone* tab.
Enter in your phone number and click the *Call Me* button.
Be ready to answer your phone; it will ring almost immediately.
Speak to a support person and get your problem resolved.

I have done this twice, both times with excellent results.


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## aadam101 (Jul 15, 2002)

I complained a couple of times when I received corrupt rental files. There is no way to re-download a rental so you have to purchase it again. Amazon is very good about promptly refunding. I always have a refund before the movie is even over.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

I saw a credit on my AMEX online statement this week. It was for one of the new Dr. Who episodes(at least I assume that is what is was for since the price was the same.) I had no idea why I got a credit since I had no issues downloading and watching the first two HD episodes this season.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

aadam101 said:


> I complained a couple of times when I received corrupt rental files. There is no way to re-download a rental so you have to purchase it again. Amazon is very good about promptly refunding. I always have a refund before the movie is even over.


If you call they will re-down load it for you. I had an issue that one I rented went bad about 30 minutes in. No questions at all they had me delete it and then they started the download again.

Thanks,


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

netringer said:


> I thought they were actually handling my complaint about the VOD download I never got.
> 
> Still no chance of that.


I have never had an issue with support for Amazon VOD download issues. They usually handle the problem immediately when you use the phone support.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I got $1, but I'm not sure what it was for. I've never watched Amazon on anything other then my TiVo and I have entire seasons of shows I've done that with so $1 wouldn't account for everything I've ever watched. All I can figure is that one time while trouble shooting a download problem to my TiVo I did start playing an episode of a show I purchased in their little video window on the website. Perhaps they registered that as streaming and that's what they gave me credit for?

Dan


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## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Jeeters said:


> Yeah, Amazon streams to my Roku box.
> 
> But I don't think it adjusts the bitrate based on my connnection's bandwidth capabilities. i.e., if I buy an HD video, then I get HD. If my internet connection is having bandwidth issues, then it just stops and buffers; it does not (as far as I've never noticed) lower the quality of the movie in the way Netflix does.


It did when I tried the Roku XD. If it didn't have enough bandwidth, it wouldn't give me HD to start with and if bandwidth slipped quality would take a dive.

Amazon's HD doesn't need as much bandwidth as Netflix', though. I did some measurements using a realtime bandwidth monitor feature of my router's software and found that Amazon's HD streams average about 2.8 Mbps (a high-action 10 minute sequence of _The Dark Knight_ did); 10 minutes of 720p Netflix averages 4+ Mbps--in both cases some of that bandwidth was used downloading unplayed video still buffered at the end of that 10 minutes. (You can see some of these graphs in this and this post at AVS Forum; a graph of Amazon streaming on the Roku is near the bottom of the first one).


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## randy1649 (Apr 18, 2011)

I got notices from amazon when I bought my tivos that I got two $5 credits. Credits towards rental or purchase. But no where could I find I actually had these credits on my acct. WHen I went thru the motion to rent something, no where did a credit show up. I called their cs and he too could not find the credit, so he gave me a general $10 store credit. AMazon is usually like that. And its true amazon does not stream to tivo, but you can rent or purchase then DL to the box, and keep it forever (if a purchase) and limited time if a rental. I was told rentals can be offered in HD, while purchases to keep are limited to SD quality only. Amazon cs also suggested that if I plan on purchasing many videos, to get the add-on tivo hard drive. I wanted to know if you can direct a download to the external drive for safe keeping?


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

randy1649 said:


> I was told rentals can be offered in HD, while purchases to keep are limited to SD quality only.


Not true, you can buy some stuff in HD.



randy1649 said:


> Amazon cs also suggested that if I plan on purchasing many videos, to get the add-on tivo hard drive. I wanted to know if you can direct a download to the external drive for safe keeping?


There is no way to direct anything to the external drive. In fact when you connect an external drive they purposely spread all recordings. and downloads. between both drives so that the external drive does not contain any usable data.

Dan


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## djwilso (Dec 23, 2006)

randy1649 said:


> I got notices from amazon when I bought my tivos that I got two $5 credits. Credits towards rental or purchase. But no where could I find I actually had these credits on my acct. WHen I went thru the motion to rent something, no where did a credit show up. I called their cs and he too could not find the credit, so he gave me a general $10 store credit. AMazon is usually like that. And its true amazon does not stream to tivo, but you can rent or purchase then DL to the box, and keep it forever (if a purchase) and limited time if a rental. I was told rentals can be offered in HD, while purchases to keep are limited to SD quality only. Amazon cs also suggested that if I plan on purchasing many videos, to get the add-on tivo hard drive. I wanted to know if you can direct a download to the external drive for safe keeping?


You can use this link to show your Amazon balances.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/fe...mo.html/ref=atv_dp_gc_getbalance?getBalance=1

You must be logged into Amazon for this to work.

There is another way to see these balances on Amazon's site. Just go to any video's page and at the bottom of the video player you will see verbiage that says "Have a promotion code? *View Balance*".

Click that View Balance link to show the same info as the link above.


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## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Dan203 said:


> Not true, you can buy some stuff in HD.


I know that they don't offer movies in HD to download to PC, but they do offer HD television episodes that you can do that with. There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to buy an HD stream.


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