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hazeof3dd

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 20, 2005
108
29
I’ve got my new Apple TV 4K set up, got new HDMI 2.1 cables, and whenever I play anything (whether Netflix, Amazon, or iTunes) it shows that its playing in HD in the swipe down menu instead of 4K. My settings are set to 4K SDR, what am I doing wrong?
 
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Scroll down to the relevant sections.

On the flip side, watching 4K eats up your bandwidth very quickly, so unless you have unlimited data, you may find that you will be exceeding your limit in short order.
 
Same here as well. Had a systems engineer from Apple Support let me know that they were getting multiple reports as of Saturday. Ran remote analysis tools on the Apple TV 4K.

At first I thought it was a bad Netflix setting, but then I noticed that all of my 4K enabled apps lost their ability to do anything > HD, including Amazon prime, Paramount+, Vudu, AppleTV+ and Movies.

I’m confident that Apple will address this as soon as it is humanly possible, even though it appears to be a only a few isolated incidents
 
I also have this problem. I tried everything but couldn't watch at 4k. I was able to watch it in HD in all applications such as Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon Prime. My internet connection is ok, I can watch Netflix in 4K from the TV's application. Fortunately, you opened the this topic. Otherwise I was thinking of returning the device.
 
I also noticed this with Netflix late last night, thought it might have been just that show. I'll try to look into this as well.
 
According to a guy at AVForums who ran some tests on both the 1st & 2nd gen it appears for the most part it’s just a labelling issue.

81E43124-DA8B-421A-B7A6-4D4F51B7EFF4.jpeg
 
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Wondered if anyone has found a solution to this or is it just waiting for Apple to release an update?
 
when I got the first gen 4k Apple TV back when it came out i had to switch this one in settings - apps - iTunes movies and tv shows - “quick start” has to be set to ‘on”. i guess this was only for their own videos. This triggers best resolution from the start.

camt remember if it actually fixed other apps as well.
 
Enabled the developer HUD on the Apple TV and it does stream in 4K despite it showing as HD in Netflix. Took a screenshot via my Mac. So it does seem it's just a bug that the Netflix HUD says HD when you're streaming a 4K show.

Screen Shot 2021-05-24 at 16.32.22.png
 
This would explain a lot!
I was getting mad trying to understand why content looked this "bad" (relatively speaking), especially Amazon Prime Video, but also the Apple TV+ itself.

Even first party content like "Ted Lasso" looked good, but not 4K good.
I'd say it looked like a good 1080p encode, that's it.

Knowing other people are experiencing the same actually makes me feel a bit better, as I thought it was me having gotten a defective unit.
 
Just setup my new Apple TV 4K 2021 and first thing I noticed when watching Netflix, its playing in HD and not 4K.

Also YouTube wants to default to the lowest possible resolution but at least you can manually change this and force it to go to the highest.

So I guess it is a waiting game to see if either Apple provide a software update or the individual app owners ( Netflix ) need to provide a software update.

Not good considering its a 4K box that can’t play 4K video content 🤷🏻
 
Just setup my new Apple TV 4K 2021 and first thing I noticed when watching Netflix, its playing in HD and not 4K.

Also YouTube wants to default to the lowest possible resolution but at least you can manually change this and force it to go to the highest.

So I guess it is a waiting game to see if either Apple provide a software update or the individual app owners ( Netflix ) need to provide a software update.

Not good considering its a 4K box that can’t play 4K video content 🤷🏻
According to a guy at AVForums forums who done some testing using the HUD he found it’s only a labelling issue with Netflix.
YouTubes default has been doing the same recently for me on my 1st gen ATV4K.
1621943594327.jpeg
 
According to a guy at AVForums forums who done some testing using the HUD he found it’s only a labelling issue with Netflix.
YouTubes default has been doing the same recently for me on my 1st gen ATV4K.
View attachment 1781230

Thanks. Certainly does not look 4K on Netflix, the quality seemed really poor while watching The Women In The Window - Didn’t look 4K HDR. Will test again. Thanks
 
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To summarize (correct me if I misinterpreted above) -- the problem with a newly purchased 2021 ATV 4K here seems to follow along with what's been written above - the 2021 ATV 4K 'works' as advertised, BUT when streaming 4K content, the pull-down info bar states 'HD', which, according to the AVForums tech, is a simple 'labeling' problem, i.e., the 'HD' label is erroneous and should state '4K' or 'UHD' or whatever flavor the 4K stream is . . . IS THAT CORRECT? SO . . . MY 2021 ATV 4K is misinterpreting the meta data or something like that . . . ?

What's the solution? Anyone have an official response from Apple corp and not a 3rd party?

FOLLOW UP after contacting Apple: tier 1 dude said no reports from anyone about this . . . after going over obvious things like trying reset and eliminating HDMI issue, their 'fix' : send this one back and wait for a new one to see if the new one works. No temp fixes known to un-reported issue - just try reset again and if it doesn't work, send it back and wait for ?? days / weeks for a new one that may or may not exhibit same. Oh well, Apple is as Apple does . . .

I'll keep checking here.
 
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it’s definitely not playing in 4K quality. 14.6 has been released and has unfortunately not fixed this. Tiny bit concerned how long of wait it’ll be for this issue to be fixed and if Apple are even aware.
 
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To summarize (correct me if I misinterpreted above) -- the problem with a newly purchased 2021 ATV 4K here seems to follow along with what's been written above - the 2021 ATV 4K 'works' as advertised, BUT when streaming 4K content, the pull-down info bar states 'HD', which, according to the AVForums tech, is a simple 'labeling' problem, i.e., the 'HD' label is erroneous and should state '4K' or 'UHD' or whatever flavor the 4K stream is . . . IS THAT CORRECT? SO . . . MY 2021 ATV 4K is misinterpreting the meta data or something like that . . . ?

What's the solution? Anyone have an official response from Apple corp and not a 3rd party?
I beg to differ. I don’t think it’s just a labeling issue. Originally I thought this issue was on Netflix alone, so I chatted for a long time with Netflix support, and they had me keep switching from my old Apple TV 4K to the new Apple TV 4K. They said that the new Apple TV 4K, is identifying itself as just “Apple TV”, while my old Apple TV is identifying itself as “Apple TV 4K”.
And because the identification is wrong, Netflix stated that is the reason they are not serving up 4K content for me.

Furthermore, upon discovering that this issue affected all streaming apps, I contacted Apple Support, who said they are looking at this issue and should have an answer by this Friday.
 
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I beg to differ. I don’t think it’s just a labeling issue. Originally I thought this issue was on Netflix alone, so I chatted for a long time with Netflix support, and they had me keep switching from my old Apple TV 4K to the new Aple TV 4K. They said that the new Apple TV 4K, is identifying itself as just “Apple TV”, while my old Apple TV is identifying itself as “Apple TV 4K”.
‘And because the identification is wrong, Netflix stated that is the reason they are not serving up 4K content for me.

Furthermore, upon discovering that this issue affected all streaming apps, I contacted Apple Support, who said they are looking at this issue and should have an answer by this Friday.

Great bit of research and follow up 😀 Now this makes perfect sense as to why it’s not showing content as 4K. Fingers crossed for a quick resolution, either by Apple or the app developers.
 
it’s definitely not playing in 4K quality. 14.6 has been released and has unfortunately not fixed this. Tiny bit concerned how long of wait it’ll be for this issue to be fixed and if Apple are even aware.

I agree - It is NOT 4K quality when I’m watching Netflix, Both Amy Adams and Julianne Moore do not look UHD and very much HD
 
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I beg to differ. I don’t think it’s just a labeling issue. Originally I thought this issue was on Netflix alone, so I chatted for a long time with Netflix support, and they had me keep switching from my old Apple TV 4K to the new Aple TV 4K. They said that the new Apple TV 4K, is identifying itself as just “Apple TV”, while my old Apple TV is identifying itself as “Apple TV 4K”.
‘And because the identification is wrong, Netflix stated that is the reason they are not serving up 4K content for me.

Furthermore, upon discovering that this issue affected all streaming apps, I contacted Apple Support, who said they are looking at this issue and should have an answer by this Friday.
That doesn't quit track for me. If that were the reason shouldn't DV/HDR also not work? That's something the old AppleTV also wasn't capable off. I definitely get DV/HDR with the latest AppleTV 4K.
Plus if I check the traffic on my router while watching 4K content on Netflix it's exactly the same as when I'm watching 4K content with the previous AppleTV 4K. Watching something in Full-HD drops the traffic on both the old and new AppleTV 4K by about half compared to 4K.

Also in another forum somebody posted a screenshot with the developer mode turned on on the latest AppleTV 4K while watching Netflix and it reported the usual 4K resolution and with DV/HDR also on. I can't check that because to turn the developer mode on you need to have an iMac which I don't have but maybe somebody else here could confirm that.
 
Also in another forum somebody posted a screenshot with the developer mode turned on on the latest AppleTV 4K while watching Netflix and it reported the usual 4K resolution and with DV/HDR also on. I can't check that because to turn the developer mode on you need to have an iMac which I don't have but maybe somebody else here could confirm that.
I can confirm that. Both Netflix and Prime show DV and HDR on the developer HUD, as well as trigger DV/HDR on my LG OLED. Seems to be a labeling issue on my device.
 
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According to a guy at AVForums who ran some tests on both the 1st & 2nd gen it appears for the most part it’s just a labelling issue.

View attachment 1780191
Thanks. I was about to ask if it was that or if truly was playing HD. Movies didn't look noticably worse, so I thought it was just a UI issue. It will show 4k DV etc if I play them in the ATV app, but NF PV Vudu and even the movies app all show HD no matter what.
 
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