Amazon expands content reach

Remember that Googlezon video from a few years ago? The one that predicted Google and Amazon would take over the world with, perhaps, apocalyptic results? Well, none of that has come to pass, but both companies continue to grow and expand. Amazon, increasingly becoming as much of a content delivery system as a product retailer, made several bold moves to get its media out to even more platforms, today.

For starters, Amazon moved to bring its Cloud Player music service to both Samsung Smart TV's and Roku set-top boxes and made its Instant Video service available for the iPhone and iPod touch. Both services are essentially cloud interfaces for your media.

As for Instant Video on iOS, according to Amazon's Anthony Bay, vice president for Video, "Our customers tell us they want the convenience of being able to watch all of their movies and TV episodes, wherever they are". The app will bring both "Your Watchlist" and "Your Video Library" services right to your mobile device.

As for Cloud Player, the service is a good alternative to Google Music, but does not provide the tremendous amount of cloud storage that its rival does -- 20,000 songs for Google versus 5GB for Amazon. Then again, much depends on your file sizes -- and tunes purchased from the retailer don't count against the storage allotment. Either way, getting access to all of your music from your entertainment center is convenient, especially when the devices are plugged into an A/V receiver and nice speakers.