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Is the Apple TV4 actually compatible with Atmos or Just the Apple TV4K

O

Openaperture

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 21, 2017
31
3
Ive just updated to tvOS 12.0 on the Apple TV 4

Start up screen after refresh shows that Dolby Atmos is a new feature but cant seem to find a setting to enable it and its not working with any movies including ones with the Atmos logo on the menu?
 
EDIT: scratch my first paragraph.


FYI: tvOS 12 will take the DD+ Atmos stream, mix it with system sounds and convert and output it as LPCM...Dolby MAT 2.0. So, it won't necessarily light up like Dolby TrueHD Atmos or DD+ Atmos from other devices.

"Dolby Atmos in Dolby MAT

The Dolby Metadata-enhanced Audio Transmission (Dolby MAT) encoder resides in a Blu-ray player to pack the variable bit-rate Dolby TrueHD bitstreams for transmission over the fixed bit-rate HDMI connections. A MAT decoder is subsequently employed in an AVR to unpack the Dolby TrueHD bitstreams. With the introduction of Dolby Atmos, we have expanded this technology to support encoding of Dolby Atmos content as lossless pulse-code modulation (PCM) audio.

A key benefit of Dolby MAT 2.0 is that Dolby Atmos object-based audio can be live encoded and transmitted from a source device with limited latency and processing complexity. Among the possible sources are broadcast set-top boxes, PCs, and game consoles. The Dolby MAT 2.0 decoder in an AVR outputs the object-based audio and its metadata for further processing. The Dolby MAT 2.0 container is scalable and leverages the full potential of the HDMI audio pipeline."
from pg. 12 here: https://www.dolby.com/us/en/technologies/dolby-atmos/dolby-atmos-for-the-home-theater.pdf
 
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I can confirm also that Atmos does light up as a flag on the AV receiver.

Worth mentioning (I’m sure you know this) that it only works when set to PCM, and not Dolby Digital

Jason
 
More Atmos films have started to work for mine. Perhaps Apple just needed to release the rights from the various studios. Jurassic Park:Fallen Kingdom and Baby Driver are now working and displaying "Dolby Atmos" on my AVR.
 
JasonHB said:
I can confirm also that Atmos does light up as a flag on the AV receiver.

Worth mentioning (I’m sure you know this) that it only works when set to PCM, and not Dolby Digital

Jason
Click to expand...
RyanMTS said:
More Atmos films have started to work for mine. Perhaps Apple just needed to release the rights from the various studios. Jurassic Park:Fallen Kingdom and Baby Driver are now working and displaying "Dolby Atmos" on my AVR.
Click to expand...
ATV 4th generation (1080p) or ATV 4K?
 
RyanMTS said:
More Atmos films have started to work for mine. Perhaps Apple just needed to release the rights from the various studios. Jurassic Park:Fallen Kingdom and Baby Driver are now working and displaying "Dolby Atmos" on my AVR.
Click to expand...

On what though - an Apple TV4K or TV4?
 
... everything I'm reading on Dolby Atmos is only related to the ATV 4K, but, it should work with the ATV 4th gen., there is no real reason for apple to limit it only to the 4K, they have the same audio capabilities, at least up until now, and hardware-wise.

Here is Apple Support page for playing audio in Dolby Atmos or surround sound... https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204069
 
benji888 said:
... everything I'm reading on Dolby Atmos is only related to the ATV 4K, but, it should work with the ATV 4th gen., there is no real reason for apple to limit it only to the 4K, they have the same audio capabilities, at least up until now, and hardware-wise.
Click to expand...
Unless Atmos processing into PCM requires A10X's extra CPU horsepower.
 
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benji888 said:
But, why exactly? it's just an audio codec, it does not require mass amounts of processing power like video does.
Click to expand...
I wish I knew the answer. But I don't.
Of course, can also be 100% product placement question. To keep 4K differentiated from 4.
 
I spoke with someone from technical support on the apple care line for the apple TV and they confirmed ONLY the Apple TV4K supports Atmos not the Apple TV 4
 
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bluraycinema said:
Atmos only comes with 4K material.

ATV 4 is HD only, hence doesn't receive Atmos from a 4K source.
Click to expand...

Certainly used to be the case that there was 1080p material that had Atmos ( and sometimes hdr metadata too)

But you still needed the Apple TV 4K to access it
 
Openaperture said:
Certainly used to be the case that there was 1080p material that had Atmos ( and sometimes hdr metadata too)

But you still needed the Apple TV 4K to access it
Click to expand...

My mistake.

As regards Blu-ray, then Atmos is on non 4K discs. Plus Atmos is available from a 4K disc on a 1080P screen.

I was saying that Apple Atmos is only available on a ATV 4K @ 4K resolution, with no downscale option, at the moment anyway.
 
Nothing to do with Blu Ray, there were iTunes films that were 1080p only with atmos.

But you needed a Apple TV 4K to acccess the atmos track anyway.

They’ve probably been upgraded to 4K now like most.
 
This is b.s. from Apple because they could allow any ATV with tvOS 12 to utilize Atmos audio, it’s not like it takes some special hardware, firmware update able AVRs could do Atmos with an update ...VUDU had Atmos years before they had 4K/UHD...limited blu-ray discs have had Atmos since 2014, though, many more blus could have had Atmos pre-4K/UHD, amongst those 1080p blus, game of thrones has been released with Atmos since 2015, with previous seasons re-released with Atmos.
 
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