William Gallagher
Some users are finding that Dolby Vision HDR Apple TV+ shows streaming to Apple TV 4K set-top boxes aren't playing back correctly, if at all.
Apple TV+ has been noted for providing the highest bitrate of all the streaming services, and Apple itself has talked up how all its shows are made in Dolby Vision HDR for the highest image quality. Users have to have an Apple TV 4K and a TV set that can display Dolby Vision HDR, but now some who do, are reporting that the feature has been switched off.
Currently, about 120 people are complaining about this in the Apple support forums, and more on Twitter, but while the overall issue is the same, the shows affected appears to vary.
@AppleTV @AppleTVPlus why isn't you own programming claiming to play in Dolby Vision only working in HDR on my Apple TV 4K. Only programming that's working correctly is Dickinson.
— Anthony (@RealSwaggyT) November 28, 2019
MacRumors, which first spotted the issue, also reports that it's not only that new episodes lack this image quality, but so do all their previous episodes.
As those episodes were streamed in Dolby Vision HDR before — and stream properly to third-party televisions — it can't be that the source material is lower quality or that the service isn't capable of streaming it.
The most likely explanation is that there is some problem with the service and while it's being fixed, Apple has switched off the higher-quality versions. This doesn't account for "Dickinson" still working for many people, and it's also still possible that only a few users are affected overall.
However, the first reported cases of the problem were almost three weeks ago, and as yet, Apple has not commented. AppleInsider has not as of yet experienced the problem. Perhaps related, one staffer has experienced a recent tvOS update inducing problems with HDCP with a setup that had worked for years prior, suggesting that the device is now more finicky about consistent bitrate across cabling.
Dolby Vision HDR brings high-quality video, and its companion Dolby Atmos provides high-quality audio to match, for many Apple devices:
- An iOS device released in 2018 or later and running iOS 13
- Mac mini 2018
- MacBook Pro 2018, MacBook Air 2018 or later, running Catalina
- Apple TV 4K on tvOS 12 or later
Dolby Vision HDR streams also available on certain Mac desktops running macOS Catalina.
As well as offering new Apple TV+ shows in this higher image quality, films and television sold through the iTunes Store can now be in Dolby Vision. If you've previously bought HD versions of titles, you now automatically and for free get the Dolby Vision ones.
AppleInsider Staff
Christine McKee
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24 Comments
This has been going on for a few weeks now, first with episodes 6, now with the whole series (all but Dickinson)
The episodes are actually in Dolby Vision (which you can check with the Playback HUD, which you can activate via Xcode), but make my Dolby Vision TV switch to HDR.
If I disable "Match Dynamic Range" they play beautifully in Dolby Vision, just as they should.
I read somewhere that some older Dolby Vision TVs had big issues when playing these Apple TV+ shows - that might be why Apple forced the shows ro display in HDR10 instead of Dolby Vision via Apple TV 4K.
The shows still appear as Dolby Vision on my iPad mini.
Any idea what the minimum speed of internet connection is required for this to work?
Folks I am not saying it is not an Apple issue.
But we all are getting the data on a shared pipe and your quality is only as good as the weakest link in the system and that could change over time. I see this all the time with any streaming service, Netlix has this issue for years, this is why Netflix starts up and does a stream test to see the speed of your connect, at first it would be fine and half way through the show you can see the quality drop off since somewhere in the path a bottle neck built up and you are not getting as much data as you were in the beginning.
Face it, ENET sucks there is no way to guaranty QOS end to end, the connection path from one end to the other can change many times over during a course of a stream. The tried solving the problem with bigger and faster pipes. It sound like Apple may have turned it off since the down side could be a far worse experience. The fact you only have a small number of the Millions of people watch these shows noticing and complaining means more people have no idea if the quality level is at level it should or could be. It was the same thing back in the early 2000's when HD hit and people were going out and getting HD TV and no idea the content coming from their cable operators was still SD.
There's also the issue of competing standards, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision, Atmos and DTSx. Most manufacturers are picking sides and very often don't support one or the other. In my case the TCL 6 series in the master suite offers Dolby Vision but not HDR10+. The Samsung Q80R in the family room is exactly the opposite. As I typically do my movie streaming in the family room I wouldn't see any benefit to Dolby Vision on AppleTV+ anyway AFAIK.
Also don't let anyone tell you streaming a 4K Dolby Vision or HDR10+ movie from a streaming service (even Apple's) is the same quality as playing a BlueRay UltraHD disc either. It is not. BlueRay UltraHD is a plainly superior experience, something I did not know would be so evident before being loaned a player and a couple of movies. I''ve now bought one for myself, a refurbed Sony UBP-X700 for less than $80 (Ebay) . What a huge difference with the right content, and easily moved between TV's. Oddly enough tho Dolby Vision BlueRay content does not look better and in fact looks worse to me on the TCL than HDR10 does on the Samsung.
I have the previous AppleTV (HD), and on two recent occasions we’ve had to give trying to watch a show because the stream goes to black.