Atmos, Vision, HDR... So Many Formats, So Little Time

[MacOH21]

Apologies if this is answered in another thread.

I'm trying to determine if Apple TV 4K (and its most common streaming apps) support the optimal Dolby picture and sound quality. I'm new to some of this and am now realizing that even if you have all the right hardware, the streaming app itself may not support Dolby Vision, HDR or Dolby Atmos.

In specific on Apple TV 4K:

• Disney+: Dolby Vision ? HDR ? Dolby Atmos ?
• Netflix: Dolby Vision ? HDR ? Dolby Atmos ?
• Amazon Prime Video: Dolby Vision ? HDR ? Dolby Atmos ?
• Hulu: Dolby Vision ? Dolby HDR ? Dolby Atmos ?

Thanks for any help you may have.

 

[waw74]

on all of the services, don't expect 100% of their library to be in DV/HDR/ATMOS.
I think Disney might be the closest on this.

everything but Hulu will give you DV/HDR and Atmos.
Hulu doesn't currently support either, they do have limited 4k content though

Prime is mostly (all?) HDR instead of DV, and I'm not sure anything there is in atmos.
Netflix & disney are mostly DV, with quite a few of those in atmos

Showtime has a few shows in 4k, and a few in 4K DV.
On some of them, it's just the recent seasons, with earlier seasons still in 1080.

HBOmax is still 1080


prime kinda sucks,
---you must find the UHD version of a title to get 4K and HDR, you can play the "regular" version if you aren't careful when you start something new. (regular and UHD are 2 separate shows in their library)
--- Prime has a decent sized selection of UHD(4K) that aren't HDR/DV.
--- I've had different qualities depending on if I'm using the app on my TV compared to the aTV

 

[HDFan]

I'm trying to determine if Apple TV 4K (and its most common streaming apps) support the optimal Dolby picture and sound quality.

As above for video quality. Sound quality, although good, is not optimal as it doesn't support the lossless video audio formats DTS-MA or Dolby TrueHD. Irrelevant if you are streaming as no streaming service supports them. May be significant if you are streaming your own ripped content.

 

[john.burn]

As above for video quality. Sound quality, although good, is not optimal as it doesn't support the lossless video audio formats DTS-MA or Dolby TrueHD. Irrelevant if you are streaming as no streaming service supports them. May be significant if you are streaming your own ripped content.

If you're streaming your own content then the Apple TV absolutely does support DTS-MA and Dolby True-HD - use the infuse app and all are available.

John.

 

[QuentinWilson]

Just to caution anyone enthusiastic about playing their own content on the Apple TV for maximum quality, this is sadly not possible for Dolby Vision UHD discs. The Apple TV does not support the necessary Dolby Vision profile (profile 8) for dual-layer Dolby Vision, which is what UHD BDs use. Only profile 5 is supported, which is the single-layer DV generally used for streaming content. Not even Infuse can help there. Because of the nature of dual-layer DV playback should fall back to HDR10, though there may be issues even with that since DV support is still very new in Infuse and MakeMKV.

 

[MacOH21]

Thanks for your responses. My situation: Fortunate to get a nice Sony OLED and Sonos Arc for my media room. Everything is DV and Atmos ready. Come to realize, Android TV on Sony doesn't support Disney+ Atmos, so I"m look at what streaming devices support the best combination of DV, Atmos, or other. Had heard Apple TV 4K may be best, but it's also more expensive than a Fire TV 4K stick, for example.

 

[waw74]

make sure your TV supports E-ARC, and not just ARC. (it's probably got to be a 2018 model or newer, maybe even 2019)
If you don't have E-ARC, there's no chance you'll get atmos. and you might be chasing something you won't be able to achieve.

if you've gotten atmos from any of the other TV apps, then you should be fine.

 

[G5isAlive]

Thanks for your responses. My situation: Fortunate to get a nice Sony OLED and Sonos Arc for my media room. Everything is DV and Atmos ready. Come to realize, Android TV on Sony doesn't support Disney+ Atmos, so I"m look at what streaming devices support the best combination of DV, Atmos, or other. Had heard Apple TV 4K may be best, but it's also more expensive than a Fire TV 4K stick, for example.

Sorta amusing that someone who purchases a Sony OLED and Sonos Arc is price comparing an Apple TV 4K versus Fire TV 4K. I'd pay for the quality to match your set up. The streaming services will lag the hardware but eventually improve.

I do feel your pain regarding format availability. It seems to be an ever shifting criteria and I gave up trying to keep up. I trust the hardware to play the best available. I am both impressed and get a headache from Quentin's reply.

 

[HDFan]

If you're streaming your own content then the Apple TV absolutely does support DTS-MA and Dolby True-HD - use the infuse app and all are available.

The native Apple TV player does not as per the Apple Specs:

HE-AAC (V1), AAC (up to 320 Kbps), protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (up to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Apple Lossless, FLAC, AIFF, and WAV; AC-3 (Dolby Digital 5.1), E-AC-3 (Dolby Digital Plus 7.1 surround sound), and Dolby Atmos

You are right that both Plex and Infuse do support the higher resolutiion formats.

 

[nutmac]

Sorta amusing that someone who purchases a Sony OLED and Sonos Arc is price comparing an Apple TV 4K versus Fire TV 4K. I'd pay for the quality to match your set up. The streaming services will lag the hardware but eventually improve.

I have 1 Apple TV 4K. I want to get a second, but I hesitate spending $180 or so for a 3+ year old product, especially when it lacks HDMI 2.1, subpar Apple Arcade experience, and new version is rumored.

 

[MacOH21]

Sorta amusing that someone who purchases a Sony OLED and Sonos Arc is price comparing an Apple TV 4K versus Fire TV 4K. I'd pay for the quality to match your set up. The streaming services will lag the hardware but eventually improve.

I do feel your pain regarding format availability. It seems to be an ever shifting criteria and I gave up trying to keep up. I trust the hardware to play the best available. I am both impressed and get a headache from Quentin's reply.

My point is more that I've shelled out enough cash, but saved money where I could:

• $2499 Sony Oled for $1799 on Amazon's Prime Day
• $799 Sonos Arch with 10% off coupon at Best Buy
• Monoprice cables, etc...

Would prefer to not spend $179 for sake of duplicating streaming services that are either already part of the 'smart' TV or could be as low as $29 on sale with a Fire Stick 4k.

 

[priitv8]

Just to caution anyone enthusiastic about playing their own content on the Apple TV for maximum quality, this is sadly not possible for Dolby Vision UHD discs. The Apple TV does not support the necessary Dolby Vision profile (profile 8) for dual-layer Dolby Vision, which is what UHD BDs use. Only profile 5 is supported, which is the single-layer DV generally used for streaming content. Not even Infuse can help there. Because of the nature of dual-layer DV playback should fall back to HDR10, though there may be issues even with that since DV support is still very new in Infuse and MakeMKV.

Luckily enough, that has been solved when you use a proper uhd bluray player.
However, there are no consumer tools to convert from one Dolby Vision encode into something other.
DVDFab UHD Ripper does sorta, but it is unclear what exactly. DoVi logo lights up on my TV, at least. I have the feeling that they still output clean HDR10 stream and just enable the DoVi flag to be set on HDMI, so DoVi mode is engaged. But the enhancement layer is not processed into the picture.

You are right that both Plex and Infuse do support the higher resolutiion formats.

How do you get that now with tvOS 14?
I reckon since tvOS 12 or so, Apple closed bitstreaming to HDMI out on the platform. So they revert to decoding to multichannel PCM? Can Infuse maintain Atmos (MAT 2.0) output when decoding TrueHD into PCM??

 

[SaxPlayer]

Just to caution anyone enthusiastic about playing their own content on the Apple TV for maximum quality, this is sadly not possible for Dolby Vision UHD discs. The Apple TV does not support the necessary Dolby Vision profile (profile 8) for dual-layer Dolby Vision, which is what UHD BDs use. Only profile 5 is supported, which is the single-layer DV generally used for streaming content. Not even Infuse can help there. Because of the nature of dual-layer DV playback should fall back to HDR10, though there may be issues even with that since DV support is still very new in Infuse and MakeMKV.

--- Deleted. Quoted wrong post! ?

 

[SaxPlayer]

make sure your TV supports E-ARC, and not just ARC. (it's probably got to be a 2018 model or newer, maybe even 2019)
If you don't have E-ARC, there's no chance you'll get atmos. and you might be chasing something you won't be able to achieve.

if you've gotten atmos from any of the other TV apps, then you should be fine.

I wouldn't for 1 second try to claim that I'm more knowledgeable than you or anyone else in this thread - quite the opposite in fact! However, the way I understand it is that if your TV doesn't have eARC and only ARC but DOES natively support Atmos then you should be able to get Atmos out of something like the Sonos Arc both from internal apps and from connected streaming devices. At least, that's what I'm led to believe.

I have a 2017 LG that has ARC (not eARC) and natively supports Dolby Atmos. I'm about to purchase a Sonos Arc (waiting for Black Friday to see if I can get it a bit cheaper). Reading others experiences with this exact set up they've reported that Atmos works with the inbuilt apps (such as Netflix) or using the apps on the AppleTV 4K. Great news if you're like me and have a perfectly good (and expensive) TV set that isn't all that old but you want to get Atmos out of it.

As others have said, this isn't lossless but you'll get as good as you're likely to get out of streaming services, which is probably what most users are going to be doing.

 

[nutmac]

I wouldn't for 1 second try to claim that I'm more knowledgeable than you or anyone else in this thread - quite the opposite in fact! However, the way I understand it is that if your TV doesn't have eARC and only ARC but DOES natively support Atmos then you should be able to get Atmos out of something like the Sonos Arc both from internal apps and from connected streaming devices. At least, that's what I'm led to believe.

Sono's Listen to Dolby Atmos page explains this clearly:

	Stereo Sound (PCM)	5.1 Surround sound (Dolby Digital)	Dolby Atmos (Dolby Digital Plus)	Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD)
HDMI eARC	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
HDMI ARC	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Optical adapter	Yes	Yes	No	No

Every streaming services output Dolby Atmos through Dolby Digital Plus (lossy) codec. If you rip Dolby Atmos Blu-Ray into MKV or pass Blu-Ray player, Xbox, and/or Playstation through TV, you will need eARC as they tend to use Dolby TrueHD (or occasionally, multi-channel LPCM which also require eARC and Sonos Arc will support in the near future).

 

[SaxPlayer]

Sono's Listen to Dolby Atmos page explains this clearly:

	Stereo Sound (PCM)	5.1 Surround sound (Dolby Digital)	Dolby Atmos (Dolby Digital Plus)	Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD)
HDMI eARC	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
HDMI ARC	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Optical adapter	Yes	Yes	No	No

Every streaming services output Dolby Atmos through Dolby Digital Plus (lossy) codec. If you rip Dolby Atmos Blu-Ray into MKV or pass Blu-Ray player, Xbox, and/or Playstation through TV, you will need eARC as they tend to use Dolby TrueHD (or occasionally, multi-channel LPCM which also require eARC and Sonos Arc will support in the near future).

Thanks for the more detailed info. I was going to say it's converted to Dolby Digital Plus, but the main point I was making is that the Atmos signal you'll end up with isn't lossless, but it does work in the kind of set up I (will) have and is pretty much what most people will be happy with if they don't have eARC available.

Thanks for including that table, though, as it'll no doubt help others viewing this thread and explains what I was saying but in a much better way.

 

[HDFan]

How do you get that now with tvOS 14?

As we did in previous versions - use Plex or Infuse.

"Can Infuse maintain Atmos (MAT 2.0) output when decoding TrueHD into PCM??"

Dunno about Atmos.

 

[priitv8]

As we did in previous versions - use Plex or Infuse.

"Can Infuse maintain Atmos (MAT 2.0) output when decoding TrueHD into PCM??"

Dunno about Atmos.

But they have already long ago removed bitstream out from their apps. So it must be decoded to PCM multichannel?

 

[HDFan]

But they have already long ago removed bitstream out from their apps. So it must be decoded to PCM multichannel?

Don't know. If I play a movie on a Plex server via a DNLA client I just see that it is DTS-HD MA. Playing from a Plex client I see DTS-MA, audio DCA-MA 2 Mbps.

 

[priitv8]

Don't know. If I play a movie on a Plex server via a DNLA client I just see that it is DTS-HD MA. Playing from a Plex client I see DTS-MA, audio DCA-MA 2 Mbps.

And your aTV is connected to AVR, not TV? I do not think this what you see, is signal sent from aTV's HDMI out. It can be the signal coming in. So that it becomes decoded in aTV and sent out as PCM. That works.

Lack of support for any lossless audio on tvOS platform was also touched in this thread, for example.

Hole was plugged already in tvOS 11.3: https://community.firecore.com/t/pa...tvos-11-3-solution-use-auto-instead/16025/279

And here is the petition to Apple from the makers of Infuse: https://community.firecore.com/t/help-get-more-dolby-atmos-on-apple-tv/16477

 

[960design]

Apologies if this is answered in another thread.

I'm trying to determine if Apple TV 4K (and its most common streaming apps) support the optimal Dolby picture and sound quality. I'm new to some of this and am now realizing that even if you have all the right hardware, the streaming app itself may not support Dolby Vision, HDR or Dolby Atmos.

In specific on Apple TV 4K:

• Disney+: Dolby Vision ? HDR ? Dolby Atmos ?
• Netflix: Dolby Vision ? HDR ? Dolby Atmos ?
• Amazon Prime Video: Dolby Vision ? HDR ? Dolby Atmos ?
• Hulu: Dolby Vision ? Dolby HDR ? Dolby Atmos ?

Thanks for any help you may have.

I'm not any help... just wanted to comment. Dolby Atmos changed my experience the way stereo did for mono. It is unreal! Watching a movie and heard the rain on my roof, thought it was raining outside. So crazy.

The content provider has the power to Dolby Vision / HDR / Dolby Atmos the movie. The AppleTV4K will play it.
I typically stay with the movies purchased through the iTunes Store for best quality. BladeRunner 2049 will get a smile out of you right as the movie starts up.

Comments mentioned about the stream compared to discs. They are spot on, streams do not currently compare to something viewed on BluRay. Streaming easier, bluray MORE amazinger.

 

[HDFan]

And your aTV is connected to AVR, not TV? I do not think this what you see, is signal sent from aTV's HDMI out. It can be the signal coming in.

Actually, no. It is connected to an Oppo 203, which has two out HDMI connections: one for audio to the AVR, the 2nd to the television HDMI output. I have to split the connections as my AVR doesn't support 4K video.

As I said when I stream to the Oppo DNLA client from the Plex server the Oppo sees the track as DTS-MA, so the server side clearly supports lossless streaming.

They are spot on, streams do not currently compare to something viewed on BluRay. Streaming easier, bluray MORE amazinger.

There are issues with Atmos. Otherwise, assuming you are streaming a bit for bit copy, you can duplicate it exactly.

Lack of support for any lossless audio on tvOS platform was also touched in this thread, for example.

Not true. Here's how Infuse does it (May 23 entry):

"The Apple TV supports up to 7.1 LPCM audio. Infuse is able to Direct Play TrueHD and DTS-HD MA by decoding the audio to LPCM in-app, which the ATV can then send to the receiver for playback."

Nothing ever works as it should

Great question. Let me start with a quick high level overview: When you play a Blu-Ray with TrueHD or DTS-HD MA, the Blu-Ray player sends that format to your receiver, and the receiver decodes the audio before sending out to your speakers. LPCM is just another Lossless (HD) audio source that can...

forums.plex.tv

or:

"Infuse does support DTS-HD MA and TrueHD, and the full lossless audio will be sent to your receiver as LPCM." December 18 post

Can infuse pro play DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD sound tracks?

So just to confirm Infuse Pro can play the DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD sound tracks from my rips through the receiver?

community.firecore.com

 

[960design]

There are issues with Atmos. Otherwise, assuming you are streaming a bit for bit copy, you can duplicate it exactly.

You certainly can. Streaming services certainly do not.

 

[priitv8]

As I said when I stream to the Oppo DNLA client from the Plex server the Oppo sees the track as DTS-MA, so the server side clearly supports lossless streaming.

"Infuse does support DTS-HD MA and TrueHD, and the full lossless audio will be sent to your receiver as LPCM." December 18 post

Now I see. I have no doubt that Plex can stream lossless. Problem is inside aTV and Plex/Infuse client within. Because bitstream output to HDMI is blocked, both have to revert to outputting LPCM to HDMI. Atmos gets lost in the process. Not sure about effect on DTS:X

You certainly can. Streaming services certainly do not.

Here I got lost. What issues are there with Atmos from streaming services?
What is the problem with exact duplicates of streaming audio formats?

 

[HDFan]

Problem is inside aTV and Plex/Infuse client within.

Yeah, the client is the biggest problem.

Because bitstream output to HDMI is blocked,

Because bitstream output to HDMI is blocked, both have to revert to outputting LPCM to HDMI. Atmos gets lost in the process. Not sure about effect on DTS:X

Not sure I totally understand this point. Atmos can be sent from the TV via an eArc cable.