At this point, Prime Video isn’t just your go-to for movies and shows—Amazon is pushing hard into live sports, locking down an 11-year deal for more NBA and WNBA games. Now it seems they might be adding multiview, a feature to stream multiple live games side by side.
An APK tear-down by Android Authority dug into Prime Video’s latest update (version 3.0.389) and found some revealing lines of code in a strings.xml file. If you’re not familiar, strings.xml is where Android apps keep all their text in one place, so any message, button label, or alert gets stored here. It’s handy for developers because they can change or add text in just this one file instead of hunting it down in the code.
Here’s what the tear-down found in the strings.xml file:
So, here’s a quick rundown of what each line probably does:
- AV_ANDROID_PLAYER_EXIT_MULTIVIEW_TEXT: Pops up with “Do you want to exit multiview?” when you try to back out of multiview mode.
- AV_ANDROID_PLAYER_FAST_FORWARD_UNAVAILABLE: Notifies you that fast-forwarding is off the table in multiview, likely since it’s live content.
- AV_ANDROID_PLAYER_PAUSE_UNAVAILABLE: Also no pausing allowed in multiview, probably because you’re watching multiple live streams at once.
- AV_ANDROID_PLAYER_REWIND_UNAVAILABLE: No rewind here either, for the same reason.
- AV_ANDROID_PLAYER_SETUP_MULTIVIEW_TEXT: Shows “Set up your multiview” when you’re getting it all going.
- AV_MOBILE_ANDROID_PLAYER_MULTI_VIEW: Likely, the name for the whole feature, just labeled as “Multiview.”
- fable_icon_multiview: This might be the icon used for the feature—a button or symbol to start multiview.
- multiview_error_message: An error message that says, “There was an error playing this stream. Please remove and try again,” if one of the streams fails to load.
With all this, Prime Video seems set to roll out multiview—but without the controls for pause, rewind, or fast-forward. YouTube TV already does multiview for sports, combining multiple streams on their servers so it works even on low-end devices. Amazon could be aiming for something similar, giving sports fans an easy way to follow multiple games at once.
Amazon Prime Video is making some changes this year. After introducing Dialogue Boost to help with audio clarity, they've decided to roll out ads in 2024. Starting in January, users will see ads unless they're willing to pay an extra $2.99 per month to remove them. Amazon claims the move is meant to help fund more content, but it's been met with some frustration.
Even though Prime stays at $14.99 a month, you'll need to pay extra if you want to skip the ads. This move puts Prime Video in the same boat as other streaming platforms like Netflix and Disney+, which already have ad-supported options. However, some users are upset that Amazon is introducing ads without offering a cheaper option for those who don't mind them.
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