Amazon Prime Video & Safari: Let's Call a Truce

I must admit that it was a sad day when the local Blockbuster Video closed. But only for a day. I quickly got over it when we signed up for Netflix. Once we started to stream our movies and TV shows we never looked back. 

Today it seems like every home has at least 2 or 3 video streaming services. My family and I use an Apple TV and routinely stream our own recorded TV Shows, a few Apple provided TV shows and movies as well as Netflix shows. What we don't use is Amazon Prime Streaming. We are a Prime member and have had the service since it started, we just never use it. 

One of the main reasons Amazon isn't part of our streaming selections is because they don't offer an Apple TVOS app. The other reason is that I could never get it to work on Safari. As of today Amazon still doesn't offer and TVOS app but I finally figured out how to get it to work on Safari.

Amazon Prime streaming video service comes free with their $99 Prime membership.  To play Prime video there is a minimum set of requirements that you can read about here. The key is that Amazon wants you to use HTML5 and Safari isn't listed as one of the Browsers that Amazon supports HTML5.

I'm not a huge fan of Plug-ins but Amazon Prime Video also supports Microsoft Silverlight Plug-In.  Since Microsoft Silverlight supports the Mac I installed Silverlight and tried again. Of course it failed. After 3 or 4 more attempts I gave up. That was over a year ago. It was only recently that I decided I would give it another try. Low and behold it now works!

In order to use Safari to play back Amazon videos the first thing you need to do is download and install the latest copy of Silverlight.

Once Silverlight is installed Open up Safari and navigate to the Amazon Prime website then open Safari Preferences.

Once the Preferences window is displayed open the Security tab and make sure "internet plug-ins:" is checked then click the "Plug-in Settings" Button.

Make sure that "Silverlight" has a check in it's check-box and that the Amazon entry shows "Allow" is from the pull down menu.  

Click "Done" at the bottom of the window and everything should be fine. On one of my Macs I had to restart Safari to get streaming to work so if things don't work give that a try.

Now you can binge watch till your hearts content! Oh, BTW Amazon, can you please get to work and please provide an AppleTV app? Maybe your viewership would increase.