this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2024
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Amazon Prime Video won't offer Dolby Vision and Atmos on its ad-supported plan | The company is now facing a lawsuit over its decision to charge $3 more for ad-free viewing. (www.engadget.com)
submitted 10 months ago by L4s to c/technology
22 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Amazon Prime Video won't offer Dolby Vision and Atmos on its ad-supported plan | The company is now facing a lawsuit over its decision to charge $3 more for ad-free viewing.::Amazon isn't only interrupting its Prime Video subscribers' viewing experience with ads -- it's also removing their access to Dolby Vision and Atmos unless they pay $3 a month on top of their subscription fees.

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[–] aleq 67 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Back in the day, before streaming was a thing, there were lots of people saying that they'd gladly pay for content if it was served to them in a convenient way. But why would you pay for a worse experience (at that time physical media, often at lower quality, and lower availability) when you can get a better one for free?

Along came streaming. Lo and behold, piracy decreased. Where the fuck do you even go to pirate music anymore? All the big sites have shut down. Video piracy is kinda still going strong, probably mostly due to bullshit concerning exclusives, but it's way less than it used to be.

Its their platform, they can do whatever they want with it I guess, but this trend is definitely gonna be a big boost to piracy.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Did video piracy ever really falter?

Even semi popular movies and shows are always available in a range of qualities, going up to extremely high quality if you get on a private tracker.

Rarbg shutting down was the biggest hit imo, but still lots of options.

[–] brewery 19 points 10 months ago

It never went away but lots of people I know who did all that stopped bothering.

When the range in netflix went down, fees went up and everybody launched different services, I was really thinking of sailing but it was Netflix blocking sharing that was the final straw.

[–] clif 11 points 10 months ago

I've noticed over the last few years that you can always find new releases but "old" material is increasingly unavailable. .

Want the new super hero movie that released last week? Easy.

Want 1984's "The Last Starfighter"? Good luck....

[–] DoomBot5 1 points 10 months ago

Content has always been available, but the number of people pirating decreased. It's now having a resurgence.

[–] TurtleJoe 9 points 10 months ago

Back in the day, before streaming was a thing, there were lots of people saying that they'd gladly pay for content if it was served to them in a convenient way.

It wasn't just people saying that, it was backed up by studies.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Music piracy just kinda gets ripped from official sources. Be it Spotify with an Adblock script, or downloading the song from YouTube.

If you want super high quality stuff, you can find groups dedicated to it. But for most users, just modding streaming services to give them what they want for free is enough.

[–] MeekerThanBeaker 28 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I mean, yeah. I signed up for a year of Prime last summer. They just decide to put in ads? At least wait for the subscription to expire before pulling this crap.

Every time they do something like this, I wait longer and longer to resubscribe. It's just been getting worse, not better.

Bezos, just go to Mars already with the rest of the billionaires. Guess how much taxes you'll save up there. We don't need you.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago

Why even bother to re-subscribe? Do you actually think they will change?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

I totally agree with you. I’m slowly starting to self host due all this streaming platforms bullshit.

Fuck Amazon!

[–] quafeinum 2 points 10 months ago

You can still cancel now and get the remaining money back

[–] Makeitstop 27 points 10 months ago

Prime was a reasonable value for me a decade ago. The streaming side was never the main draw but it was a nice added bonus, especially when Netflix started to lose a lot of the content I actually wanted to watch.

Unfortunately, Amazon's been flooded with worthless trash, and they made the conscious decision to make searching and filtering as useless as possible. It's actually impressive that they've so degraded their service that it's usually more convenient for me to go shopping locally than to try to navigate the unending mine field on Amazon.

So of course they try to ruin the last thing keeping me subscribed. I'm done, they can fuck off. I've got a jellyfin server, I don't need these assholes.

Unfortunately, I'm sure they'll make an obscene amount of money with this move, because apparently the world is full of people who will pay good money to bend over and take it.

[–] refreeze 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Meanwhile I get support for both completely ad free with infinite selection on my Jellyfin server... What on earth are these companies thinking, you literally get a superior product by not paying for it. I would gladly pay a small fee per download of DRM free files if that were an option.

[–] TheGoldenGod 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Care to elaborate on a Jellyfin server for those who don’t know? I would gather a lot who read this would be interested in a summary or ELI5 it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Jellyfin server

https://jellyfin.org/

The easiest way forward is to take that and couple it with something like this for near instant access to a shit ton of content.

Edit: If you are using Set Top Boxes or Smart TVs like Roku / Google / Samsung make sure there's a Jellyfin client available for your device. You may need to use something else like Plex or Kodi if a Jellyfin client isn't available for your environment.

[–] quafeinum 4 points 10 months ago

Jellyfin, kodi, openelec, emby and plex are currently the best self-hosted media streaming platforms. Just attach some hard drive with your vacation videos, ripped dvds/blurays, other owned content and you can have your own service that is only available in your local network at home, for free, with whatever quality you want. One benefit is that this will still work in the rare occasion that your ISP screws up and knocks your neighborhood offline. The downside is you have to have sufficient storage and need to acquire your media yourself.

[–] MisterChief 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Just cancelled my prime subscription today. It was set to renew on Friday. I've been with prime for close to 10 years.

I don't see any value. The price has nearly doubled since originally signing up. The free two day shipping was nice but more and more 2 days is 3-4 and I can get free shipping anyway on any order over $35 without prime so I'll just build up my cart and be patient or order from another place.

The video content was nice but they're fucking joking if they think I'm going to watch ads or pay $3 more per month to not have ads. I can easily pirate most content including live sports and they're making it far less convenient to be part of their ecosystem.

I get my books from the library and store my photos locally.

The literal only downside i see is my buddy won't get his twitch prime subscription from me every month so I guess I'm costing him like $2/month but he's got several hundred so he'll do without.

[–] Sami_Uso 1 points 10 months ago

Same, just cancelled today, as well. I don't buy nearly enough stuff on Amazon anymore to justify the free shipping, the prime video app is fine enough, but if I have to pay more for HDR/surround, well the line has to be drawn somewhere.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Go after netflix too.

[–] snekerpimp 4 points 10 months ago

yar HAR!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

🏴‍☠️

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I don't regularly watch anything on APV so this specific action doesn't really effect me -but- the uninhibited profit seeking by the Entertainment Industry is out of control. As a high income household we've silently absorbed the rate hikes and content splitting in order to keep enjoying content but the latest industry moves around account sharing and charging extra for basic stuff is getting to be too much. The former because I've got kids in College and I shouldn't have to pay for extra"accounts, even with Student Discounts, so they can watch things and I definitely shouldn't have to pay for simple add-ons like HD, Vision, and Atmos!

I'm lucky enough to be able to stand up a Media Server (Plex in my case) and am currently integrating that with "Arrr" services so I can hop off this carousel of rent-seeking insanity.