Amazon Prime Video just got a superb free video quality upgrade

(Image credit: Amazon)

published 14 September 2022

Good news for anyone with a Dolby Vision TV: Amazon Prime Video, which has been banging the HDR10+ drum for years, seems to have had a change of heart. Some of its most popular shows including The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, The Wheel of Time and Jack Ryan are now available in Dolby Vision.

The new Dolby Vision support is in the Amazon Prime Video app on compatible FireTV devices and on smart TVs from firms such as Philips and LG; to get it, you just need to update the app to the latest version. It hasn't made its way to Apple TV boxes yet, although coincidentally this week's tvOS update adds HDR10+ support to the Apple TV app on those devices.

Why Amazon's use of Dolby Vision could be a big deal for Samsung

Most – but not all – of the best TVs support Dolby Vision, with Samsung being the main hold-out: even the best Samsung TVs don't support the format, preferring HDR10+ instead. That's because HDR10+ is Samsung's own rival to Dolby Vision, so it doesn't need to pay licensing fees for the HDR tech. It's an open source standard but Samsung is the main supporter of it.

We're not quite in VHS vs Betamax territory here: many streamers offer titles in both flavours of HDR on a title-by-title basis. But if Amazon is warming to Dolby's flavour of HDR over Samsung's preferred format, that could be an important development. Samsung struck a deal with Amazon in 2017 to stream in HDR10+ rather than Dolby Vision – making it the first streamer to launch HDR10+ content – so if that's coming to an end Samsung may need to rethink its our-way-or-no-way stance.

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).