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Comment by Spoom | Hacker News Reader

Hell, until recently, you couldn't play Prime Video on Android at all without resorting to Flash trickery in the browser. (But, of course, you could play it on Fire OS devices, even though they're running a fork of Android.)

Amazon really does not like Google. This is not a failure on Google's part, this is all of Amazon's own making in an attempt at product lock-in.

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...I had Prime Video working on my Android phone a while back, but it no longer works.

Is there a new, new way to get it to work that I don't know about?

Install the Amazon app, but not the Amazon app from Google Play, the sideloaded one directly from their site, and then do a bunch of convoluted stuff to install the Prime Video player within that app.

It's been a couple of weeks since I did it, but I got it working on my nVidia Shield TV, and I remember the process being something like:

1) Sideload Amazon app APK 2) Sideload Amazon Video app APK 3) Open Amazon app and log in 4) Open Amazon Video app

However, it wasn't a pleasant experience. The version of the Amazon Video app I was able to get working didn't scale well to large screens, didn't work well with remote-based navigation, and didn't seem to do HD. I watched one episode of something, and haven't used it again since.

In some regions (apparently Japan): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.avo...

In others: http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-com-Amazon-Video/dp/B00N28818A

For most users, installing the Amazon Appstore is required.

You can install the Amazon Video app on Android now via the Amazon app. No Chromecast, so I haven't really used it much, and it doesn't look like you can tell it to download shows onto your SD card instead of internal storage. I'm guessing I'll end up using it for limited times when I wouldn't have a TV anyway, like airplane trips.

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