Well, it is finally here. The Amazon Prime Video app is available for the Apple TV. I am posting this to get everyone's thoughts on the app and tips for better use. Some of my initial thoughts are that I am puzzled as to why Amazon felt the need to have Samantha self-voice the app if we already have VoiceOver active. Also, I hate that when you are signing in to the service, you are required to use direct touch mode to navigate. And I have not tested purchasing anything from Amazon or turning on or off audio description. For those of you who are willing to give it a shot, please post your comments and let's have a good discussion on this. I know many of us have been waiting for this for a very long time. So in some ways merry Christmas to us from Amazon and Apple.
Comments
Yeah, it says you can use
Yeah, it says you can use direct touch, or the follows focus setting. I prefer the follows focus mode, myself. The self-voiced decision is odd. I've been looking for a way to speed up the speech. It's painfully slow. I just got it about 30 minutes ago, so I'm still fiddling. All the same, it's cool to finally have it. I have a Playstation 4, and the Prime Pideo is accessible there, too. That's a little fyi. I'm interested for the podcasts to start rolling out.
audio description
I do wish in the settings you could turn on or off the audio description. I haven't found a way to shut the Samantha voice off. Not sure why we need it. Or at least for me since I use Alex as my VoiceOver voice.
audio description
If anyone figures out how to enable audio description, or filter by available to stream vs needing to buy, please do let me know.
RE: Audio Description
Hello Tangela. I don't know if we can enable audio description for everyything that has the track available as we can in Netflix; however, on a case by case basis, you can turn it on each time, assuming it is available. Here is what I did.
I wanted to watch the movie Allied yesterday and checked for audio description, which was available. I started the movie playing, flicked down on the trackpad to the media controls. then I flicked right to the Audio controls and pressed on the trackpad to activate this. Then I flicked left to the language options, which told me there were two items, with English USA, the top item, being highlighted. When I flicked down, it said that English USA two of two was selected. I expected that there would be some sort of indicator that I had the audio track selected but both options appeared to be the same. I took a chance and pressed the trackpad to highlight the second option. I then navigated back out and started the movie. To my delight, the audio described track started playing.
Hopefully we will be able to just have the audio described tracks feature enabled by default, but, until then, this should work for you, assuming that there is an audio track available.
HTH
Don't shut voiceover off
Ok. One thing you won't wanna do is shut VoiceOver off in the Amazon Prime Video app. If you do, you get no speech at all. I have spoken to Apple about this issue and explained to them that Amazon didn't need to put VoiceOver in the app since Apple had that handled. So in other words, we are stuck with Samantha until Amazon fixes this app with another update. I tried to see if I could turn off VoiceOver and then start the app with Siri opening it, then turning on VoiceOver again. No such luck. So, your default voice, and Samantha will be fighting in some instances.