Amazon’s streaming video service has stepped up its game against Netflix by adding SD card support for downloads on Android devices.
The update is minor, but adds a very useful bonus feature for Amazon Instant Video customers which allows downloaded movies and TV (such as Amazon exclusive Mr. Robot – now on it’s second season) to be stored not only on a smartphone or tablet for watching offline (a feature that been possible for some time now), but also means it will no longer gobble up all the devices on-board data thanks to the downloaded files going straight to the SD card.
Of course, with removable storage now supported by Amazon apps on the Android platform, the SD card can be swapped between devices meaning you can play your videos optimised on a tablet screen, or play the same files while on the move (bus, tube or even on a flight) on a smartphone without the need to connect to the web – this also offers benefit to the device’s battery life because it doesn’t have to be hooked up to a power hungry internet connection all of the time.
Currently the Amazon video update with support for external SD cards is rolling out to Android devices in the UK, USA, Germany, Austria and Japan.
Leading rival Netflix still offers a much greater range of movies and programming (including the recently added Stranger Things, which is a superb homage to the 80s sci-fi horror) but the pioneer of on-demand streaming video is still yet to include an official download option however, this is apparently in the pipeline. But less than legal methods of downloading the content from the currently online-only Netflix library have been recently discovered.
Also See: Netflix Videos Can Be Downloaded and Saved Thanks to Google Vulnerability
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