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Prime Video cuts Dolby Vision, Atmos support from ad tier–and didn't tell subs

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Re: Prime Video cuts Dolby Vision, Atmos support from ad tier–and didn't tell subs

#81
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clarkson's Farm is legitimately good. It's worth checking out.

I'll second this. It also helped me to humanize Jeremy Clarkson as more than just an old oaf. The moment at the end of the first season when they're totaling up his profit for the year. It is delicious. Top 10 TV moments, when the realization of what he's doing washes across his face.

He's a really good actor. He obviously knew his farm was losing money before that scene.

Re: Prime Video cuts Dolby Vision, Atmos support from ad tier–and didn't tell subs

#82
post #10
post #7

> The Rings of Power... now in HDR10+ for ad-tier users. I'm not sure even the power of Dolby Vision could make Rings of Power worth watching, though.

This is the real problem with Prime Video. The first party content is terrible .

The Expanse was fantastic (although checking now it started on Syfy for first 3 series).

Re: Prime Video cuts Dolby Vision, Atmos support from ad tier–and didn't tell subs

#84
post #5

I’m letting my Prime lapse for the first time in well over a decade. I don’t watch Prime Video much, but this rubbed me the wrong way when they’re making money hand-over-fist on top of recent Prime increases.

Ditto. Price doubled while the service declined. Amazon used to offer a credit card in Germany that offered more cashback with Prime, and they pulled that too. I mostly only care about the fast shipping, and that doesn't seem to be much different than non-prime shipping anymore. For the few times I actually need it, I can pay for fast shipping explicitly and still come out under €90. Things have been so bad with the direction of Prime that I've actually wondered if they're trying to kill it off.

Re: Prime Video cuts Dolby Vision, Atmos support from ad tier–and didn't tell subs

#85

5.1 audio channels is all you really need.

I recently streamed the Taylor Swift Eras concert movie through Apple TV (Dolby Atmos) and Amazon Prime (Dolby DDS I think?) to compare (through a Denon X6200W with a 9.1 speaker setup). Yes, I paid the $19.89 two times. For science. The audio quality with Atmos was substantially better.

The confusing thing about Atmos is that there are basically two versions of it. There is the TrueHD version that you get on BluRay discs which is the highest, uncompressed quality. And then there is the streaming version which uses Dolby Digital Plus as a wrapper for a compressed version of the audio signal.

Atmos on its own really just tells you that there are height channels. Dolby has made all this stuff quite misleading and confusing to the average user.

Re: Prime Video cuts Dolby Vision, Atmos support from ad tier–and didn't tell subs

#86
post #10
post #7

> The Rings of Power... now in HDR10+ for ad-tier users. I'm not sure even the power of Dolby Vision could make Rings of Power worth watching, though.

This is the real problem with Prime Video. The first party content is terrible .

Mr. & Mrs. Smith is good, brand new, and seems critically well-liked. Their general catalog is about as good as, if not better than, Netflix, even if their original content isn't. The Ad-free subscription for Prime Video doesn't cost enough for me to care about.

Re: Prime Video cuts Dolby Vision, Atmos support from ad tier–and didn't tell subs

#87
post #62

I have genuinely no clue what Dolby Atmos is even for. I assume it's for some specific sound setup? And I also assume I don't have that.

Atmos has height channels added to the audio track. So you'll either need speakers in your ceiling or a setup which tries to emulate that by bouncing the sound off the ceiling to really benefit from it.

Re: Prime Video cuts Dolby Vision, Atmos support from ad tier–and didn't tell subs

#88
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the real problem with Prime Video. The first party content is terrible .

This is not even remotely true. Patriot is amazing.

Patriot rules, and is criminally under-watched. True facts: I watched the first season of that show without realizing that my sister-in-law is in it, until she shows up in like episode 2 (and through the rest of the season). An extremely WTF moment, I recommend everybody have it on some kind of show.

Re: Prime Video cuts Dolby Vision, Atmos support from ad tier–and didn't tell subs

#89
post #5

I’m letting my Prime lapse for the first time in well over a decade. I don’t watch Prime Video much, but this rubbed me the wrong way when they’re making money hand-over-fist on top of recent Prime increases.

I don't use Prime Video much either but this was the straw that broke the camels back and made me really consider the value I was getting from Prime. I realized I was actively avoiding buying from Amazon for multiple fears. Lately fear of getting absolute junk drop shipped from China. I didn't trust them to get anything to me that was sensitive. I had a hard drive delivered in a static bag and one single bubble. They…

> And Prime doesn't even mean two or one day delivery anymore, just free shipping and we'll get it to you when we get it to you.

I laughed at the final sentence. My wife and I were talking with friends last week and both of us have independently decided to cancel prime on the next renewal because the prime shipping is random. We summed it up the same way, "For $12 /month we will deliver your product for free... eventually".

Sometimes I get it stuff the next day (rare but does happen), sometimes I get it in 3 days, sometimes a week, sometimes several weeks. I have a book that I ordered 3 weeks ago. It never shipped, so I cancelled it. Then as soon as I cancelled and went to the product page, I saw that it was available to get the next day, so I ordered it again and sure enough the new order arrived the next day. We had a package that arrived about a week ago. We weren't expecting a package, but we opened it up, and it was something that we had ordered 6 weeks earlier and had forgotten that we ordered.

Furthermore, we used to have Amazon Key delivery into our garage. I know a lot of people think its creepy but we loved it. Packages were always safe, we had a camera in the garage we could see whenever the driver dropped it off, plus packages always were delivered to the right house since they could see the garage door open, the knew it was the right place. Then randomly, Amazon started charging either $3 extra per delivery for this a few months back, or you had to wait an extra week to get it for free. What? We pay a premium subscription for delivery already, why do we have to pay more for a delivery that is more secure, costs Amazon nothing, and was more reliable? So we started just getting stuff delivered to the door. Since then, we have only received about 2/3 of our deliveries. They are consistently delivered incorrectly. So we are forced to either a) pay a $3 premium per order to get it delivered reliably, b) wait a week to get it delivered without a surcharge (only the cost of our subscription), or c) roll the dice with the door delivery.

Keep in mind, UPS and FedEx never have problems with deliveries, only Amazon because they are random gig-worker drivers who are not experienced, just delivering as quick as possible to get the next gig shift.

On top of the "eventual" delivery, now Prime Video, which was already the worst of all the streaming services started doing ads. I bit my tongue on it, but now the loss of Dolby Vision and Atmos pisses me off, because I have an amazing home setup that supports both of these and we really appreciate and notice these technologies.

All in all, we are cancelling Prime. Prime Video was not that great anyway. And if I am just going to get random delivery times that can take upwards of several weeks to arrive, then I see no reason to pay for that. I can still get free shipping on $35+ orders from Amazon that will also arrive in a week without a prime subscription. Or I'll just pay the surcharge when I need a faster delivery. This all leads to us using Amazon less, which I am honestly fine with.

Re: Prime Video cuts Dolby Vision, Atmos support from ad tier–and didn't tell subs

#90
post #82
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the real problem with Prime Video. The first party content is terrible .

The Expanse was fantastic (although checking now it started on Syfy for first 3 series).

There is a network that has consistently shot themselves in the foot, and refuses to understand it. The number of great shows that started on SyFy (and some from Showtime that moved to SyFy and then moved on) is incredible but they all end the same, abruptly cancelled because they didn't get the ratings that WWE would get.
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