# Prime movie & purchased movies



## Perkville (Dec 26, 2010)

Greetings!  I have been considering getting a tablet for myself but more so for my daughter for when we travel.  I have been reading all of the topics about the fire and think it will be a great option.  My question has to do with movies.  I understand that they can be streamed via Amazon and WiFi...but, are there other options for when WiFi isn't available?  Is there a way to load to the Fire or Cloud movies that are purchased that come with a digital copy from say WalMart?  I hope I haven't asked a confusing question.  Thanks.


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## corkyb (Apr 25, 2009)

I believe if you purchase a movie from Amazon, you can download it to your device and it will always be available.  However, if you have Prime and are streaming their free movies, I believe you have to have wifi available or you cannot stream the free movies. I think the difference is that purchased movies can be stored on the cloud and you can stream them from there, or they can be downloaded to the Fire and you can watch them without a wifi connection.  Not so with free Amazon streaming though.  All you can do with those is stream when you are in wifi areas.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Corkyb is right.  You can also put a movie on your Fire to watch by connecting via USB to your computer.  I haven't done that yet.

There are also wireless hard drives that some folks have purchased that allow one to stream from the hard drive.

Betsy


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## KVWitten (Apr 11, 2011)

corkyb said:


> I believe if you purchase a movie from Amazon, you can download it to your device and it will always be available. However, if you have Prime and are streaming their free movies, I believe you have to have wifi available or you cannot stream the free movies. I think the difference is that purchased movies can be stored on the cloud and you can stream them from there, or they can be downloaded to the Fire and you can watch them without a wifi connection. Not so with free Amazon streaming though. All you can do with those is stream when you are in wifi areas.


But keep in mind that the amount of memory on a fire is limited and cannot be increased. On the color nook, you can easily install a micro SD card to increase the memory.

(Yes, I know this is a kindle board but I have a color nook and I love it. So shoot me.  )


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

BarbaraKE said:


> But keep in mind that the amount of memory on a fire is limited and cannot be increased. On the color nook, you can easily install a micro SD card to increase the memory.
> 
> (Yes, I know this is a kindle board but I have a color nook and I love it. So shoot me.  )


I have, honestly, never really understood that argument. I guess if you need (or, I suppose, just _want_) to personally keep all your content with you and available even if there's a catastrophic failure of the internet, then, yeah, more memory is good. But 'catastrophic failure of the internet' would likely mean I've got lots of other more important things to worry about!) 

For a portable type device of this sort, having access to it via the cloud is just as good, it seems to me. I can download a few things that will hold me until I get somewhere again where I have access, and the on board memory is plenty for that. A few songs, maybe a video, some time wasting games, and a thousand books will last me a LONG time. And the fire could easily hold all that at once. 

(And, while we don't shoot people here (heck, we don't even put them in the stocks very often ) it is a bit gauche to keep crowing about how great your nook is.  Sorry, just my opinion.  )


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Now, now, Ann ...You know we looooove our Nook-owning members... Why, we even set up a special place for them to talk about their Nooks to their hearts' content and not disturb us:

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/board,54.0.html


Betsy


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## KVWitten (Apr 11, 2011)

To be fair, the OP was specifically asking about playing movies while traveling, i.e. when wifi/streaming wasn't available. This involves loading the movies onto the device itself. And movies take up a lot of memory so being able to increase that memory is important in this situation.



Ann in Arlington said:


> I have, honestly, never really understood that argument. I guess if you need (or, I suppose, just _want_) to personally keep all your content with you and available even if there's a catastrophic failure of the internet, then, yeah, more memory is good. But 'catastrophic failure of the internet' would likely mean I've got lots of other more important things to worry about!)


I'm not worried about catastrophic failure of the internet. I'm more focused on the fact that many people either do not have access or have poor/limited access to the internet.

I have wifi at home but I'm limited to 3g/month on my plan. And - on a good day - I only get 2 bars (out of 4). Right now I only have 1 bar. This works for general internet surfing but is not viable for streaming movies. And wifi is not available while traveling with kids in a car.

On the other hand, if the OP has a portable wifi device, she could probably hook it up to the fire and stream movies that way. (Don't quote me on that though.)


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## TraceyC/FL (Mar 23, 2011)

Apps such as Handbrake.fr will "rip" the movies from DVD in a format that should work on the fire. I don't know if it has presets for the fire or not, I haven't updated min recently! LOL!!

Space IS a valid concern for portable movies on the go. The bigger the screen, the bigger the file size. Keep in mind, a lot of anal movie watching folks set up presets..... Quite frankly, on my iPad the movies ripped for the older video iPod small screen play decently. I'm really NOT trying to count how many strands of hair so and so has! So playing with the sizes and quality can greatly reduce the size. I think out average movie size right now is 4-500mb, and those will play on the TV too (just don't ask me what settings, i'm not a video geek so I just let my mom do it for me!). I think the last one I did at the default iPad/Apple tv combo was 1.5GB, so a big difference with limited storage.

As for the walmart type of digital copies, I've only seen two types. One is for iTunes and the other is for the new UltraVoilet locker. The iTunes one wouldn't work without some law breaking DRM stuff, and the Ultraviolet stuff depends on having their app. SOOO, if they have a version that runs on the fire then you SHOULD be good to go. UV sounds to be off to a shaky start, but as they are backed by all the major studios except Disney (and Apple) the kinks should smooth out.

that said, my kids have been putting movies on their iPod nano's for a few years. They have 8GB devices and occasionally ditch all music for movies, but for road trips they seems to do a mix of 3-4 movies and the rest music. The Fire would take space planning, but I would probably work to entertain a child offline for a decent amount of time.


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## Shastastan (Oct 28, 2009)

We've bought a movie and a tv series from amazon to watch on a trip.  We won't have wifi available for that.  I'm hoping that they will come up with some type of extended movie rental (say a month) in the future.  If they can set the time for 48 hours, why not 30 days?  Of course they would have to charge a premium for a longer rental period, but that would better than having to buy a movie--even if it's stored in the Cloud.  We rarely watch a movie more than once and then we might wait at least 5 years before we see it again.  As to copying from dvds, I'm not sure if that's legal, but  I've never tried it or have any idea how to go about it.


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## KVWitten (Apr 11, 2011)

Shastastan said:


> We've bought a movie and a tv series from amazon to watch on a trip. We won't have wifi available for that. I'm hoping that they will come up with some type of extended movie rental (say a month) in the future. If they can set the time for 48 hours, why not 30 days? Of course they would have to charge a premium for a longer rental period, but that would better than having to buy a movie--even if it's stored in the Cloud. We rarely watch a movie more than once and then we might wait at least 5 years before we see it again. As to copying from dvds, I'm not sure if that's legal, but I've never tried it or have any idea how to go about it.


I'm not sure I understand.

You 'bought' a 'movie and tv series' to watch on a trip where you won't have wifi So. you downloaded them (via wifi) and are storing them on your (fire/android device) so that you can watch them later when wifi is not available? Is this correct?

If so, I have two questions...

One - when you downloaded the files, did you specify what type device would be using it. I'm asking this because (I'm guessing) they could get by sending a much smaller file if you're planning on watching it on a 7" tablet vs. a 60" television. Or does the device/size of viewing screen not matter?

Two - Could you tell us how much memory they take up? I've seen the (rough) estimate of 500 mbs (0.5 gigs) per average-length movie thrown around - is that in the ballpark?


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## Shastastan (Oct 28, 2009)

I think you understand.  There's another thread on Amazon Movies that talks about rentals.  The general comment is that there is enough storage for 10 movies and I only have 1 so no worries here.  I ordered it from my Fire and it went to the Cloud.

Sent from my Kindle Fire using Tapatalk


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