Amazon Instant Video

Amazon’s Instant Video service offers more than 100,000 movies and TV shows for purchase or rental. Amazon Prime subscribers can also stream a few thousand of those episodes over the internet as part of their $79 per year membership.

Up until recently the Instant Video service was only available on a PC or a set-top-box such as a TiVo, Roku, or similar device. But Amazon developed an Android app for the Amazon Kindle Fire.

It lets you login to your account on the 7 inch tablet and stream movies from your collection or from the Prime Instant Video collection. You can also purchase or rent content from the tablet and then watch it either on the Kindle Fire or another device. Amazon Instant Video also keeps track of your viewing progress, so if you stop watching a movie on your laptop you can pick up where you left off on the Kindle Fire.

While the Kindle Fire is the only Android tablet to ship with the Instant Video app preloaded, it turns out the app can run on other devices. All you need to do is download the ATVAndroidClient.apk from the xda-developers forum and install it on your phone or tablet.

The app won’t stream video if your device is rooted, and it plays best with 1024 x 600 pixel displays. If you have a lower resolution device some of the controls might not fit on you display. Amazon clearly hasn’t bothered to make sure the app supports devices other than the Kindle Fire yet.

But one tablet that the app does work well with is the Barnes & Noble NOOK Tablet. Like the Kindle Fire, it has a 7 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display. I took the app for a spin, and Amazon Instant Video looks great on the NOOK.

There are still a few quirks. I couldn’t play every video I tried, and in order to login you’ll need to either purchase an app or have an Amazon Prime membership, since there’s no standalone login screen. But as Kindle apps find their way to the NOOK Tablet and the NOOK eBook app finds it way to the Kindle Fire, the differences between these two tablets are getting smaller and smaller.

via Mobiputing

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24 replies on “Amazon Instant Video app works on the NOOK Tablet (or other Android devices)”

  2. I have installed the app on my nook but I can not figure out how to sign in to see my library. nothing pops up?? can any one help

  4. When I try to launch a video the app quits. I suspect it is JB on my Transformer Primer. Has anyone had this work on a Jelly Bean device?

  5. downloaded the amazon instant video app from this site to my droid razr, but when trying to view a video (downton abbey), got a prompt to login, attempted login, but it failed saying unknown error.  doesn’t each device to be used with instant video have to be registered before it can be used?  had to do that with my panasonic viera blu-ray player. wondered if that isn’t the reason i am getting the error message.

  7. I know this is a dumb question to ask but what you are saying is that when you download this software onto a nook or any other device it will be able to use amazon instant video and amazon apps?

    1. Sort of… you can login with your account and stream or download movies from Amazon. But it’s buggier when you use it on an unsupported device. Not every video plays every time. 

      1. So will it work the 2nd or 3rd you try to play it or is it some videos you can’t watch period?

  8. I downloaded the file, but it then it says can’t open the file. Help!

  9. I installed the apk yesterday and downloaded multiple espisodes of Doctor Who and the lattest Harry Potter – then turned off WiFi to test if it would work without the stream.  Looks absolutley great!  No problems whatsoever, and it looks Hi-Def on the Nook.

    Thanks so much – at this point I feel like I have a fully functioning tablet even if I haven’t rooted and can’t get to Android Market.

      1. As I recall, you need to rent a video at which time you will be promted to log on to your existing account. You might need to set up an account first if this is your first time streaming from Amazon.

        By the way – I spent a few hours visiting the alternate android market sites I found on the nook forum over on the development web site where you get the apk for Amazon – there are more free apps than I’ll ever use.

        Check it out!

  10. hmm, this is good news, but now there are no Kindle fire supported videos on its official page, many people don’t know what it can play on earth. Luckily I have already got an video tool – aneesoft video converter pro before, think it can do some help for my video playing on the go.

  11. OK, I installed the .apk, but since there’s no login screen, how do I get Amazon to recognize that I have a prime membership?

    1. I went ahead and picked something to ‘buy’ that would be free for prime, which got me to a login screen – once logged in, it gave me prime free access

  12. Bottom Line – Amazon Instant Video has reasonable prices and a wide variety of programming. If you use Amazon to purchase a lot of merchandise, the Prime service now combines free shipping with free video streaming, which is an added bonus to an already great program.If your just learning about Amazon Instant Video – i wrote a good overview of the service at: https://www.killthecablebill.com/amazon-video-on-demand/

  13. Huh. I don’t get it … amazon video streams through a regular browser…. you don’t need an app.  I’ve been watching amazon video for ages on android tablets.

    I believe it is just flash based.

    Android tablets aren’t ipads you know. 

    1. Think of it like the Youtube app, it can run better than running Flash on a mobile web browser.  So can handle better video quality and puts less load on the device, which in turns usually means better run time.

      Plus it’s more future proof now that Adobe is stopping development of the Flash Player plug-in for mobile devices.  So focus from now on is to provide such features through apps and server side services.

      It’s just for now the app is only really intended for the KF but eventually Amazon will expand it to other devices as it benefits them in the long run as it’s the service and not the device they are really making profits on.  So the larger the customer base the better it is for them.

      1. I guess my point is that the article makes out that this is the only way to get it on an android device. It makes out that the kindle was the only device that could play amazon videos up until this ‘hack’

        1. jb82…I think the real point you miss is if you have bought anything from their video library, the only way to view it offline is with an application like this. It’s not for when you have good internet connecting.

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