Amazon.com, Streaming Service | featured news

Amazon is developing a set-top box to stream video over the Internet via its Amazon Prime and Instant Video services, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

Fourteen pilot shows - including Alpha House and Zombieland - are to be put to the public vote on Lovefilm and Amazon.com. Viewers can submit feedback influencing which shows get made into full series. The 14 shows are made by independent production companies and produced by Amazon Studios, the film and series production arm of Amazon.

Amazon is letting viewers help choose its new lineup of TV shows, scuttling a secretive, wasteful process once reserved for Hollywood taste-makers... There used to be just one way for getting shows on TV. Networks would spend tens of millions of dollars ordering scripts and shooting pilots and then show the fruits of their labor to focus groups. A small group of executives would cherry-pick a few promising shows to put on TV, hoping they'd be a hit with bigger audiences. The process was unscientific, expensive, and often didn't work. It's still how most of the industry operates today.

CBS and Amazon have struck a deal to expand the CBS content made available to Amazon's Prime video streaming service.

Amazon.com Inc unveiled a new effort to develop original comedy and children's TV shows to distribute over the company's video streaming service.

Amazon expanded a licensing agreement that allows Prime members to stream additional PBS programming.

Amazon.com said it struck a deal with Fox to offer online video-streaming of the company's movies and television shows.