Two pieces of news put Amazon Prime in the daily news today and both come from the USA. The streaming platform is being sued by a North American user for adding advertisements to one of its paid plans.
Also in the North American market, the streaming service continues to make changes to its most basic plan. It has now removed support for Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision, which promises more protests.
Extra cost for no ads and Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos support
Amazon Prime made a brief statement to Forbes magazine about the changes to the basic plan Crédito@FrankReppold/Pixabay
According to the information released, Amazon Prime’s ad-supported plan is limited to HDR10+ and Dolby Digital 5.1 features. All users who do not want to view commercial spaces and wish to benefit from support for Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos will have to pay an extra cost of $2.99 per month (around €2.80).
Although it did not announce the removal of these resources from the basic plan, in statements to Forbes magazine, the company confirmed the information. Amazon Prime tells the publication that “The move from Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos to the ad-free level is deliberate and not the result of a technical issue.”
It should be noted that, for now, these measures – presence of advertisements and withdrawal of support for Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos – are only being applied in the North American market.
There is still no information on whether the platform will move forward with this strategy for the remaining markets in the world or when it will do so.
Ad addition leads to legal action
However, the addition of ads to its most basic paid plan is not being well received by North American users. Wilbert Napoleon, a California resident and user of the service, expressed his discontent in a more assertive way and filed a lawsuit against Amazon Prime.
The user states that he renewed his subscription to the streaming service, believing that it would always have content free from commercial spaces. Napoleon even included an image of the platform’s website dating back to 2011 and which guarantees “unlimited, ad-free instant streaming of more than 5000 films and TV shows at no additional cost”.
According to this user’s lawyers, the renovation contract was made with the plan’s previous premises, which did not include commercial spaces. In practice, the renewal took place in June 2023, at which time the new measures had not yet been applied.