[mapontosevenths]

That's ok if you don't care about sound much. Apple prevents local playback apps from playing back Atmos audio. It's fine if you only want 5.1 though.

There used to be some limitations with Dolby Vision as well, but I think those have mostly been straightened out now.

[mingus88]

Yeah if Apple ever allows audio passthru then the appleTV would dethrone the aging Nvidia shield as the best streamer on the market

I have a modest AVR and 7 channel setup and still watch movies on my shield which is still getting android updates

[maayank]

wait. If I use VLC (for example) on AppleTV to play something from my network using SMB or DLNA, I cannot get Dolby Atmos?

[mapontosevenths]

Right. I'm under the impression that it's a licensing thing. It also can't do TrueHD Atmos in general. Just lossy Dolby DD+ for audio. It also doesn't do Dolby Vision properly, only supporting the profiles meant for streaming that use less data.

Similarly, It CAN do Atmos for E-AC3 audio, but E-AC3 is meant for streaming, so it's really rare to have that in a file you're playing back locally.

Basically, it just falls back to whatever the next best thing it can support is at the hardware level.

This is one area where Android wins. The Nvidia Shield, despite being ancient, is your best bet for local playback. It's still limited on the supported Dolby Vision profiles, but can just pass the audio through to your receiver without mucking with it. So you get all the bells and whistles.

Other than the shield your only alternatives are weird dedicated devices that are literally built for playing back UHD blu-ray rips (Dune HD, etc).

https://community.firecore.com/t/help-get-more-dolby-atmos-o...

[hapticmonkey]

Dolby TrueHD and DTS:X audio tracks (from Bluray) are played as lossless 7.1 PCM.

Only Dolby Atmos from WEB-DLs will play, and you need to use a supported player (like Infuse or VidHub).

It’s a tvOS limitation.