Are you finding it too dark to watch your favorite shows on Prime Video due to HDR or when playing the shows in 4K?
In order to provide us with a cinematic experience, HDR (High Dynamic Range) provides us with bright highlights that are 1000 or more nits for every screen whereas SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) controls the entire screen.
If HDR is turned on on your TV or mobile, the picture quality changes to provide a cinematic experience and becomes dark. Nit refers to the intensity of light on your screen.
Further, HDR settings can’t be tweaked much because that depends primarily on the device. Generally, you can say that HDR isn’t good if we can’t control its settings; industry experts agree with you.
In fact, it becomes quite unpleasant when we have to turn off the lights, have curtains on, and make the room a bit darker in order to see HDR videos on the Prime Video application, otherwise, we will not be able to enjoy them.
All users who play Prime Video applications on LG, Samsung, Sony, Philips, or any other smart TV face this issue and report it numerous times in various forums.
Aside from Smart TVs, even if you have turned on HDR and streaming Prime Video titles on your smartphone, the screen will still become dark. This happened on my Samsung S20, and it has been reported on many other smartphones, including One Plus phones.
Do not worry, I’m a streaming enthusiast myself, which means I need to find a way to fix the display issue on Prime Video. In this guide, I’ll teach you how to fix the problem.
Table of Contents
Why My Prime Video Picture Is Too Dark?
If you have HDR active on your device, it is most likely that the title you are playing is being displayed too dark.
Aside from this, when there are issues with either the HDMI cable or the port, Amazon Prime Video’s picture becomes too dark. In my own experience, switching the output port on my TV made a big difference.
Consumers with LG 4K TVs complain about Prime Video shows or movies appearing too dark, but Sony, Samsung, and Panasonic sets are also reporting similar problems.
Apart from faulty output source or HDMI cable, Prime Video 4K titles only offer HDR settings, unlike Netflix, which offers three options: “vivid”, “living”, and “standard”.
With the default picture settings of HDR with over 1000 nits and no option to switch the 4K content to another picture mode, Prime Video users can only play 4K videos on HDR, which has a dark cinematic experience by default. This explains why Prime Video’s 4K content looks too dark when viewed in HDR.
All the devices on which Prime Video streaming is too dark were listed below:
- Smart TVs
- LG
- Sony
- Philips
- One Plus
- Samsung
- Panasonic etc.
- Smartphones
- One Plus
- Samsung
Now that we’ve identified which devices are affected by the Prime Video app dark screen streaming, let’s look at how you can resolve this issue.
How To Fix Prime Video Dark Screen While Streaming And Make It Brighter?
Due to the fact that the problem affects all devices that can access Prime Video regardless of whether it is a smart TV or a smartphone like Android or iOS, the solution is also different.
In the case that your Prime Video display is too dark while streaming 4K content on your Smart TV, you can change the HDMI Input port.
Each individual port of your TV has a different brightness level, which can be adjusted through the settings, so it is possible for a faulty or poorly configured port to lead to this problem, which can be resolved by switching the port and HDMI cable.
Throughout this article, I have outlined several ways for you to increase the brightness on your Prime Video or get rid of the dark screen issue while streaming.
Increasing Brightness and Fixing Dark Screen Issue Of Prime Video On Smartphones (Android):
On my Samsung S20, I have been watching Prime Video content, but Prime Video keeps dimming the screen.
No matter how bright I make my phone screen, it doesn’t make a difference.
In fact, when I adjust the volume, the screen brightens tremendously, but when I turn off the volume display, the stream dims.
I wasn’t too pleased to see this constantly happening, but I figured out how to fix it. Here’s what you can do if you are experiencing this issue:
- The first solution is to turn off the automatic brightness.
- The second method through which you can fix it is via turning on/off the video enhancers.
In case you are streaming Prime Video on an Android smartphone, you can perform the above two fixes one by one and then the brightness will be increased.
Fixing Prime Video Dark screen while Streaming Issue on Smart TVs
The picture quality settings on each smart TV, regardless of whether it is a 4K, QLED, OLED, LCD, LED, or Plasma TV, vary depending on the hardware and brand. Because of that, I have outlined the steps below and you can perform them in accordance with your TV.
LG
In case you own an LG TV and are experiencing this issue, you can quickly fix it by simply turning off the TruMotion setting, and you will notice a dramatic improvement in picture quality while streaming Prime Video.
Sony
If you have a Sony TV, you can try setting the picture adjustment mode to Cinema Home and then making the adjustments suggested here https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00024643.
In terms of picture quality, I recommend Cinema Mode when watching 4K and HDR content on Prime Video. Nevertheless, you can try different picture modes and choose one based on the environment you are in.
Samsung
As Samsung offers maximum customization options across all televisions, you can tweak settings on your TV if you’re experiencing this dark picture problem while streaming Prime Video.
When Samsung TVs try to auto-adjust brightness and dimming levels, the Prime Video Picture goes dark.
In that case you can tweak the settings by following the below steps:
- General > Intelligent Mode > Adaptive Brightness = Off
- General > Eco > Eco Solution > Ambient Light Detection = Off
- Picture > Expert Settings > Local Dimming = Low
- Picture > Expert Settings > Brightness = 20 (this is a good minimum value for me)
Philips
By switching off the “Automatic HDR” option and increasing the HDR to its highest level, you can reduce the darkness and increase the brightness on Philips OLED and other variants.
This will solve the issue for Philips TV users.
Conclusion
Although HDR was intended to provide a complete cinematic experience, numerous users have reported that it turned out to backfire as the screen is so dark that watching Prime Video movies becomes difficult.
I hope the above steps will help you to fix this issue and my guide includes the steps for all major TV brands as well as Android smartphones, so you should be able to get this sorted easily.
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Kazhiko Kuro is the Founder of StreamingStash.com. Over a span of 8+ years, He has tested, researched, and written hundreds of articles and guides on how to fix common issues with TVs, streaming media players, streaming services, and related devices. See our Editorial Guidelines and Content Integrity.
