It’s been a long time since Apple announced that we would get a Dolby Atmos update for the Apple TV 4K, and it has finally arrived! YEEEES!! This is one of the first streaming devices to support both Dolby Vision AND Dolby Atmos. And it’s under $200!! What’s the big deal you ask? Well, I have an LG E6 OLED from 2016, so I can get Dolby Vision through the TV apps but Dolby Atmos pass-through via ARC (Audio Return Channel) was not implemented until the 2017 models. This is where the Apple TV 4K comes in! I know some of you may say the Xbox One X is a great streamer, but it has it’s issues, and you really need to turn off alerts so you aren’t disturbed during a movie when your buddy “PooDonkeys” decides to get online. Check out the article or video below on how to setup Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision after you update to tvOS 12. the ATV4K comes in two flavors, a 32GB for $179.99 and a 64GB for $199.99, pickup your Apple TV 4K today with the links below!
Apple TV 4K 32GB – Best Buy: https://go.magik.ly/ml/flfb/
Apple TV 4K 64GB – Best Buy: https://go.magik.ly/ml/flfc/
Now the whole update takes about 7 to 8 minutes, but we’re just going to kind of fast-forward through all the nonsense but I just wanted to do a quick little intro. Alright so here we go, this is what we get in the what’s new screen, we have Dolby Atmos, aerials, passwords and remote control.
Dolby Atmos Setup
What are we most concerned about, at least me is Dolby Atmos because this is going to be the world’s first streamer that has the Double D, that’s right ladies and gentlemen Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision. So let’s get into some settings right now, video and audio, and let’s go down to Audio Format now this already says “Auto and Atmos Available.” So this is what you want it to look like, Change Format is set to “Off” and Dolby Atmos is set to “On,” if you change those around Change Format will bump everything down to 5.1 and we don’t want that, we want Dolby Atmos so make sure it’s on.
Alright now that’s set let’s jump into a movie, I already have Transformers: The Last Knight which has both Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, so let’s hit play and wait for this guy to boot up. This first opening scene at Dark Ages let me press info and here we are, there it is ladies and gentlemen Dolby Atmos input signal and I have all nine active speakers going, perfect!!
Alright let’s go to another movie shall we, now this is an iTunes movie of course this is a movie app iTunes. Let’s go to Oblivion, it’s supposed to have both so let’s check it out, it’s 36 seconds in let’s hit info and look at that ladies and gentlemen we do not have Atmos, we have PCM and if you notice on the right hand side only five speakers are active, that’s kind of strange. All right let’s bump out of here and let’s go to Lucy, I know this one’s got to have Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos yes it does, alright let’s hit play and here we are again ladies and gentlemen PCM signal not Atmos and only five channels are active. All right, so transformers works but the other two don’t, now it was kind of strange so I didn’t want to make this video until later on Monday evening so I can figure out what’s going on. Now what I found out was not all of the iTunes movies that say Atmos are playing in Atmos right now, so you might have to wait for that. However, good news is a lot of the movies on Vudu are playing in Atmos even though the description doesn’t say Atmos, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 does have Atmos and it will play in Atmos.
Dolby Vision Setup
Now one thing we’re not getting is Dolby Vision, why are we not getting Dolby Vision? It’s kind of weird! So let’s go back to settings, now I don’t know if this is going to happen for everyone but for me it looks like Match Content was turned “Off” when the update completed as well as Chroma being at 4:2:0. I had that set to 4:2:2 so we need to change that as well. So this is what it looks like guys, Format – “4k HDR” and Chroma – “4:2:2” and then Match Content – “Range & Frame Rate”, range means dynamic range and frame rate means frame rate because you want it to match the original frame rate of a movie which is 24 frames per second. Once you have those selected then we should have no problem getting Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. Like I said after I did the update, it just kind of went ahead and put those to defaults which had changed long ago when I first turned on my Apple TV 4K.
So let’s go back into iTunes movies and into Transformers and let’s hit play and see what we get, and there we go you can see at the top Dolby Vision, insignia comes on the Vizio TV here and hit info on the Denon and boom we have Dolby Atmos and all nine speakers are working, fantastic! Now this isn’t limited to just the iTunes movies app, I did go ahead and jump into Netflix and my go to movie is Okja, it says Dolby Vision, it says 5.1 but when you actually hit play guess what? You get Dolby Atmos. So I think the issue is that these apps just need to get updated, once the apps get updated I think all the information will say perfectly fine, what is what.
Final Thoughts…
So there you guys go Apple TV 4k has Dolby Atmos, it’s not implemented a hundred percent yet and apps need to catch up a little bit but we do have Dolby Atmos functionality, we do have Dolby Vision functionality for that fabled Double D. I know you guys are all after that Double D!! It’s finally here and yes that’s pretty much it for today. If you have questions hit me up down in the comments, and that’s it alright have a good one see you next time, peace!