Amazon Drops Dolby Vision & Atmos

[gene]

Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service recently began running ads. If you don’t want ads, you have to pay $2.99 more per month. But what they didn’t tell us was that the standard ad-supported tier would be stripped of Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos! If you want them back, you have to pay for the ad-free tier.

These changes may be met with backlash from enthusiasts like us, but unfortunately we are a small minority. Big companies like Amazon, Netflix, and Warner Bros. Discovery carefully calculate these decisions in order to make the most money, and there are plenty of ordinary folks who simply won’t notice that Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos have left the building. After all, there are millions of people who consume content solely on phones, tablets, or laptops, and if Amazon can get away with downgrading their content to save some cash, that’s what the company is going to do. While some enthusiasts might cancel their subscriptions in protest, most will likely fork over the additional $2.99/month and get on with their lives. Which way will you go? Share your thoughts in the related forum thread below.

Read: Amazon Prime Drops Dolby Vision & Atmos

 

[snakeeyes]

Prime has a few shows but is not as good as Netflix. I’ll use DSU upmixer and suffer through the commercials for now and see how it goes.

 

[Trezl]

They make me regret canceling Prime last year less and less...

 

[everettT]

Class action suit has been filled.. but I'm guessing that the majority of the customers who are mad about the ads, don't care about or know about ATMOS.

Amazon Prime Video Ad Tier Sparks Class Action Lawsuit From Subscribers

The lawsuit takes aim at the ecommerce giant turning on ads for Prime Video users and charging them an additional fee for its ad-free tier.

www.google.com

 

[Tankini]

Prime Video Now Charges Extra for Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos

Back in September, Amazon created an ad-free tier to its Prime video streaming service. To enjoy Prime without ads, consumers now have to pay an extra $3.99 per month on top of the $8.99 they already pay. But it was recently revealed that the company also quietly stopped supporting Dolby Vision...

lifehacker.com

SOOO, you want your Dolby Atmos while streaming from Amazon huh? Well its gonna cost you mo-money for that prevalence with your Amazon Prime.
Lol, if I had a crystal ball back when all the streaming services were starting out with low prices. All of the streaming services have slowly been raising prices.

Glad I didn't fully buy into this bs. This is the main reason I still buy Blu-ray disc.
They have been trying real hard to kill off the market of owning movies on a disc.

I have in my Collection of DVD's, Blu-ray and 4 K Blu-ray, All 8 seasons of GOT, TWD, Lord of the Rings trilogy, Spartacus, Rome, The Witcher, Galactica just to name a few. I be dam if I will pay 4 bucks extra for Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos to any Streaming service for the privilege of not owning a damn thing.

 

[j_garcia]

Downgrading everyone as an "incentive" to move to their pay tier is a bit of a d1ck move, but I don't think as many people will opt for the pay level as they think and they'll end up having to figure something else out or walk some level of it back. For me, I just won't use it as much. They very well may find that it backfires and a LOT of people will just use other services.

 

[Danzilla31]

This actually is one of several reasons which caused me to cancel Amazon Prime

#1 they have had price increases for Prime from 75 when it started to now it's $150. More if you pay monthly. Now they want $36 extra bucks which raises it to $186 a year more if you pay monthly.

#2 it's the way they did it. If they'd have done like Netflix and left the premium tier untouched and then offered a lower tier which we could opt to go down too and pay less I'd probably have been ok with it. But they really just kept their premium tier just as expensive and then without giving you the option forced you to pay even more to access the higher tiers premium options. It's not what they did it's how they went about it.

#3 you get free shipping on anything over $25 anyway. I could care less about their 1 or 2 day guarantee. I can wait a little longer anyway. Not only this it's not like they don't f that up anyway.


Maybe if they stopped spending hundreds of millions on the rights to content and then kept producing flops off of it aka Lord of the Rings and The Wheel of Time we wouldn't have to be asked to give more money for them to produce it. I especially don't want to be asked to pay more for them to produce content if they don't have the best track record of creating something worthwhile to watch

 

[j_garcia]

This actually is one of several reasons which caused me to cancel Amazon Prime

#1 they have had price increases for Prime from 75 when it started to now it's $150. More if you pay monthly. Now they want $36 extra bucks which raises it to $186 a year more if you pay monthly.

#2 it's the way they did it. If they'd have done like Netflix and left the premium tier untouched and then offered a lower tier which we could opt to go down too and pay less I'd probably have been ok with it. But they really just kept their premium tier just as expensive and then without giving you the option forced you to pay even more to access the higher tiers premium options. It's not what they did it's how they went about it.

#3 you get free shipping on anything over $25 anyway. I could care less about their 1 or 2 day guarantee. I can wait a little longer anyway. Not only this it's not like they don't f that up anyway.


Maybe if they stopped spending hundreds of millions on the rights to content and then kept producing flops off of it aka Lord of the Rings and The Wheel of Time we wouldn't have to be asked to give more money for them to produce it. I especially don't want to be asked to pay more for them to produce content if they don't have the best track record of creating something worthwhile to watch

Netflix does the same thing: they buy a property, fail to create something good out of it and then raise prices to cover their losses citing operating expenses. The few winners don't make up for the endless pile of losers. Disney is no different. The bought whole brands and essentially drove them into the ground. Sure, you can keep shooting at your own feet, but eventually...

Amazon's base plan is technically "free" aka included, so they can't really charge you less for it. They did that to themselves: they have to add a higher tier because they want to say they aren't charging you for the service.

IMO LotR wasn't a flop, but they certainly spent too much for what they produced. Wheel of Time, not worth time lol.

 

[lovinthehd]

I don't find it surprising and they do offer a lot more in/for Prime than they did in 2005 when it was $80 annually. OTOH I don't have Atmos /4k systems so dropping it from the "free" tier isn't going to affect me anyways. I will gladly pay to avoid commercials, tho.

 

[snakeeyes]

This actually is one of several reasons which caused me to cancel Amazon Prime

#1 they have had price increases for Prime from 75 when it started to now it's $150. More if you pay monthly. Now they want $36 extra bucks which raises it to $186 a year more if you pay monthly.

#2 it's the way they did it. If they'd have done like Netflix and left the premium tier untouched and then offered a lower tier which we could opt to go down too and pay less I'd probably have been ok with it. But they really just kept their premium tier just as expensive and then without giving you the option forced you to pay even more to access the higher tiers premium options. It's not what they did it's how they went about it.

#3 you get free shipping on anything over $25 anyway. I could care less about their 1 or 2 day guarantee. I can wait a little longer anyway. Not only this it's not like they don't f that up anyway.


Maybe if they stopped spending hundreds of millions on the rights to content and then kept producing flops off of it aka Lord of the Rings and The Wheel of Time we wouldn't have to be asked to give more money for them to produce it. I especially don't want to be asked to pay more for them to produce content if they don't have the best track record of creating something worthwhile to watch

Hmm. Might be worth canceling the whole thing. I forgot how much the yearly fee went up.

 

[Danzilla31]

They have nothing that I can't get from them with paying from a prime membership. I can still order movies to rent if I want whether I'm a member or not.

Still get free shipping.

I really have access to anything they offer so why keep accepting pay increases?

 

[Danzilla31]

Netflix does the same thing: they buy a property, fail to create something good out of it and then raise prices to cover their losses citing operating expenses. The few winners don't make up for the endless pile of losers. Disney is no different. The bought whole brands and essentially drove them into the ground. Sure, you can keep shooting at your own feet, but eventually...

Amazon's base plan is technically "free" aka included, so they can't really charge you less for it. They did that to themselves: they have to add a higher tier because they want to say they aren't charging you for the service.

IMO LotR wasn't a flop, but they certainly spent too much for what they produced. Wheel of Time, not worth time lol.

They in my opinion should have done the same thing Netflix did. Netflix kept their highest plan untouched and then offered a lower plan for less.

Prime could have done the same it's not like prime members would jump down to the lower tier

So the only members they would get are new members who don't want to pay for a full prime membership anyway.

It's not like they wouldn't be getting enough of the advertising as well.

How much profit did they earn last year and now they want to squeeze me for more? Didn't Bezos just build a rocket or something? I'm just not interested in letting them squeeze me for more

 

[lovinthehd]

They have nothing that I can't get from them with paying from a prime membership. I can still order movies to rent if I want whether I'm a member or not.

Still get free shipping.

I really have access to anything they offer so why keep accepting pay increases?

What is typical transit time for that level of free shipping?

 

[isolar8001]

I've had Prime for 6 years at a current 6.99 per month. (up from 3.99 at start)
Haven't looked at it in months to see what they've done. Don't care at all myself, it's just there.
Lots of users are having kittens over this and what's happening on all streaming services by the look of things.
Salad days are over it seems.

I've never watched a show or movie on Prime, or any other streaming service....cant stand the low quality and the method of usage of streaming for more than a few minutes. (scrolling for an hour to find something to watch ? bitch, please)

 

[Danzilla31]

What is typical transit time for that level of free shipping?

6-7 days sometimes less depending on what you order

 

[lovinthehd]

6-7 days sometimes less depending on what you order

Hmmm...and the free shipping is offered on all the same items as a Prime member? IIRC when I signed onto Prime I saved money as not everything shipped free....

 

[Danzilla31]

Hmmm...and the free shipping is offered on all the same items as a Prime member? IIRC when I signed onto Prime I saved money as not everything shipped free....

As long as you orders are $25 and above your good to go ai just found some better speaker stands for my LCR RBH speakers and ordered them from Amazon. It was free shipping supposed to be here next Tuesday

 

[Wayde Robson]

I don't use Prime very often and for years I only used Windows 10 for streaming video services and unfortunately the Prime Win10 app only streams stereo sound so I've sort-of just ignored Prime outside specific shows. Netflix Win10 app does Atmos, so it's always been my random movie go-to.

Amazon's list of devices used to get Atmos on Prime.

Prime Video: Help

www.primevideo.com

It's very Android-centric and hates Windows.

Not long ago I picked up an Apple TV4K and it never even occurred to me to test Prime on it until reading this article. Funny how you can just get used to the way things have always been, Prime was my acoustic parable of the cave. I'm surprised that Apple lets its device stream Atmos on every app that supports it.

Next time I get Prime will be when I learn the new season of The Boys is out. It will be nice to hear it in something better than stereo. Thanks, Jacob!

 

[jliedeka]

My Prime subscription auto-renewed in December. I'll drop it this December. I'm not happy about the downgrades of their streaming service and Prime delivery went from 2 days to random number of days. It's not a budget issue for me so much as refusing to pay scam artists.

 

[Scott Y.]

So, they raised their price $36 per year. It’s like all of the others, take it or leave it.

I have 4k and 7.3.4 Atmos and I watch a lot of Amazon Prime. Of course, most of the stuff I watch there isn’t 4k or Atmos. But, I don’t watch commercials.