Along with ‘The House of the Dragon’, one of the series of the year is ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’, not only because of its plot or the story it tells, but also because of the quality it possesses, both artistic and technical level, where Amazon has thrown the rest betting on the most powerful in technology.
And it is that the Prime Video series is the first major premiere of the platform to offer Dolby Vision on the platform, which makes it obtain outstanding image quality. Nevertheless, not all users will be able to experience this improvement or not, at least, those who use an Apple TV 4K or what is more bleeding, an Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K. But let’s go by parts.
High quality but not for everyone
In the case of Apple TV 4K, a few days ago we learned that this series was not seen in Dolby Vision, despite the fact that the company announced it. It is not a problem of the series, but of the application, which at the moment does not support Dolby Vision, despite the fact that the rest of the big ones, such as Netflix, HBO Max or Disney + do. What the Prime Video app does is show us the HDR10 track that Amazon sends to it, but without the dynamic metadata from Dolby.
The non-presence of this high dynamic range format in the series, if the viewing is done from an Apple TV 4K, is something that has not gone unnoticed. On Twitter, for example, Jose Saez Merinocomments that the fact of not having access to Dolby Vision on the Apple TV causes that in your case the series is seen with half brightness, turned off. This doesn’t have to be the case in other cases, in fact in our tests with an LG C9, the HDR10 version and Dolby Vision looked practically identical, but the Apple device must introduce some problem into the equation.
The Amazon Prime app for AppleTV does not support Dolby Vision. I already said that RoP looked a bit dull.
It will be time to review with the TV app
Jose Saez-Merino (@josesaezmerino) September 2, 2022
But more bleeding is still the situation that occurs if you use some Fire Stick TV devices. Taking into account that the brand of the device and the “owner” of the platform is the same, one would expect maximum optimization so that users of all Fire TVs could access the highest specifications. Something that doesn’t always happen.
In fact, we have done the test with two different Fire TV Stick. A Fire TV Stick 4K connected to a 4K OLED LG C9 TV, with support for Dolby Vision and another Fire Stick 4K Max connected to a Sony TV, also OLED and with support for Dolby Vision but this time from LG. In the video, it can be seen that although they “sell” it as content with Dolby Vision, the 4K Stick launches it as HDR10+, and finally the LG C9 shows it as HDR10, as it is not compatible with HDR10+.
And while in the first case, and using the secret menu, we can see how Dolby Vision is used and a higher bitrate than other outstanding series such as “The Boys”, in the case of the Fire Stick TV 4K “The Rings of Power” content is not displayed in Dolby Vision, despite the fact that, as we said, on the series selection screen it is announced that the series is in that format. Incredible but true.
We thought it might be a configuration issue on our end, but after touching all the available settings and updating the app and the device, things stay the same: Prime Video is not capable of displaying content in Dolby Vision, while the rest of the installed applications (Netflix, HBO Max, Disney+ and Apple TV+) display it normally.
Although they advertise it, then it does not play with Dolby Vision
The solution goes through your TV, not by changing the configuration
In the case of the Fire TV Stick 4K, we hope that Amazon will solve the problem soon, since in a 4K Max and in a Cube it does not happen and the application is the same. In the case of Apple TV 4K, the application requires more work, and it may not have been done until now due to the almost total absence of Dolby Vision on the platform.
If as a user you want to see ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ with the highest HDR quality available on your television (as long as it is compatible with Dolby Vision, if it is not the case, it does not matter), our recommendation is to use the Prime Video application integrated in itin the case of having it.
As users, it is best to use the Prime Video application for Android TV, Tizen, webOS or the system we have, waiting for Amazon to solve the problem on the devices
Both the Apple TV 4K and the Fire TV Stick 4K include a setting that forces everything to play in Dolby Vision, but it is a conversion that the devices carry out, since the track that comes from Amazon is still HDR10. We recommend leaving everything on automatic on these devices until Amazon fixes the lack of compatibility, as adjusting on our own can make it look even worse.
