SPOTLIGHT Apple TV4k TIPS, TRICKS and TRAPS

[Ephi82]

I’ve got 15.3 sw.

anyone else having issues with the first few seconds of a song truncated unless you restart it?

 

[cdheer]

Amen.

But...

They still work.

And Best Buy keeps selling them.

Sadly, not near me. Or at least, not such that I can find.

I need one for my bedroom, so I'll probably have to brave the eBay waters.

And Logitech has said they will support the Harmony backend infrastructure as long as people use them.

I will use a harmony until the day I die (or their servers do, whichever comes first)...

SAME.

 

[RustyStatic]

I’ve got 15.3 sw.

anyone else having issues with the first few seconds of a song truncated unless you restart it?

Yep, experiencing this regularly. Also, the first song I queue up almost always has some stuttering as the ATV4K struggles to download all of the channels; doesn't happen in stereo.

 

[Tornado Red]

Of course, the real answer is to use a universal remote (moment of silence, please, for the late, lamented Logitech Harmony).

I do have 3 Logitech 650s in the house, one down with the main rig that I use for most things other than ATV. The ATV is programmed in, but I've fallen hard for the iPod wheel on the Apple remote.

 

[marcb]

Of course, the real answer is to use a universal remote (moment of silence, please, for the late, lamented Logitech Harmony).

I still use 2 Harmony One’s. It’s amazing that all these years later, it’s still the best remote ever made.

 

[gillette]

Hi,

Sorry if I am being stupid and/or have missed this info elsewhere.
I bought 4k ATV and Apple Music subscription and I think it's working fine.
PS 5.1 set-up.

I see people on the other threads posting Atmos or 5.1, 4.0 tracks they have found on Apple Music but how do you know what a track is offered in please?
I know some albums have Atmos marked at the top of the album or Spatial whatever.
I also see an asterisk on some tracks.

My amp just always says the feed into it is 5.1.
Some do "sound surroundy" even if there is no asterix or Atmos/Spatial indicated.

 

[marcb]

Hi,

Sorry if I am being stupid and/or have missed this info elsewhere.
I bought 4k ATV and Apple Music subscription and I think it's working fine.
PS 5.1 set-up.

I see people on the other threads posting Atmos or 5.1, 4.0 tracks they have found on Apple Music but how do you know what a track is offered in please?
I know some albums have Atmos marked at the top of the album or Spatial whatever.
I also see an asterisk on some tracks.

My amp just always says the feed into it is 5.1.
Some do "sound surroundy" even if there is no asterix or Atmos/Spatial indicated.

The asterisk is just indicating popular tracks.

Atmos tracks should be feeding as 7.1 to your receiver (assuming your receiver can handle 7.1 input). Dolby Audio (5.1 & 4.0) should be feeding as 5.1.

Unfortunately Apple isn’t indicating an album is Atmos or Dolby Audio (5.1/4.0) unless all tracks are Atmos or Dolby Audio. So, for instance, if there are stereo-only bonus tracks (which is common), you won’t see the Atmos/Dolby Audio designation unfortunately.

Many Apple Music users don’t care about or might even be confused by the surround designations, so I’m sure Apple us still trying to figure out how to make this all work best for of it’s user base. In my experience, Apple doesn’t tend to make things works better for users as time goes on though...

 

[Ephi82]

Ephi,

I do agree it's possible that if you hold it longer, it sends the CEC command twice- iirc the command is a toggle, then the first time it's off and the second time on. I can't explain the multi minute delay though.

I personally despise CEC because it's just smart enough to work and too dumb to be diagnosed in depth. Turn off CEC, unplug everything, remove power, wait 10 mins for reset, add things back in slowly, pray-drives me nuts as a troubleshooting step.

After an hour on the phone with Apple TV advanced support, the final solution was to re set the ATV to factory settings. Took me about an hour to set up re load all my apps but it worked. Everything stays off now..

 

[DoctorO]

Am I understanding correctly regarding the gear? Apple TV 4K doesn't do complete Atmos output--only up to 7.1? Have to get the Apple TV HD box for full Atmos output? Can't have both 4K and full Atmos?

Thanks for your help

 

[mrcond]

Am I understanding correctly regarding the gear? Apple TV 4K doesn't do complete Atmos output--only up to 7.1? Have to get the Apple TV HD box for full Atmos output? Can't have both 4K and full Atmos?

Thanks for your help

No, that is incorrect. The Apple TV 4K box does full Atmos (I am using it in a 7.1.4 setup).

 

[DoctorO]

No, that is incorrect. The Apple TV 4K box does full Atmos (I am using it in a 7.1.4 setup).

Thanks!

 

[JediJoker]

Am I understanding correctly regarding the gear? Apple TV 4K doesn't do complete Atmos output--only up to 7.1? Have to get the Apple TV HD box for full Atmos output? Can't have both 4K and full Atmos?

You won't get surround at all from Apple Music with a non-4K Apple TV. Any 4K will do; it doesn't have to be the latest model.

 

[gwlbe]

Anyway to keep the song info constantly displayed? I hit the menu and the timeline displays with their ATMOS sign but disappears and goes back to the album art shortly after.

 

[marcb]

Am I understanding correctly regarding the gear? Apple TV 4K doesn't do complete Atmos output--only up to 7.1? Have to get the Apple TV HD box for full Atmos output? Can't have both 4K and full Atmos?

Thanks for your help

The amtos metadata is embedded within the 7.1.

ATV HD can’t do atmos. Only the 4K box can do atmos.

 

[Strilo]

Anyway to keep the song info constantly displayed? I hit the menu and the timeline displays with their ATMOS sign but disappears and goes back to the album art shortly after.

I don't think so. This is also a huge pet peeve of mine.

 

[Cheezmo]

Anyway to keep the song info constantly displayed? I hit the menu and the timeline displays with their ATMOS sign but disappears and goes back to the album art shortly after.

You can't. One of those stupid things (like not displaying the album name and cropping rectangular artwork to a square) that Apple does their way because they know better than us.

 

[ted_b]

So I have an Apple Music subscription (family subscription), and bought an ATV4K but not unpacked and installed it yet (system isn't finished), so I thought I'd create a playlist or two on my Apple Music on my pc of some of the great Atmos links here. I create a "Teds New" playlist, but when I go back in (say, with another link of an album I found on here) the list is gone. Am I searching and creating on the wrong platform (pc)?? I am assuming I can prepare for ATV4k by doing this, but something is wrong. Thanks for the newbie question.

(and move this if the thread is only for tips, not questions)

(edit: ok, so these redundant test playlists all showed up on my iphone...so I guess this worked, just not showing when I go into Apple Music on pc. Weird.)

 

[mrcond]

I also posted this in the Elton John Atmos thread, but since it falls under the topic of an Apple Music "trap", I thought I would also post here.

If you have an pre-existing iTunes library (from your own CD rips or iTunes music store purchases), once you join Apple Music, you may find that you wind up with a conflict between your iTunes library and your Apple Music account. For some reason, when I first tried to stream the Elton Diamonds album, Apple has the annoying habit of first checking to see if you already have the track in your iTunes library. If it finds a match, it plays the library version, even if it is a crappy mp3 version and not Atmos. So some of the tracks found a "match" in my library (from the "To Be Continued" box set, apparently) and force-played those. Some of the tracks actually found a "match" in my library with a live version, no less. No rhyme or reason. (This also happened to me a couple of months ago with Rush's Moving Pictures.)

At first, I thought I was going to need to delete the previous Elton tunes from my iTunes library. Eventually, I figured out that I needed to just add the Diamonds set to my library and it would play correctly when I selected it. Annoying as hell, but glad I got that squared away and can fully enjoy the Elton Atmos experience.

 

[humprof]

@~dave~~wave~'s post in another thread reminded me to share a trick that I use for better Library organization. (I can't take credit for it, but I also can't remember where on the web I read about it.)

First: I don't use Apple Music on an Apple or Android phone--only on the ATV4K box and on Windows computers. So there might be better solutions for phone users. But here's my process:

• First, I search for Atmos and other "Spatial Audio" content primarily on my Windows computers, on this page of the Apple Music web app, and add albums to my Library from there. (Obviously I also make use of direct links that people share here on QQ.) But once you have more than a dozen or so albums in your Library, it becomes next to impossible to find things. I wanted to organize albums by genre (and alphabetically within genre), using a system similar to Windows File Explorer. But since Apple still doesn't have a Windows desktop app, it's not easy to do that. Here's a workaround:
• Download and open the iTunes desktop app, and log in using your Apple ID.
• Create a new playlist for each album in your library (Dave's method of adding items to the library as playlists rather than albums might save a step here).
• In iTunes, over in the lefthand column of the screen, you can create "Playlist Folders." (I currently have one for Atmos Classical, Atmos Pop & Rock, Quad & 5.1, etc.) Then you can drag and drop individual album playlists into whichever folders you like and arrange those folders internally.
• When you next open Apple Music on any device, the Playlist Folders you've created now appear in your Library.

This makes it a lot easier (for me) to scroll through my library and remember what's in it! (It would be easier still if I could just do it all from within the Apple Music Windows web app.) YMMV.

 

[Bob Romano]

I have to say that I am a little more than irritated with this whole truncation thing that's happening with Both Atmos titles and Dolby Audio. It used to be that you would only have to restart the first track and then, if you play it through, no problems. Now, every song has a truncation problem at the start of each track. Apple really needs to get it's shit together.