Exactly. Why steal processing power from your TV. Today is a great day. Only need one box now.
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Hands-On With the New Amazon Prime Video App for Apple TV
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Exactly. Why steal processing power from your TV. Today is a great day. Only need one box now.
I’m having the same issue, all I get is a black screen that looks like the video is loading but nothing happens. My TV isn’t HDR and none of the 4K videos play in the Prime app. 1080p videos play fine as do 4K Netflix videos. I called Amazon and the person I spoke to was entirely clueless.
Shocked that this got added on Apple TV 3rd gen didn't Apple give up on it haven't used my Apple TV since I got Xbox One probably get ATV5 for Apple Music.
If you can stomach your TV's interface (which is becoming less of a problem, but there are still some quite abhorrent interfaces out there) and you have your ATV4k actually hooked up to a 4k TV with apps (given the sales of 4k TVs so far I suspect that most ATV4Ks are insurance for a future TV purchase and for the better underlying hardware, not for the 4K feature set right now). And of course the support lifetime for an in-TV app is about a year and a half, so even if it isn't important now, it will be important to you on the next update to Amazon's interface. Plus most 4k TVs don't have universal search, voice control, etc.
Overall, for a small number of people this might be pointless, but for the vast majority of the intersection between Amazon Prime subscribers (or Amazon video purchasers) and Apple TV owners (3rd gen, 4th gen, and 4K) this is a great improvement.
Haha. Four years of implementation, and this is what the UI has developed. It's great to have the App, but I kind of get the feeling they pushed it almost a forced... like the sample icons and text on the screen. Nothing is inviting... But, I'm not complaining. It's nice finally having the App!
As was I! Pleasantly, surprised, even.
But then reality hit as I navigated around and was reminded, once again, just how little of what I actually want to watch is included in my Prime subscription.
Unfortunately, NYC apartment and no need/room for speaker set up here. If I were back in LA, I'd probably care more about lossless audio.
And DTS-HD is supported at FandangoNow on UHD titles:
- https://twitter.com/dts/status/798593329826918400
- https://www.facebook.com/DTS.Inc/ph...1460097023./10154105997183270/?type=3&theater
- http://www.v-net.tv/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/DTS-USP-Streaming-premium-Audio-EBook-V2.2.pdf
Given how long people (including myself) have been complaining about this, and Amazon hasn't even attempted to make a token effort towards improving the Prime experience, I'm fairly certain that Amazon sees that as a bug, not a feature.
I find this annoying as well. Even Hulu, which is explicitly for a single user and only allows a single stream at a time with no way to upgrade to more streams, supports user profiles. Amazon video recommendations in a family are useless (no, I don't want to watch Melodramatic Teen Angst Anime Superstars!)
Overall, from a just-video technology perspective, Amazon's offering is third-rate. But, they do have some great originals (but IMHO they are not batting 1000 like Netflix has for the last couple of months...) and of course free 2-day or same-day shipping isn't anything to sneeze at (although the shipping benefits of Prime wax and wane with the seasons, this time of year seems to be "high tide" for Prime shipping).
My strategy is simple: figure out what originals you want to watch, and where you can watch the most of those for the lowest cost. If you have the cash for $20+/month, do them both (still a hell of a lot cheaper than cable has ever been in my adult lifetime). Fill in the gaping voids with "purchase" seasons, either on iTunes or especially now on Amazon (usually 10 cents cheaper per episode, although it always pays to shop around). When you tire of the originals on one service, don't hesitate to drop it and pick up the other (yeah, Amazon's service is a yearly lock-in, which sucks, unless you want to give Amazon an extra $2.75 a month; but you can drop it after a year and wait until there is a must-watch show on it to pick it up again). Keep the "other" service while you watch the previous seasons of everything you care about, and when that is exhausted, there might be something back on the first service worth switching back to (or, you know, drop them both until something worthwhile comes up). Whichever service you have there will be miles of back-catalog dreck to tickle your interests (Amazon seems more likely to have near-first-run movies, but I haven't really paid attention and generally don't have the patience to wait for either of them to get movies).
A few things I’ve been able to watch on Amazon, not available on Netflix:
Mr Robot
Teen Wolf
Orphan Black
Grimm
The Twilight Zone
Amazon originals (haven’t watched many)
Red Oaks
The Last Tycoon
They’ve got Wallace and Gromit shorts now
They have all the Star Trek movies, in addition to all the tv shows (except Discovery)
They have movies Netflix doesn’t also. You can go through their content within the app without signing in to see what they offer, just look for the “included with prime” sections.
EDIT: but, if I had to choose one, I’d choose Netflix. I have Prime mostly for the free fast shipping.
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Unless you replace your television far more often than is typical, you’ll find out soon enough that your TV’s built in apps will probably get EOL’d after only 3-4 years.
On our 2012 LG “smart” television, just about all the apps are now non-functional.
The same happened to the 2012 Bravia in playroom of the house. BBC iPlayer no longer works and will never be supported on that TV again. I now have a Chromecast plugged into it and couldn't be happier.
Or like my 2013 blu-ray player that got its last update in 2014...the web interface is slow with crappy UI anyway.
I’d prefer they put more into quality of the display, speakers and connectivity and drop the “smart” from “smart” TVs.
I was on online with Amazon for 45 minutes today. I too, cannot get 5.1 sound from the app. Netflix, Vudu, and itunes purchases all play with surround sound. Confirmed by my Onkyo AVR.
Amazon support has no idea what is wrong, I was also told it should have 5.1.
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I just picked up a small 5.1 (rear surround w/powered sub [wireless]) as we do not have a great area/space to put rear surrounds....anyway, Vizio has a small kit that get decent reviews...might check them out.
Amazon support has no idea what is wrong, I was also told it should have 5.1.
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I just picked up a small 5.1 (rear surround w/powered sub [wireless]) as we do not have a great area/space to put rear surrounds....anyway, Vizio has a small kit that get decent reviews...might check them out.
Me too ! Watching Amazon 4K on my Samsung TV app works fine btw. 4K content on the amazon app on Apple 4K tv just buffers. Watching Netflix and Apple 4K are also fine. And there’s nothing wrong with my net speed
As other people are saying, the app does not currently seem to be streaming 4K. The Grand Tour title always indicates [UHD], as it's part of the title string, but the video being streamed is clearly upscaled 1080p. (I've seen the same thing when their app for LG WebOS also had problems streaming 4K.) Further, none of the other titles I know to be available in 4K from my TV's app are currently showing as 4K in the Apple TV app.
You have to wonder if they are having streaming capacity problems, because they are being slammed by all the Apple TV users.
You have to wonder if they are having streaming capacity problems, because they are being slammed by all the Apple TV users.
I was thinking the same
My new TV's remote does even have a dedicated launch button for Amazon and Netflix.
Amazon have just used the same UI for the ATV app as all the other versions of Amazon video (e.g. Fire TV, OEM TV apps, iOS app etc), which makes sense in terms of having a consistent user experience over multiple platforms.
But if they do that, then how could they spy on you?
It's no surprise the makers capture user data such as viewing habits, which might be expected.
But the always-on live mics on Samsungs not so much.
LGs were recently revealed to be scanning local network shares and sending the results back to their servers.
Actually, some high-end Panasonic 4K OLED models don't have that type of functionality with the clunky, poorly-designed 'smart' interface, since Panasonic just threw everything at image quality processing, realizing that most people likely to buy a display of that quality and price would have their own input devices.
Yes.