Prime Video, no more Dolby Vision and Atmos for basic plan subscribers: you will have to pay a surcharge

Prime Video continues to be one of the most advantageous streaming services available in Italy over time. The reason is simple: it boasts a good library that evolves on a monthly basis included in the Prime subscription. And the great thing is that Prime includes a lot of stuff, not just shipping and access to the service catalog.

However, things are about to change a bit. Prime Video’s basic plan will soon include ads. The price of the Prime subscription remains, at least for now, blocked: you will always pay €49.90 per year, but if you don’t want advertising while watching streaming content you will have to pay a extra charge of $2.99 ​​per month. The price is in dollars because at the moment this thing is not yet active in Italy, but we suspect that the conversion rate will be 1 to 1. Considering the annual price, any additional expense to remove the advertisements would increase the cost of the subscription to €7.14 per montha still competitive price compared to other services.

Even apple TV+, which was one of the most advantageous, has risen to €9.99 per month.

Amazon, however, is about to make matters worse, making what we can actually call it Basic Plan even less greedy. In fact, the e-commerce giant will soon be launched will remove Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos from Prime Video. Or rather, to see the contents in this format it will be necessary spend the usual $2.99 ​​per month more. In essence, this additional expense will serve not only to remove advertising, but also to guarantee the possibility of enjoying content compatible with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos support. The reason is easily explained: compared to other standards, those signed by Dolby have licensing costs that Amazon no longer intends to offer “for free” to its users.

Now, with all due respect to Prime Video, given its cost which we could almost define as negligible, the absence of Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos is really the least of its problems.

The real “drama”, if you use the slightly exaggerated term, became finding something to watch on the service’s home page. Leaving aside the two initial carousels, the home is a triumph of films to rent or buy, additional paid channels, free trials that then lead to new monthly subscriptions and the like. Going to the Film or TV Series subsections doesn’t help: paid content is continuously offered there too. And mind you, we’re not the only ones complaining about it. Even abroad it is full of complaint threads on Reddit and the like. If the $2.99 ​​served not only to remove advertising, but also to improve the home situation, the Premium subscription would make more and more sense. What is certain is that getting users used to something and then taking it away from them by asking for more money is not the best, but if Netflix and Disney+ have already done it, why should Amazon be any less?