Amazon recently introduced ads to its Prime Video service, asking users to fork out an extra $2/£2 per month if they want to go commercial free. However, it turns out that’s not the only change that’s been made.
Both Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos have allegedly been removed from the ad-supported tier. This was first discovered by testing from German site 4KFilme, which showed that content was capped at HDR10 with Dolby Digital 5.1 when played on this subscription.
When the tests were repeated on the ad-free tier, Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos 3D playback were available. A spokesperson for Prime Video confirmed this change to The Verge, but this information wasn’t available in Amazon’s initial announcement when launching the ad-supported tier, and the help pages have not been updated to communicate this change at the time of writing.
Amazon isn’t the only platform to other capped streaming on its ad-supported tier. Disney+, Netflix and Max all have downgrades as well, with most of them not even allowing 4K streaming. Nonetheless, this does make a difference to how competitive a subscription now is.
If you bundle in streaming with a full Prime subscription, then this 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 ad-free streaming (and Dolby Vision/Dolby Atmos), then this may be a better option when you add on the extra $2.99/£2.99 per month.
Of course, if this news is a dealbreaker, then you can always cancel your Amazon Prime subscription.