I currently use Synology’s 1520+ at home, and the plex server deployed on Synology, but the decoding ability of Synology is worrying. For this reason, I bought a new Apple TV4k and installed plex, but the decoding is still placed on Synology. I want to know, why can’t the decoding be placed on Apple TV? Why can’t it be set up like this? The decoding ability of Apple TV itself is very strong (compared to Synology), can you give me such an option?
Make sure the Player settings allow “Original/Maximum” quality.
Also make certain subtitle burning is “Automatic”.
Doing this transfers the playback load (as much as possible) to the AppleTV
As an FYI and after a lot of research. I discovered this regarding audio with a plex and Apple TV 4K. I have a strong Home Theater system including Dolby Atmos ceiling speakers. If you ever check the audio signal being output from Plex via Apple TV for MKV movies, you won’t see Dolby Atmos being outputted. Apple puts out a multi channel Dolby signal. It appears that Apple doesn’t allow HDMI Passthrough. HDMI Passthrough is necessary to allow Dolby Atmos to be outputted. I purchased an Nvidia Shield Pro streamer and now my MKV movies output Atmos. This streamer allows HDMI Pass through. I like my Apple TV but am upset that it won’t allow HDMI pass through.
There was a discussion (originated by Apple) several years ago about this.
AFAICR, The reason Apple wouldn’t get involved with Dolby licensing is because Dolby would want access to Apple’s source code to verify the data path is secure (trusted execution path).
Apple, being Apple and rightfully so, was not willing to let some third party have access to the source code of the entire toolkit (used on AppleTV, iPad, iPhone, and MacOS)
I believe someone senior at Apple once described Dolby as a “bag of hurt”.
What Apple does provide is LPCM output from a decoded Dolby core audio input. Any other metadata gets dropped.
