Amazon Prime Video’s “Dialogue Boost” feature has been made available globally, but it only works for a few titles at launch. The good news is Amazon has promised to bring it to much more content later in the year.
Hard of hearing watchers will find it an incredibly useful feature that can be set to Low, Medium or High for select movies and TV series. Simply hit the pause button, go into the menu and change the audio track.
As the name suggests, Dialogue Boost makes it easier to hear what the actors and actresses are saying by separating their voices from the background noise and amplifying them so they stand out better.
For now, it only works with a handful of Amazon Originals titles, including The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, Harlem, and hit movies such as The Big Sick, Being the Ricardos and Beautiful Boy. So popular series like The Rings of Power do not currently support the feature, though Amazon said it will bring it to more titles “this year”. It's also only available for English audio at this time.
Raf Soltanovich, VP of Technology at Amazon Prime Video, said the company is committed to creating a more inclusive and equitable streaming experience for all users. "Our library of captioned and audio described content continues to grow, and by leveraging our technological capabilities to create industry-first innovations like Dialogue Boost, we are taking another step to create a more accessible streaming experience,” he insisted.
Dialogue Boost is a feature that utilises artificial intelligence technology to identify spoke dialogue and enhance it based on the scene, as opposed to traditional methods such as boosting the centre channel. The technology is applied server-side, meaning it’s delivered as a separate audio track. For that reason, it works with all Amazon Prime apps and devices, including all Smart TVs, Apple TV, Google TV boxes and smartphones and tablets.
Some early adopters reported that Dialogue Boost will sometimes reduce the background noise, in addition to enhancing the dialogue, to make it easier to hear voices. Users will be able to see any title that currently supports Dialogue Boost in the detail page, before they hit the play button.
