[HN Gopher] Prime Video cuts Dolby Vision, Atmos support from ad...
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Prime Video cuts Dolby Vision, Atmos support from ad tier-and
didn't tell subs
Author : nickthegreek
Score : 86 points
Date : 2024-02-12 21:51 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| 5.1 audio channels is all you really need.
| bombcar wrote:
| I would be interested to know the _actual_ audio setup of most
| video watching ...
|
| I suspect that even if you ignore whatever (probably huge?)
| percentage is on mobile, that much of it comes out of whatever
| TV speakers are being used.
|
| Even my 7.1 receiver is down to a single laughable channel,
| because I've not been arsed to fully set it up and a wire is
| loose.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Bought a receiver years back, only ever bought two speakers -
| whole thing isn't plugged in since I moved two years ago,
| just the little speaker in the TV with no bass.
| solardev wrote:
| Just wait a few years and you'll be like me, seven speakers
| and one good ear.
| woobar wrote:
| My guess is a lot of people with bigger TVs are getting
| soundbars. They are easy to setup and doesn't require wires.
| I won't switch from 5.1 setup but if I ever move I would give
| it a try. Built-in speakers I've used in hotels/airbnbs are
| not great.
| o11c wrote:
| I expect most people use at most a soundbar. Which,
| regardless of what it advertises, is really just 2-3 channels
| and maybe a subwoofer.
|
| And the rise of phones means there's a lot of stereo or even
| mono.
| catchnear4321 wrote:
| just in case anyone is wondering what happened to the audio on
| their ad tier videos next month...
| juliusdavies wrote:
| 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.
| echelon wrote:
| I'd really like for regulators to look at Apple and Amazon and
| their interest in the film business.
|
| Both of these are propped up on the profits of unrelated business
| units and offered below cost to viewers.
|
| This behavior has led to existing film studios folding and
| getting bought out by these giants.
|
| Now they're jacking up prices to healthy levels. They literally
| just ate an entire unrelated industry because of their scale.
|
| They should be split up again.
| Alupis wrote:
| Can you elaborate on this a bit? The pricing for the services
| seem to be in-line with the rest of the industry[1], and I'm
| not aware of any "block buster" TV Shows or Movies released on
| either Prime Video nor AppleTV (in fact, Prime Video has one of
| the biggest TV failures of all time[2] under it's belt, titled
| "Citadel").
|
| > This behavior has led to existing film studios folding and
| getting bought out by these giants.
|
| Netflix, Paramount and the rest are swallowing up small
| productions too.
|
| From an industry-outsider's perspective - now seems to be the
| best time in history for small, quirky, weird, niche
| productions to get in front of huge viewership numbers.
|
| [1]
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/29/amazon-...
|
| [2] https://gamerant.com/citadel-prime-video-expensive-
| failure-e...
| bombcar wrote:
| Disney did a few "direct to Disney+" releases (and eventually
| on DVD, Blurry, etc). The third Hotel Transylvania movie was
| direct to Prime (Amazon bought it fully made).
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Ted Lasso was an AppleTV+ production. One of the biggest
| streaming success stories, right up there with your stranger
| things, etc.
|
| The Boys was an Amazon production. Also a huge success story.
| astrange wrote:
| Prime Video wasn't a loss leader in order to jack up prices
| later, it was a loss leader for Bezos to date actresses.
| zie wrote:
| I have no idea how true this is, but it's 100% funny even if
| not true, so YAY for funny at the very least!
| threeseed wrote:
| > Both of these are propped up on the profits of unrelated
| business units and offered below cost to viewers
|
| Do you have evidence of this ?
|
| Apple has historically chosen not to use the loss-leader
| approach.
| tpowell wrote:
| 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.
| Larrikin wrote:
| 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 still do OK if you have a specific brand or model in mind.
| Despite HNs insistent that all they do is deliver counterfeit
| goods, I've never gotten any, just lately cheap junk or
| occasionally clearly used items being new.
|
| 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'll save the 100+ dollars and just pick up from target when I
| need something quick.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I cancelled when they announced limited ads ( or however they
| phrased it ) to create new content. I did not watch Prime and
| was using Amazon less and less ( after actually going through
| my orders, it turned out not to be enough to spend on Prime
| membership ) and they still had to balls nickel and dime me. I
| suppose I should thank them to kinda force me re-evaluate this
| relationship.
|
| I suppose Cory was right; enshitiffication continues unabated.
| I am not certain people approach the way I do. Hell, I was
| ready to drop Sirius after their upcoming changes letter came
| in, but wife is clearly addicted so baby steps there are
| needed.
|
| Maybe amazon figured they don't need to be good.
| enobrev wrote:
| Just dropped it as well after maybe a decade of membership.
| Waiting an extra couple days for shipments has been fine. We
| don't trust Amazon as a stow anymore anyway so we don't order
| much from there.
| zelos wrote:
| > 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.
| jeffbee wrote:
| This is the real problem with Prime Video. The first party
| content is _terrible_.
| dualboot wrote:
| This is not even remotely true.
|
| Patriot is amazing.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Also 'The Boys' is quite popular, 'Bosch' and 'Reacher' are
| very popular.. there are a few others that do well. If you
| are old enough think back to the haydays of the network
| television evening programming. There were hits, there were
| misses, there was tons of stuff in between. For every
| 'Friends' there is a 'Two Guys a Girl and a Pizza Place'.
| manquer wrote:
| For every "Friends" there are _thousands_ of 'Two guys a
| girl and a pizza'
| jeffbee wrote:
| There is no accounting for taste of course, but this show
| appears to have a 35% dislike vote fraction among Google
| users and 68% favorable on Metacritic. Which puts it
| objectively well below other Prime shows that I personally
| think are extremely bad, such as Reacher and Jack Ryan.
| jjulius wrote:
| >This is not even remotely true.
|
| It's a subjective opinion, therefore entirely true to OP
| and not even remotely true to you.
| thelastparadise wrote:
| Turns out gobbling up IP and hitting the print button isn't
| such a great business model.
|
| Also see: Disney.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| See also every television/cable network ever. Every season
| a few shows would rise to the top and a few would get put
| out of the misery, you just move on and hope the good bets
| make more money than the bad bets burn.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I don't get why this would be an issue for Prime. They
| don't have to fill up a schedule so they can sell ad
| slots. They can make as little or as much content as they
| want. They don't need to make a "Veronica's Closet" to
| cram in between "Seinfeld" and "ER".
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Clarkson's Farm is legitimately good. It's worth checking
| out.
| Loughla wrote:
| 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.
| melvinram wrote:
| Jack Ryan and Reacher are pretty good.
| parthdesai wrote:
| eh, both had great 1st season and then they were terrible
| in the following seasons.
| MBCook wrote:
| They've had a few. Marvelous Mrs. Maisel was fantastic. So
| was Sneaky Pete with Giovanni Ribisi. Unfortunately that
| doesn't seem to be well-known.
|
| I don't really know much else they've done, besides the man
| in the high castle. I just don't hear about them much, and
| the fact that I find their app rather obnoxious means I don't
| go looking in there very often.
|
| As soon as they announced they were adding ads I deleted the
| app off all my devices. I basically never use it anyway, and
| now I definitely don't want to. And clearly I don't like it
| well enough to pay to remove the ads.
|
| Honestly I wish the government would somehow break up prime.
| I'm happy to pay for shipping but I basically don't want a
| single other benefit.
| ilikecakeandpie wrote:
| The Boys is great, but I can't really say there's anything
| else that I'm excited about
| minimaxir wrote:
| The Boys/Invincible are generally at the top of the Most
| Watched lists on Prime when they release new episodes.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| The app sucks, the way they present content sucks.
|
| There was a series on prime called Mammals that remains
| seared into my brain. I have no idea why I started watching
| it, or why, because nothing about the show is my taste. By
| the end I was oh so glad I did... I have yet to find someone
| else who has seen it.
| nyjah wrote:
| I noticed this the other night. I have an atmos setup and I
| figured the media was flawed. Oddly, I was on there just to see
| the ad tier and how the ads would be integrated into movie. This
| particular movie had no ads. So I watched it, albeit confused why
| the sound was not great. I ordered about 30TB of hard drives
| earlier. Off to the high seas.
| Animats wrote:
| "I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further."
| commandlinefan wrote:
| It looks like these streaming services have been hemorrhaging
| cash for years now and they just can't hide it any more. They're
| going to have to take drastic steps to try to become profitable -
| remains to be seen whether customers will bite. OTOH, we don't
| have the infrastructure to go back to the days of DVD rentals.
| fabian2k wrote:
| I canceled Prime after they added ads. I might have canceled it
| anyway at some point, but this was a very clear and significant
| reduction in value.
|
| They never really competed all that well, but there were some
| interesting original shows on there that kept me interested
| enough to keep a subscription. But they were really bad about
| having the original language audio, and they rotate content out
| pretty fast, my watchlist is always half-gone.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| I did the same. I know it won't matter to them, but I feel
| better not paying for a product they're actively and
| intentionally making worse.
|
| It does also mean I'll be doing much less frequent business
| with their store.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| <<They never really competed all that well
|
| I respectfully disagree. Amazon became Amazon, because it
| really did some things well and forced some good standards ( 2
| day shipping, almost zero friction when it came to purchases --
| and returns ). It is not a horrible experience yet, but the
| direction is clear.
| basisword wrote:
| I think OP is referring specifically to their Prime Video
| product which is awful compared with every other streaming
| service both in terms of content available and UI/UX.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| This is called segmentation.
|
| People with home theatres are more likely to be willing to pay
| extra, so they're squeezing those users for more money. Likewise,
| other people are more price sensitive and are more likely to be
| willing to watch ads to save money, so they're squeezing them in
| a different way. With ai and mass surveillance in the future,
| companies will be able to segment at an individual level.
|
| What would they squeeze you or your kids for one day?
| ado__dev wrote:
| The greed knows no bounds. Amazon Prime cancelled.
| Czarcasm wrote:
| I cancelled my Prime within 24hrs of them adding the ads to the
| base tier. Just isn't worth it anymore.
| WXLCKNO wrote:
| I only have prime for the actual amazon purchases and don't
| really use prime much except for the boys and invincible from
| to time to time.
|
| But even with that, this move makes me consider cancelling just
| to spite them.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Technical question, a typical 2 hour movie represents how many
| bytes of stereo audio signal, how many bytes if atmos. How many
| streams served with stereo, how many with 5.1/atmos/whatever.
|
| Are they actually saving any real money here or is it just a pain
| point to milk the whales?
|
| I'd be willing to bet that 80%+ of households don't even have
| equipment that can properly render atmos or even 5.1.
| samtho wrote:
| Its amusing to think that part of this decision is to save on
| bandwidth costs.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]/Related:
|
| _Amazon Prime Video Ad Tier Sparks Class Action Lawsuit from
| Subscribers_
|
| More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39350257
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