Amazon’s Prime Video X-Ray feature finally arrives on Apple TV. Here’s how to use it

Quietly and with little promotion or fanfare, Amazon Prime Video has added details of various tv shows and movies to content on its Apple TV app, leveraging Amazon’s ownership of the IMDb entertainment database.

Officially known as X-Ray for Movies & TV Shows, the tool instantly allows subscribers to dive deeper into the videos they’re watching, everything from the names of actors and other shows or movies they’ve appeared in along with their photo; the name of whatever music is currently playing; even trivia about a particular scene, location, bit of dialog and so on.

The feature was added to the latest update of the Prime Video app for tvOS last Thursday.

How to ‘X-Ray’ a Prime Video program

On Apple TV, the X-Ray feature can be activated by either simply pressing the ‘pause’ button on the Apple remote or tapping on the touch surface while the video is playing and then swiping upwards. In either case, the ‘X-Ray’ text will appear in the lower left corner of the television screen, as shown in the image below.

The video stream will pause once on the X-Ray data page. Users can then move left and right through six categories of information from ‘Scene’, ‘In Scene’, ‘Bonus Content’, ‘Cast’, Music’, and ‘Trivia’. The cast information page (shown below) allows users to select individual persons by scrolling horizontally through the list.

Bio’s of various cast members – including other TV shows and videos they might appear in – add added value to a program, together with various trivia facts, as shown in the two images below.

Without having to step back out of the information screen, users can resume video by press the ‘play/pause’ button on their Apple remote to return to a video stream.

Not working on your Apple TV? Delete and download the app again

Since its addition on Apple TV, some Prime Video users are reporting the X-Ray feature isn’t working for them. BESTAppleTV has confirmed this issue directly and through two readers. The problem can be fixed by deleting the current version of the app and re-installing it from the Apple TV App Store.

If the login details have been saved to the device previously using the Password Autofill feature, then the new version of the app should launch without having to re-enter an I.D. and password.

UPDATE (Sunday, February 3, 2018 @ 10:00 am ET): Various U.S.-based Apple TV users are reporting on Reddit continuing problems with getting the X-Ray feature to work, even after deleting and re-installing the Prime Video app. BESTAppleTV has reached out to Amazon Prime Video for comment and has yet to recieve a response.

The rollout comes almost five years since Amazon launched the same capability on its Kindle Fire HD tablet and almost two years since its debut on the Prime Video Roku app. It was not part of the original launch of the Prime Video app for Apple TV that debuted in December of 2017.

X-Ray actually improves the viewing experience much like the various extra pieces of content found on IMDb through a web browser, but in this case, embedded right into the video. The more you use it, the better it enhances the content. Better late than never for Apple TV users.