Amazon Prime Video is locking 4K behind a paywall, and there's also a price increase
Well, isn't that lovely?
🤨 Amazon has announced a shake-up of its Prime Video streaming tiers
🔒 4K UHD video is now behind a new Prime Video Ultra tier
💰 Its price has risen to $5 a month to remove ads, get 4K video, Dolby Atmos and more
🤷♂️ The base Prime Video tier has gotten Dolby Vision HDR and higher concurrent streams and download limits as some compensation
Amazon Prime Video is the latest streamer to change its subscription model, raising prices and putting previously included components behind a paywall.
The additional charge to go ad-free, which was $3 a month, goes up to $5 a month from April 10 as part of a rebranding to Prime Video Ultra, and will include 4K UHD content – this was previously available to everyone on the base Prime Video tier.
For the extra $2 a month, the download capacity increases from 25 shows to 100, and you can now run five streams concurrently as opposed to the current three, according to Amazon’s press release.
The prices for standard Prime Video remains unchanged, although it becomes a worse deal because of Amazon’s changes. Customers paying $139 a year, or $15 a month, will be limited to 1080p streaming on up to three devices at the same time, unless they sign up for Prime Video Ultra.
Amazon has thrown in Dolby Vision HDR support for the first time on Prime Video, although that isn’t limited to Ultra just yet and is available to all. The concurrent stream and download count for the ‘free’ tier of Prime Video has been bumped up, but at the expense of 4K video.
If you want Dolby Atmos surround sound in supported content, that also remains exclusive to the $5 Prime Video Ultra tier.
We’ve seen price hikes to the likes of Apple TV, Disney+ and HBO Max in recent times, so Amazon isn’t alone in doing what it’s done here. However, locking features behind a paywall that most were aggrieved with in the first place, probably won’t go down well.
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Reece Bithrey is a journalist with bylines for Trusted Reviews, Digital Foundry, PC Gamer, TechRadar and more. He also has his own blog, UNTITLED, and graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in International History and Politics in 2023.