Dolby Digital Plus bitstream

[Sakurambo-kun]

In TVOS 11 the only way to output DD+ is to let the ATV decompress it, then send it as multichannel PCM. The fatal flaw with this approach is that ARC only supports two channel PCM.

Does anyone know if TVOS will finally fix this, and allow the ATV to output the raw DD+ bitstream over HDMI? This would fix the ARC issue and allow multichannel DD+ as 7.1 or Atmos.

Thanks all.

 

[Audit13]

It hasn't been enabled in tvOS 12 or talked about by Apple so I doubt it's a planned feature.

 

[priitv8]

In TVOS 11 the only way to output DD+ is to let the ATV decompress it, then send it as multichannel PCM. The fatal flaw with this approach is that ARC only supports two channel PCM.

Does anyone know if TVOS will finally fix this, and allow the ATV to output the raw DD+ bitstream over HDMI? This would fix the ARC issue and allow multichannel DD+ as 7.1 or Atmos.

Thanks all.

Nope, also tvOS 12 decodes DD+Atmos bitstream and outputs it as multichannel PCM with Atmos embedded.
But yes, for that all to work, you need to connect it directly to AVR that knows how to decode Dolby MAT 2.0. As I understand it, all Atmos-approved decoders ought to do that. But I may be wrong here. My AVR took me by surprise that it does, although this is mentioned nowhere in the specs or documentation.

 

[Sakurambo-kun]

Thanks chaps. I guess ARC will remain off the table then, at least until eARC arrives next year. A shame Apple took such a restrictive approach.

 

[priitv8]

Thanks chaps. I guess ARC will remain off the table then, at least until eARC arrives next year. A shame Apple took such a restrictive approach.

Some of us are hoping, that Infuse can reinstantiate their audio passthrough to HDMI.
But if you need to feed UHD signal directly to TV (because your AVR does is not UHD capable) and audio directly to AVR to let it decode Dolby MAT 2.0, then a 4K HDMI splitter should do the trick for you, no?