Amazon Prime doesn't play some HD videos full screen

[Stunned_Monkey]

Just getting to grips with my 1 III, and encountered a weird issue with my library in Amazon Prime.

Some HD films are displayed with big black bars all around them, as though the phone thinks they are in 4K. I think I've got to the bottom of why... They are all films where no 4K version exists, or where it is in some way different from the standard version. Examples:

Inbetweeners 2 (no 4K version)
Any film "With Bonus content" (Infinity War, Cars 3, Captain Marvel)
Deadpool 2 (Super Duper cut)

Interestingly, when playing a film such as Alita: Battle Angel, Prime still says 'HD' in the bottom corner, yet it fills the screen.

We must applaud Amazon for quietly rolling our 4K verssions of filmes we've already bought, but this appears to be a hiccup somehow.

No such issues on Netflix. For example The Hunt for Red October is only in HD and fills the screen.

Is this a Sony issue, or an Amazon issue?

[Corruptedminds]

It could simply be due to the way they have encoded the video and the aspect ratios supported by each movie.

The app may as well support full screen but their video conversion on specific resolutions may not, so I guess this will depend on the content (just like when you play an older programme on your tv and you see the black bars on the sides as their video is on 4:3 format. Just a thought.

[Stunned_Monkey]

Hi, thanks for your reply. The issue isn't the aspect ratio, it's the resolution. It's a perfectly normal 1920 pixels-wide HD video in the full 2.35:1 aspect ratio appearing correctly but only using the exact number of pixels rather than being expanded to fill the screen.

Here's an example HD-only video on YouTube that will initially appear exactly as I describe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpI3x6gf2uA

The big thing here is that YouTube lets you pinch-zoom-to-fit. Prime just has a dumb zoom button which crops a big chunk of the image. Netflix just works.

[Corruptedminds]

I would still say it is an issue with the content / platform.

I checked the video you have shared on my handsets, it will pinch to zoom perfectly on my 1 III (3840 x 1644) and it will take full screen (lovely), however on my LG V30 (2880 x 1440) I still see banding when I pinch to zoom (it will expand a bit but not full screen) so to reply to your question of  'They are all films where no 4K version exists, or where it is in some way different from the standard version':

I would say the content doesn't scale up well to fit some resolutions as it's only been encoded for particular screen sizes, but back to the issue with Prime, I believe they need to add the option to fit to screen or support more devices but in anyway it's not an issue with Sony I believe and Aamzon should be able to provide a resolve..

[Stunned_Monkey]

I would point out the videos play correctly on my Panasonic 4K TV (and I'd bet good money on any Sony 4K TV also) so it's probably the Prime app and not the video per se.

[Stunned_Monkey]

It gets better. Some titles are now stretching the 2:35 image into a 16:9 image making Prime Video pretty unwatchable for a lot of content. Case in point: Avengers Endgame, which played just fine across the whole screen, albeit only in 1080p when I originally posted this thread.

IMO it's too easy to just blame the app when it plays fine across other devices.