It took Amazon years to bring Instant Video to Android users. The app has technically been available for Android for quite some time, but the only “Android” device you could use it on was the Kindle Fire and Fire Phone. Why did it take them so long? We can’t say, but whatever the case it’s here. And now that it is, Android users have been starved of a key feature that many have been asking for — Chromecast support.
While we wait for Amazon to serve that up, one knight in shining armor may have saved the day. A new app called Primecast has made its way to the Google Play Store, and its functionality is simple — log into your Amazon account and easily cast instant video to your Chromecast. That functionality comes with a price tag of $3 and a warranted amount of certainty.
For starters, its requirement to login using your Amazon username and password might be a bit unsettling for folks who don’t like to trust unknown developers. The pair of guys who put this together said they’d used it privately for quite some time, but realized that there was real demand for something like it.
They claim (on their refreshingly informative website) that your username and password go directly to Amazon’s servers for authentication and nowhere else. This claim might be strengthened by the fact that you have to manually enter your username and password every time you want to refresh the app’s list of videos (in the event that you rent or buy a new video) but it certainly isn’t enough to rest our nerves.
The other concern is that Amazon may eventually get the app shutdown. The developers claim Amazon’s open policy of streaming Amazon Instant Video in a web browser as a loophole for their app being safe as the Chromecast is technically a web browser on an HDMI stick, but who’s to say Amazon won’t make an exception for this case? (Especially considering they’re likely trying to push their own similar product.) That $3 for this app suddenly becomes a lot more hard to swallow than it initially seems.
If you want to take the plunge, go straight ahead — it’s in the Google Play Store, and you can get a refund for 2 hours after purchase if it isn’t to your satisfaction. In the meantime we’ll be contacting the developers to see if we can get more information on the app, any potential security risks and why they’re so confident it won’t get busted in the near future.
[via Reddit]
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