Amazon recently introduced ads to its Prime Video service, asking users to fork out an extra $2/£2 per month if they want free advertising. However, it turns out that’s not the only change being made.
Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos have reportedly been removed from the ad-supported tier. This was first discovered during testing on German site 4KFilme, which showed content being capped at HDR10 with Dolby Digital 5.1 when playing with this subscription.
When testing was repeated at the ad-free level, Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos 3D playback were available. A Prime Video spokesperson confirmed this change to The Verge, but this information was not available in Amazon’s initial announcement when the ad-supported tier launched, and the help pages did not not been updated to communicate this change at the time of writing.
Amazon isn’t the only platform offering other streaming services capped at its ad-supported tier. Disney+, Netflix, and Max all have downgrades as well, with most of them not even allowing 4K streaming. Still, it makes a difference in how competitive a subscription is today.
If you bundle streaming with a full Prime membership, it costs $14.99 per month in the US and £8.99 per month in the UK. Amazon also offers a standalone video subscription for $8.99/£5.99 per month – so if you want to keep costs down and keep streaming ad-free (and Dolby Vision/Dolby Atmos), this may be a better option when you add the extra $2.99/£2.99 per month.
Of course, if this news is a deal breaker, you can always cancel your Amazon Prime subscription.
