Amazon have always been behind the scenes at LoveFilm, but over the last year or so they have been coming forward and have now completely taken over.
LoveFilm by Post remains as a brand, but LoveFilm Instant (the streaming service) is dead and buried... subscribers can opt for Amazon's own Prime Video service if they want it (but I don't).
I'm in two minds about "losing" the streaming service. I never asked for it in the first place. Having been a by Post subscriber for many years before streaming was possible, it just appeared one day as a free extra.
On the one hand, it was never a very good service for me. Or rather, it quickly became a not very good service. Initially I remember being quite impressed. But then LoveFilm stopped supporting Linux and you could only stream on Windows computers (which I don't have). Much later, when I got a Nintendo Wii U, I tried it again and it was OK... but only during the week. Even though I have a 60Mbps connection the buffering and drop-out at peak times was unacceptable.
On the other hand, I did use it (off peak) to try out a lot of foreign-language films that I probably wouldn't have risked renting. Knowing I could just give up after 1/2 an hour made it feel low-risk... even though I didn't actually bail many times. But the streaming selection is quite limited and I eventually felt that I'd probably seen all the decent foreign films they had.
So now I'm back to LoveFilm by Post where I started. It's actually cheaper than it was, so I guess I was paying for that free streaming service after all (stupid to think I wasn't). I may watch a few fewer films than I did... or I may try to get more disks if that becomes an option. Either way, I wont miss video streaming.
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