Since late last month, many Amazon Prime Video subscribers have been wondering what happened to Dolby Atmos and Vision HDR support. The Dolby icons are still present on such Prime Video content as Jack Ryan and Air, but when you click “Play,” no dice.
Well, Prime Video users have figured out that change coincides with the arrival of ads on Prime Video–and if you upgrade to the ad-free Prime Video, you get Dolby Vision and Atmos back.
German website 4kfilme.de was the first to notice that videos on the ad-supported version of Amazon Prime Video was no longer delivering the Dolby Vision flavor of HDR or object-based Dolby Vision audio. Switching to the new–and pricier–ad-free tier of Prime Video brings back Dolby Vision and Atmos, 4kfilme.de noted.
Amazon later confirmed to Forbes that the lack of Dolby Vision and Atmos support for with-ads Prime Video users is a “deliberate” change,
I checked for myself by streaming various Prime Video originals on an Apple TV 4K, an Amazon Fire Stick 4K, and a Roku Streaming Stick 4K and had the same experience (I haven’t upgraded to ad-free Prime Video yet).
Try to play Air on the ad-supported version of Amazon Prime Video, and you’ll only get standard HDR, not Dolby Vision.
Ben Patterson/Foundry
The movie Air, for example, has Dolby Vision and Atmos icons on its Prime Video description screen. But when I clicked “Play” on my Roku stick, the video played in standard (but still 4K) HDR and 5.1-channel audio.
I’ve reached out to Amazon for more details.
Amazon rolled out ads to Prime Video on January 29, and you must now cough up $2.99 a month to “upgrade” to an ad-free version of Prime Video.
Amazon telegraphed its plans to inject ads into Prime Video months in advance, but as far as anyone can tell (maybe it’s buried in the fine print somewhere?), it never said anything about dropping Dolby Vision and Atmos support for ad-supported subscribers.
To be fair, ad-supported Prime Video offers a fairly robust feature set compared to some other streamers. For example, Prime Video with ads does offer 4K HDR streaming, and you can download videos for offline playback.
Max and Netflix, on the other hand, only serve up 1080p streams for their ad-supported tiers, and Max won’t let with-ads users download videos.
But if Amazon has, indeed, intentionally yanked Dolby Vision and Atmos support for its standard—and now ad-supported—plan, it should have come clean about the new restrictions.
Author: Ben Patterson, Senior Writer, TechHive
Ben has been writing about technology and consumer electronics for more than 20 years. A PCWorld contributor since 2014, Ben joined TechHive in 2019, where he has covered everything from smart speakers and soundbars to smart lights and security cameras. Ben's articles have also appeared in PC Magazine, TIME, Wired, CNET, Men's Fitness, Mobile Magazine, and more. Ben holds a master's degree in English literature.