# Amazon's IMDb TV: speaking of free TV with commercials



## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

I'm not sure everyone knows about this. It's kinda lost in the clutter.

You probably know about IMDb, short for the Internet Movie Database, the website that is an online encyclopedia for TV shows offering information on 5+ million movie and TV show titles with everything from cast breakdowns to ratings, fan reviews, and production details for pretty much every title you might want to Google. Originally a fan-maintained site, not unlike Wikipedia, it's been an Amazon subsidiary since 1998.

In January 2019 Amazon launched IMDb TV as a free ad-supported service for streaming movies and TV shows in the U.S. These days you can access it on most devices. They offer a lot of movies plus what we would have called in the old days "syndicated" TV shows.

The Cord Cutters News article Here is Everything Coming To Amazon's Free IMDb TV Streaming Service in February 2020 had a few comments which reflected that many just can't stand to watch TV with commercials but also this informative one:

I watch quite a few tv shows on Imdb. I normally only see 3 breaks of commercials in an hour episode. Each break is maybe 60 seconds. That's 3 minutes of commercials an episode. I can handle that. I just finished an episode of Chicago Fire and it didn't have any commercials. I'll admit that's the first time I've not had any.​
You can read earlier listings on Cord Cutters.

IMDb TV has some original TV shows. This leads me to believe that Amazon with its Prime Video and IMDb TV is going to continue to be an effective player in the streaming business. Thus, while the Peacock and Disney+ services begin with huge libraries of old stuff, Bezos intends for Amazon to be a meaningful player in the video streaming landscape.

The reality for our household is that Prime Video is free - we were Prime members decades before Prime Video was added and benefit from buying stuff enough that the Video is just a nice addition.


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

phrelin said:


> I'm not sure everyone knows about this. It's kinda lost in the clutter.
> 
> You probably know about IMDb, short for the Internet Movie Database, the website that is an online encyclopedia for TV shows offering information on 5+ million movie and TV show titles with everything from cast breakdowns to ratings, fan reviews, and production details for pretty much every title you might want to Google. Originally a fan-maintained site, not unlike Wikipedia, it's been an Amazon subsidiary since 1998.
> 
> ...


I initially checked it out...ads you can't FF thru...nope...yeah it's free but clearly you get what you pay for. I am clearly one of the "many just can't stand to watch TV with commercials"...I will personally pay before I will watch ads.


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

mjwagner said:


> I initially checked it out...ads you can't FF thru...nope...yeah it's free but clearly you get what you pay for. I am clearly one of the "many just can't stand to watch TV with commercials"...I will personally pay before I will watch ads.


I agree for two reasons as I've noted in other threads. First, my time is worth money. Second, I'm old and I don't want to use whatever time I have left watching ads.

But, Amazon apparently believes there is a market for TV-with-commercials, a belief shared by CBS All Access, Disney's Hulu, and NBC's Peacock along with many other smaller companies.


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## NYDutch (Dec 28, 2013)

phrelin said:


> I agree for two reasons as I've noted in other threads. First, my time is worth money. Second, I'm old and I don't want to use whatever time I have left watching ads.
> 
> But, Amazon apparently believes there is a market for TV-with-commercials, a belief shared by CBS All Access, Disney's Hulu, and NBC's Peacock along with many other smaller companies.


I think ad-supported services like Pluto with its 20 million+ active users pretty much prove there is definitely a market for their services.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

mjwagner said:


> I initially checked it out...ads you can't FF thru...nope...yeah it's free but clearly you get what you pay for. I am clearly one of the "many just can't stand to watch TV with commercials"...I will personally pay before I will watch ads.


Me too.

Rich


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

I can live with brief commercial - especially on a free service.


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## techguy88 (Mar 19, 2015)

I actually watched a few movies on IMDBtv when I got an Amazon Fire Stick and the ads were not annoying. For a free service it has my vote of approval.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

techguy88 said:


> I actually watched a few movies on IMDBtv when I got an Amazon Fire Stick and the ads were not annoying. For a free service it has my vote of approval.


What were the ads like? Something brief at the beginning I could live with.

Rich


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## 1948GG (Aug 4, 2007)

Pluto has been the 'go to' ad supported stream for quite a while, and has been joined by several others. Yttv has been pointing older episodes of shows that aren't directly accessible on any if their channels to IMDb. The commercial interruptions seemed to be somewhat light, where the program has obvious pauses where advert insertions were (I watched an old episode of 'medium' the other day) and at least half of them went right to a continuation of the program. 

I don't see why more of these live streaming folks add the free news and information channels to their service, so that subscribers don't have to exit and then enter the other apps. Things like cbsn, abcnews, nbcnews, and other ad supported entertainment channels. Now obviously they would accrue the cost of receiving and transmission rather than offloading those costs to those channels, but it would add to the usability of the live streamers.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Rich said:


> What were the ads like? Something brief at the beginning I could live with.
> 
> Rich


I varies. I've watched some shows with nothing at all, the worst was fairly short ones at varying times.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


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## techguy88 (Mar 19, 2015)

Rich said:


> What were the ads like? Something brief at the beginning I could live with.
> 
> Rich





lparsons21 said:


> I varies. I've watched some shows with nothing at all, the worst was fairly short ones at varying times.
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


As far as movies go the ads were not bad. IMDBtv had Clue a while back and it had a total of 4 ad breaks each having 3 ads lasting 30 seconds per ad. The ad breaks seemed to be strategically placed to ensure the flow of the movie was not hugely disrupted. So for a 90 minute movie having a total of 6 minutes of ads wasn't bad.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

techguy88 said:


> As far as movies go the ads were not bad. IMDBtv had Clue a while back and it had a total of 4 ad breaks each having 3 ads lasting 30 seconds per ad. The ad breaks seemed to be strategically placed to ensure the flow of the movie was not hugely disrupted. So for a 90 minute movie having a total of 6 minutes of ads wasn't bad.


I'm gonna take a look at the available content and see if anything interests me. I can see that kind of advertising becoming a thing and I think I could live with it. Thanks.

Rich


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