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

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

arstechnica.com

215 pointsnickthegreek165 comments

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.

> OTOH, we don't have the infrastructure to go back to the days of DVD rentals.

amazon is perfectly capable of doing the old disc-based netflix/blockbuster model if they want - actually it would complement their pivot into distribution and shipping perfectly. Just some mylar mailers and a bunch of BD-R blanks - licensing is another matter but what is the logistical problem? Print QR code and put on disc, send it out, get it back, scan QR code when it's "returned" and goes back to inventory...

I suppose they mean that your phone, tablet, laptop or smart TV have no optical drive so no way to watch physical media unless it came on a new format like a usbC device or something which the studios historically refuse on copyright infringement reasons.

not saying I agree with the OP but player install base would be the infrastructure hurdle more than the discs

Late reply but yup probably fair.

Too bad they’re unwilling to seriously consider P2P distribution for streamed media.

Would cut costs way down.

My residential wired home internet in Silicon Valley has an unreasonable data cap that I hit every month, so I would not be able to use a service that also requires upload.

(Which is very intentionally anticompetitive because they will happily sell you access to their streaming service that doesn’t count towards the cap).

They would have to make allowances for people with data caps yes

Isn't the content and licensing costs are the majority of their costs? Honestly asking, I never assumed infrastructure and bandwidth might be the majority

It depends on the service. For Disney and Paramount+ they already own the IP and the costs then would be storage + bandwidth + metadata/transcoding servers + engineer time. Of those, the bulk would be bandwidth.

Similar for content that’s owned by the platform. Netflix, Apple, and others invested in to original programming and in those cases there’s again no need to license.

However the prices of all those are similar. By this interpretation, either Disney does a very bad and expensive engineering job, or Netflix is losing big money. And I don't think either is the case... so there must be something else (and I can't tell what).

In this case you can’t look at prices as an indicator of profitability. Pricing is all marketing right now, and only barely connected to real business numbers.

> OTOH, we don't have the infrastructure to go back to the days of DVD rentals.

We already have streaming rentals. I believe while monthly subscription models are not profitable, pay per view still makes money.

The fifth paragraph goes directly to Qui Bono: It costs them licencing fees to people like Dolby Laboratories. So, it's the kind of choice which drives directly to outflows of revenue.

They made a bet less people will cancel, than the net outflow of licences, and those who pay $2.99 are on their way to being made to pay more rather than meeting the licence-tax.

Yes, it's interesting how fast streaming has rotated from fierce competition to be better (more content, exclusive content, big name productions, dolby, 4k, ad-free, etc) to being worse (reduce ability to share / insert ads / what can we cut / slowing the new content pipelines).

Feels like a super accelerated version of seeing capital rush into a space and then right back out.

Everyone is now desperate to stop burning money, and will either cut or merge themselves into break even.

Prime Video is in that weird spot where most people have low expectations and don't feel like they paid for it. There were already pre-roll ads (for other prime shows) under some conditions, so people who stuck through them will probably also stick through the new sponsored ads I guess.

I think this will be the straw in the camel's back for only a small slice of their members, especially as Netflix is also enshittifying their service.

Prime Video is for me the worst compared to the other streaming services I use (Netflix, Disney, HBO). Why? Here in Switzerland they skimp on languages, which means half the catalogue is in only one language and most irritating, not even in the original one - imagine Hollywood movies only available dubbed in German, or Korean dramas only in French (with bad syncing). And the same with subtitles, sometimes there's none, sometimes they pick some random language as sole available... it's a dumpster fire.

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?

I'm surprised the advertisers are playing ball here.

Advertisers want access to people who are willing to pay more money and they want the service that does show their ads to be as accessible as possible. And they're able to more effectively negotiate for consessions as they're less diffuse.

I think the fact that higher priced subscriptions that promise "no ads" exist at all is a good indication that even advertisers are losing power to monopoly gatekeepers.

Following the inevitable enshitification pipeline I guess.

I cancelled my Prime within 24hrs of them adding the ads to the base tier. Just isn't worth it anymore.

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.

I think Man in the High Castle was the last Prime content I watched.. I guess that was 5 years ago, lol.

I cancelled my whole Prime subscription. The few things I’ve ordered since then have been delivered in 2 days with free shipping, so I’m still not sure what I was paying for before.

Having less features on a cheaper tier is entirely normal.

Should Amazon have been more up-front about it? I guess. But most people don't even care. If you have the money and space for a full Atmos-enabled surround-sound setup at home and/or true mega-bright HDR screen and regularly watch Prime Video, you're probably already paying the extra $3/mo. for no ads anyways.

It's not like any of those features matter if you're watching on an iPad or a regular TV or even regular surround sound speakers.

Of all of the corporate outrages to upvote here on HN, this one feels like the absolute tiniest.

The cheaper tier was the normal tier. They they downgraded the normal tier when the added ads and you had to pay extra to remove them. This is just adding insult to injury.

I mean, I'm happy they introduced tiers rather than raise prices for everyone which was the alternative. If I subscribe to Prime just for the shipping, I don't want to be subsidizing people who are heavy video watchers. I see neither insult nor injury, just normal market segmentation.

> Atmos-enabled surround-sound setup

Headphones. You dont need a full setup to enjoy this feature.

I don't think Prime Video supports even 5.1 surround sound over headphones. I tried pulling up content in Prime Video on my iPad with my AirPods Pro and the sound output in iPadOS says "Spatializing Stereo". Not "Spatial Audio" which indicates receiving an actual 5.1 source.

So with certain other apps yes, but with Prime Video specifically it seems like no. (Nor can I find anything reputable online confirming it's supported.)

Also, the vast majority of content is only 5.1 surround sound anyways. Atmos is still only used in a minority of modern films, and only the tiniest sliver of TV shows.

Prime Subscription is annual, not monthly. So they’ve substantially changed the product in the middle of a contract term.

That's not true, there are both monthly and annual options.

And judging from lots of comments online, even if you have annual, they'll refund your remaining time if you cancel in the middle. Sometimes automatically, sometimes you need to request it.

So that part doesn't seem to be a problem.

> Having less features on a cheaper tier is entirely normal.

Oh, definitely. Removing features from your existing subscription, on the other hand, is not normal.

I guess we will have to get used to live with skimpflation [1], but it's not "normal".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinkflation#Skimpflation_or_...

I had a trial subscription of Prime couple of years ago and I hated that they showed skippable ads about other Prime content at the beginning. That was enough for me to never join Prime.

This is a bit of a petty way to artificially widen the value gap between tiers no?

We're not really in the era of customers not knowing any better anymore.

There are 167 million prime subscribers. If only 5% don’t know better that’s over 8 million subscriber. If you surveyed 100 random Amazon customers what percent do you think would actually know what Atmos and Dolby Vision are? I doubt it’s even 50%

Damn you and your amazing insight. Have a star *

I cancelled my Prime membership 3 years ago after moving to Australia. Haven't missed it in the slightest. I make far fewer impulse purchases and found prime video anaemic at best.

What would it take to have an open alternative to the various license-required Dolby formats? Are there any initiatives already underway? Is it just algorithms and software or do they also make codec chips or some other kind of required hardware?

I don't think the Dolby licenses were the cause here, but rather as all other comments underline, new segmentation.

Seems like we made a full circle back to cable-like services but more expensive.

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.

Yeah, it adds speakers above you. It sounds dumb, but even crappy speakers really did make our sound more immersive.

That said, we moved the TV to another room and decided against installing Atmos speakers there... So I guess it's not compelling enough to really care. A good 5.1 setup is enough.

Yeah, it's really not much meaningful benefit over 5.1.

If you want cool effects in a war movie of a plane flying by overhead, then awesome.

But in most television and movie scenes, the sound is coming from a circle around you on the ground.

Putting another 2 (or 4) speakers on the ceiling isn't usually going to make much of a difference. It's truly just diminishing returns.

For the war or action movies where it does, my advice is just to go see it in the theater.

Weather effects are pretty immersive that way, too. But most scenes are indeed pretty flat.

The greed knows no bounds. Amazon Prime cancelled.

5.1 audio channels is all you really need.

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.

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.

Just wait a few years and you'll be like me, seven speakers and one good ear.

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.

Soundbar marketing has a lot of snake oil about bouncing soundwaves around a room to simulate 13 discrete speakers or something. I've got no science, but I do have some serious doubt whether the bouncing stuff works at all. In my imagination, soundbars are basically stereo, or maybe 2.1

I've always considered them the "Bose" of our generation (built on shitty engineering) - they sound better and bassy and so they sound "good enough".

I was skeptical for a while. But I have a friend who is used to a 5.1 setup and moved to a much smaller apartment. He has switched to a soundbar with Atmos and says it is on par. The fact that he "downloads" Dolby Atmos versions of movies even when they are available for streaming added some weight to his opinion. I still did not compare myself so would not go to fight over this.

I don't know your friend, but people are not good at listening. There's a whole industry catering to audiophiles with products that can't pass a blind test. Cynically, I might suspect that your friend is trying to justify their purchase to themselves. Or maybe I'm wrong. But the anecdote doesn't convince me either way.

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.

just in case anyone is wondering what happened to the audio on their ad tier videos next month…

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.

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.

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...

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).

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.

Ted Lasso is a Warner Brothers production licensed to AppleTV more accurately.

On Amazon: Reacher, The Boys, Terminal List, Jack Ryan

All of which took top viewership levels. Of course they're all pretty good shows.

Prime Video wasn't a loss leader in order to jack up prices later, it was a loss leader for Bezos to date actresses.

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!

Do we know which studio investments of the 20th century weren't of that kind?

> 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.

I agree. Apple offers TV+ in their Apple One bundle. Their services revenue is huge and this is a big driver of it. News+ and TV+ on their own are not necessarily profitable but I would bet the bundle that includes them is more profitable than the iCloud extra storage only tiers and more than makes up for the cost.

This is very different from they make a lot of money on iPhones so they can afford to waste it on TV shows.

Traditional studios was also "propped" by unrelated business. Seagram/Unviersal, Gulf+Western/Paramount, Transamerica/UA, (Time,AOL,AT&T)/WB, Sony/Columbia, News/Fox.

On what grounds a business should not be allowed to buy another unrelated business?

While true and a good counter point, the tech companies own both the means of distribution (platforms) and the devices used to consume.

These are subsidized across unrelated business unit profit, enforce the moat of these businesses, and create substantial barriers to entry for businesses across all sectors, including entertainment businesses.

It's really weird that my grocery store is producing Lord of the Rings, selling me the router and TV with which to watch it, and shipping it to me.

Or that the device I use to pay for dinner pops up a notification for Ted Lasso, which also gets prime real estate across several screens that all cross-sell first party experiences.

We've strayed really far from the regulations that produced dealerships and mandated that movie studios couldn't own theaters. Now these companies own everything and can force your hand on distribution and marketing.

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.

Its amusing to think that part of this decision is to save on bandwidth costs.

Maybe if their egress prices were based on real costs

I suspect it’s the licensing fee to Dolby that is the cost driver.

It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s a licensing issue more than a data one. Atmos support for my Xbox headset, for example, has a monthly subscription cost.

Atmos and DTS:X for home theatre setups don’t have any additional licensing fees however.

They're one of the largest providers of cloud compute in the world. I doubt they care about bandwidth.

I remember back around 2015 they had a problem and half the internet went down.

Bet it’s a licensing cost things. But some Atmos tracks are losslesss.

I'd be happy to give up Prime Video entirely for five dollars off my yearly subscription.

Tricks like this is enough for me to never pay Amazon a penny for digital content.

[dupe]/Related:

Amazon Prime Video Ad Tier Sparks Class Action Lawsuit from Subscribers

More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39350257

"I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further."

Altering the deal was the ads, removing Dolby is altering it further. A year from now the ad load will increase, altering it even further. All consumer prayers go unanswered.

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 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.

> 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.

> 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 never had Prime and shipping is about the same with the only exception that you must spend $35 or more to be eligible for free shipping. It used to be $25+ but they changed it.

I've gotten packages in 1-2 days a number of times and 5-7 days most of the time but I don't order a lot. Usually what happens is I'll order something on let's say a Monday, it won't ship until Friday and then I get it on Saturday.

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.

Enshittification it is indeed.

I just started a siriusxm trial (never used before) on a new truck and the audio quality is so atrocious that I can’t bear to listen to it. Maybe for like sports talk it might be tolerable but definitely it’s so much worse than even radio (seems like 4x worse than terrestrial radio) for the audio quality that how can anyone pay for this service?

Because it existed for 15 years before data roaming existed.

No, it’s because the audio quality used to be good, before they tried to see how many channels they could ram in there. Must have been going on 20 years now since we first got XM. When Sirius and XM merged,that’s about the time I recall the quality going way down.

And good luck to OP in cancelling that trial. We bought a new car, too, and I didn’t even bother to activate satellite radio.

it seems like they gave a bunch of satellite bandwidth to the stupid Howard Stern channels and cut back on the music ones. at least some of them.

That happened in 2008. Relatively ancient history. Getting Howard was the entire reason they bought out Sirius

It was never good. Maximum bittate per channel was something like 48kbps.

I use it to listen to listen to talk radio, which does not have to be great quality. Business news/talk are also somewhat interesting. In other words, it has moments. It is ok for music if you are half deaf like me:D

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 store anymore anyway so we don't order much from there.

Same here, it’s just not worth it anymore and the ads on Prime Video sealed the deal for me. Anything I wanted to watch on my list has been replaced by “rent or buy” below it and what’s left is trash. We buy too much crap from Amazon anyway and I’m done paying $139 a year for the privilege. We cancelled our Netflix too. HBO Max continues to be the only thing that has actual movies on it.

Let me edit my comment to add some more substance.

If these statista numbers are true, it seems like I'm not the only one. The first lower number ever happened in 2023. It will be interesting to see the 2024 numbers.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1223385/amazon-prime-sub...

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.

> this rubbed me the wrong way when they’re making money hand-over-fist on top of recent Prime increases.

Are they? AWS is very profitable, but the e-commerce business isn't doing as well. In North America, their operating margin is 4.2% for the past 12 months. International operating margin is -2.0% so they're still losing money on their international retail business. Overall, their retail business net margin is probably around 1.8%.

They're making good money, but AWS is less than 5% of their revenue and accounts for 67% of their profits. The retail business does a ton of sales, but has very thin margins on those sales.

I definitely encourage people to do things like cancel Prime. Companies offer better deals when they know people will walk away. However, I wouldn't say that Amazon is making money hand-over-fist on their retail business. Their margins are pretty tight there.

I cancelled due to ads a few weeks ago after 10+ years of Prime.

I was also sick of yelling at Alexa who pretends not to understand me.

Streaming has lost its appeal to me compared to owning the discs. eBay is especially affordable now with so many Goodwill sellers offering used blu-rays.

I still have prime, but only to keep shipping costs down. I don't use any of the other junk.

I second the used media. That's a great way to very affordably build your collection.

Wait, if you drop prime you can't use Alexa any more?

I cancelled Prime many months back with the fortuitous expiration date of the last subscription coming up in early March. Feels really great to be leaving as this massive wave of enshittification comes crashing down.

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.

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.

<<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.

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.

They do have one feature that I love and wish other services implemented: the x-ray (or whatever it's called), which lets you pause and it will show you info on the actors in this scene, trivia, etc.. This is great for when you see someone and you're like "wait I know that actor... what's their name again?" -- or if you're just a weird trivia junkie. It kind of reminded me of Pop-Up Video like that.

I meant Prime Video. But even the store part of Prime is not that convincing anymore to me, shipping times feel much more random to me now than they used to. So maybe there is a significant speed advantage in Prime, but it's just hard to perceive it when at random times you have slow shipping anyway. And the price advantage only comes into play if you order lots of small stuff individually.

My bad. I misread your post. I agree with that.

> 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.

This is not even remotely true.

Patriot is amazing.

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'.

For every “Friends” there are thousands of ‘Two guys a girl and a pizza’

2GGPP launched Ryan Reynolds and Nathan Fillian and Susan Cryer from Silicon Valley. It’s a bit of a gem in its own way

... but it didn't do well overall.

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.

Patriot is amazing. One of the best black comedys ever made.

>This is not even remotely true.

It's a subjective opinion, therefore entirely true to OP and not even remotely true to you.

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.

Another vote for Patriot here. I think it flew under the radar due to the poor choice of title, but it's just so ridiculously good. Darkly hilarious writing and a really solid cast.

It's funny how Michael Chernus keeps playing brother roles ("Cool Rick" on Patriot, Cal on Orange is the New Black) or brother-in-law (Ricken on Severance). Dude just has a real brotherly vibe, perfect choice for this show.

And then separately it's kind of weird to think that Patriot's showrunner's real-life brother is an actor in the show (playing Dennis), considering some of the scenes that character is in...

Turns out gobbling up IP and hitting the print button isn't such a great business model.

Also see: Disney.

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.

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".

Because you still can't know how a show will turn out when you buy it.

You are often buying a show based on some scripts or based on a pilot. Pilots are, generally, not a good representation of what a show can be. Often they can be weak because the actors and writers still haven't found character voice etc.

With rings of power they bought some licenses for an IP THEN made a show... at that point you have a significant sunk cost and there is pressure to get SOMETHING made.

Maybe some of the actors are weak on the show, maybe the show just looks bad once you get it, maybe qualitywise it's fine but it just doesn't click with audiences.

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.

I'd like to see a fairer accounting, amortizing the equipment costs instead of incurring them all in full on year one.

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

Jack Ryan and Reacher are pretty good.

eh, both had great 1st season and then they were terrible in the following seasons.

"Reacher" is simply right-wing violence-porn. Its moral turpitude is only exceeded by the risible "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" that somehow wants me to like protagonists who kill and hurt strangers without any justification. I've loved everything Donald Glover was in, until now. Meanwhile, "Rings of Power" is left-wing girl-boss porn that utterly disrespects everything Tolkien made. Above all, Amazon's blatant anti-labor practices and monopolistic size makes it an important company to avoid. There are many smaller, better companies that specialize in different markets and offer better deals and support, and if they do err at least they will do so at a much smaller scale (personally I like alibris for books, discogs for music, b&h photo for electronics, the local dollar store for supplies like toothpaste and detergent, and the local thrift store for everything else).

> "Reacher" is simply right-wing violence-porn.

> Meanwhile, "Rings of Power" is left-wing girl-boss porn

You are aware not everything needs to be political, right? Sometimes bad television is just bad television...

I think it's an accurate description that successfully conveys the manipulative, puerile, and harmful nature of these shows in a compact way. My description isn't political in the "right vs left" sense although I admit it may be political in the "extremism vs moderate" sense. Personally, I think that the information we consume cannot help but shape our world-view, so identifying how it shapes our world-view is valid criticism. Reacher and Galadriel are, in my view, icons of their respective flavors of extremism, and I think Amazon does poorly to produce such content.

Have you actually watched Reacher? There is no politics in it at all. It's reminiscent of poorly written 80's action flicks, disguised as a noir mystery.

Again, sometimes bad television is simply bad television. Not everything needs political coloring.

"Ex-military strongman solves our problems through murder" is an inherently political framework for a story. It is as politically tainted as the old show "24", where any and all ethical frameworks were shredded on the altar of the ticking bomb scenario.

Please explain the politics of "Ex-military strongman solves our problems through murder". Specifically, what is the political message being pushed?

That the maintenance of the rule of law requires One True Man to stand outside the law and protect us through extrajudicial killing and torture. It is a statement on the core concept of law and justice.

Ok, and what are the politics of that statement, if any?

You seem to have some definition of politics that differs from the one I use. Politics is discourse and debate about the form of government and the exercise of power. As such, the political statement of "Reacher" or "24" is exactly what I described above: the implication that it is necessary to have someone who breaks all the laws, in order to maintain the system of laws.

Note that in the past we have had pop culture artifacts that argue the opposite, that stand for the triumph of the rule of law over individuals who arrogate extrajudicial powers to themselves. "A Few Good Men" was such a statement.

In the books, Reacher was violent when he needed to be. The author made him ‘huge/large’ and his size enabled his act of violence/ability to mete out justice to the bad guys. Reacher’s size in the books is why folks complained when Tom Cruise starred as Reacher in the movies

Reacher's first season was good. Second season turned into a bad action movie. Bad writing, little time spent on characters/development while adding six new characters we were given no reason to know or care about.

It is legitimately too bad, they really had something with S1.

Reacher is based on the books. The ‘new’ characters were in the book (they were part of Reacher’s team and were being killed off).

That is very authentic to the books.

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.

My two favorite hidden gems are Patriot and ZeroZeroZero. They also did Outer Range, A Hero (movie), Red Oaks, Good Omens, and Mozart in the Jungle.

The Boys and Invincible are both excellent, but more “mainstream” shows.

The Boys is great, but I can't really say there's anything else that I'm excited about

Invincible, Reacher, Terminal List and Jack Ryan are all pretty good as well.

The Boys/Invincible are generally at the top of the Most Watched lists on Prime when they release new episodes.

same here and there's a few non "shipping time" bonuses I remember hearing about and noting that I wanted to try... but then never did, I wonder if I should cut them off because I really dont mind just "acquiring" those shows otherwise if I want to watch them

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.

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.

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.

I had such high hopes for Wheel of Time..

Disagree. The Boys is the most fun I've had with video entertainment all year.

And I like The Expanse better than I like most sci fi. (And it's the only one I know of that actually cares about portraying space travel true to physics.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_gustibus_non_est_disputandu...

I salute with happiness everything that is disliked by people, multimedia is a waste of time, free shipping is shallow consumerism, well done amazon!

What do you spend your time doing?

Defending myself from American culture

Doesn’t really sound anymore fulfilling than multimedia or shallow consumerism. In many ways, it seems substantially worse.

My feeling is that the impact of this on media consumption is zero. Even the Amazon offering won't get impacted. Which is what Amazon guesses too, that's why they are doing it.

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