Despite its wide selection of original content, such as Fall, Boys and Rings of powerPrime Video has always offered a cluttered, confusing, and unintuitive design, especially compared to rivals like Netflix. That changes today, as amazon begins rolling out a new Prime Video user interface that, in the company's words, brings “clarity and simplicity back to streaming.”
Prime Video’s redesign starts with a streamlined navigation bar that should make it easier to navigate. On the left, the bar includes the general categories Home, Movies, TV Shows, Sports, and Live TV. Immediately to the right, the navigation bar continues with a tab dedicated to the content included with your Prime membership, followed by sections for additional subscriptions like Max, Paramount+, Crunchyroll, and others. There’s a separate section for adding new subscriptions (from amazon’s 100-plus options) directly from the bar.
Meanwhile, a new “hero rotator” below the bar displays the content available in each selected section of the bar. It looks similar to rival services, which doesn’t sound like much on paper, but should be a welcome change for anyone who’s ever played around with Prime Video’s confusing old UI.
As expected, amazon is adding ai-generated personalized recommendations (“Made for you”) when browsing the Movies and TV Shows sections of the bar. Using the company’s Bedrock ai model, the machine learning recommendations will offer content suggestions based on your viewing history and preferences.
ai will also power synopses for new shows and movies. amazon says the change will make browsing its synopses faster, saving you from having to scroll down the screen to find out more information about a particular piece of content.
Lastly, amazon says the UI has new animations, snappier page transitions, and zoom effects to make the experience more “seamless.” On living room devices, video content will automatically play in the hero rotator as you browse the site (much like Netflix and other competitors). If you head to the live TV tab, recommended stations will also play on their own, continuing until you pick something to give your full attention to.
The UI update begins rolling out on Tuesday. You can read more on amazon Announcement posting.
