As I reported yesterday, Amazon Prime Video has finally landed on the Apple TV. This is great news in most ways, as it finally removes one of the Apple TV’s most frustrating limitations. It’s great, too, to see that the version of Amazon Prime Video running on the Apple TV 4K (the latest generation Apple TV box) delivers its video in 4K high dynamic range where a show and your TV supports it.
While the video side of the app might be working nicely, though, the audio side definitely is not. For bizarrely it’s currently only outputting sound in PCM stereo.
The vast majority of films and TV shows available on Prime Video these days are made with Dolby 5.1 sound. In fact, if you go and check out such shows as The Man In The High Castle and The Grand Tour on, say, the Amazon Video apps built into the latest TVs, you will see a little check box saying ‘5.1’ on their header page. On the Apple TV’s Amazon Video app, though, there’s no such box, and everything only plays as PCM stereo.
This isn’t exactly what you’d expect from one of the biggest profile apps on one of the AV world’s most expensive video streaming boxes. Especially when the Apple TV 4K is capable of delivering 4K, HDR, Dolby Vision and 5.1 sound from so many other applications - including iTunes and Netflix.
Making the situation even more strange is that when I first installed the Amazon Video app yesterday, shows were appearing with the 5.1 header information on them. But today that has mysteriously vanished, and shows are definitely only playing out in stereo.
While I’m moaning about the Apple TV’s Amazon Video app, I might as well also add that it’s disappointing (especially when it's already arriving months behind schedule) that it doesn’t yet integrate fully with the Apple TV home screen. By which I mean that when you highlight its icon, you don’t get a row of direct show links running along the top of the interface like you do if you highlight, say, the iTunes or Netflix app icons. You just get a static, unselectable image.
Also, as somebody who doesn’t live in the US, comparing the Amazon Video app on the Apple TV 4K with the box’s Netflix App, I was reminded again of how, bizarrely, Amazon doesn’t provide any support for Dolby Vision outside of the US. Its HDR content here in Europe is just available in the lower quality HDR10 format.
And then, of course, the Apple TV Amazon Video app retains the crazy situation where two separate versions of shows made in 4K (one 4K version, one HD version) exist simultaneously on the Amazon Video interface, meaning many people with 4K TVs will end up accidentally playing the HD versions of shows rather than the 4K ones. Though this issue exists on every Amazon platform, even the latest Amazon Fire TV.
I’ve contacted Amazon to find out what’s going on with the audio issue, and will update this story if they have anything to say.
—
If you liked this story, you might also like these:
Amazon Video Finally Arrives On Apple TV
Something Weird Is Going On With Dolby Vision On The Apple TV 4K
New tvOS Update Fixes The Apple TV 4K’s Biggest Problem. Kind Of
Apple TV 4K Review: 13 Reasons You Shouldn’t Buy One
Apple TV 4K Review: 13 Reasons You Should Buy One
Apple TV 4K Falls Victim to Video Streaming Format War
The Grand Tour Isn't Just For Petrol Heads - It's A Joy For AV Fans Too
