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AppleTV 4K - how is it as a dedicated Emby client?


ShoutingMan

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ShoutingMan

In fact, the native player in tvOS 13 beta is capable of playing 4K HDR HEVC mkv media files as direct streams without a hick!

 

Do they support Atmos as well? That would be amazing! I'd upgrade my AppleTV's to 4K and maybe switch from Shield to aTV for Emby use.

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vdatanet

Do they support Atmos as well? That would be amazing! I'd upgrade my AppleTV's to 4K and maybe switch from Shield to aTV for Emby use.

 

Apple TV 4K supports Atmos from tvOS 12, but limited to itunes movies and some streaming services (Netflix..). it's not allowed passthrough for local content (Plex, Emby, Infuse...) so audio must be decoded to LPCM and this doesn't support spatial audio metadata. I don't know if one day Apple decides to change its mind and allow passthrough for local content of Atmos audio and other codecs. 

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Senna

MrMC supports ATMOS for local content, but only when it is delivered in EAC3 format (>> Dolby Digital Plus + ATMOS)

 

Dolby Vision is now in latest MrMC TestFlight 3.9.0 to test !

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vdatanet

MrMC supports ATMOS for local content, but only when it is delivered in EAC3 format (>> Dolby Digital Plus + ATMOS)

 

Dolby Vision is now in latest MrMC TestFlight 3.9.0 to test !

 

I'm curious if they transcode the audio or pass through it. If they transcode the audio I think there could be licensing problems. 

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Everbrave

Atmos EAC3 audio tracks (of Dolby Atmos samples) are DIRECT played by the native player in tvOS 13 and the receiver displays Atmos correctly, so I deduced that tvOS 13 can pass-through Atmos!

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vdatanet

Atmos EAC3 audio tracks (of Dolby Atmos samples) are DIRECT played by the native player in tvOS 13 and the receiver displays Atmos correctly, so I deduced that tvOS 13 can pass-through Atmos!

 

This is another reason that shows that using the MPV player has been a bad move.

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Senna

This is another reason that shows that using the MPV player has been a bad move.

Plex shows us, that everything can be done with the MPV player core and even gives the user the choice, to use MPV or not.

 

They also have subtitle customization under control, where the Apple TV subtitle style settings can be used for displaying subtitles, EVEN with the MPV Player core.

 

Story short, the Emby team is miles behind in development, but that is something we already now unfortunately, for reasons we also know.

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ShoutingMan

Apple TV 4K supports Atmos from tvOS 12, but limited to itunes movies and some streaming services (Netflix..). it's not allowed passthrough for local content (Plex, Emby, Infuse...) so audio must be decoded to LPCM and this doesn't support spatial audio metadata. I don't know if one day Apple decides to change its mind and allow passthrough for local content of Atmos audio and other codecs. 

 

Yes, Atmos is for all practical purposes not available on the aTV for Emby use. Which is why I was wondering if that might be changing in tvOS along with improved video codec capability. :)

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ShoutingMan

Atmos EAC3 audio tracks (of Dolby Atmos samples) are DIRECT played by the native player in tvOS 13 and the receiver displays Atmos correctly, so I deduced that tvOS 13 can pass-through Atmos!

So AppleTV with tvOS 13 can do dolby atmos with the right local streaming client (e.g Plex or Kodi)? I'm not interested in switching away from Emby -- its design philosophy and practical features have been a much better fit for my goals than Plex or Kodi. But it's good to know the options.

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vdatanet

Atmos EAC3 audio tracks (of Dolby Atmos samples) are DIRECT played by the native player in tvOS 13 and the receiver displays Atmos correctly, so I deduced that tvOS 13 can pass-through Atmos!

 

But most ATMOS content is TrueHD. The use of DD + is limited to streaming services, therefore the content is scarce. It is not clear that TrueHD will be available in the near future on Apple TV 4K, I want Apple to make it available, but Apple does not usually listen to the wishes of its customers.
 

 

If you want TrueHD Atmos audio, Nvidia Shield is one of the best players you can use. If you want support for TrueHD right now, Apple TV 4K is not your player.
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Everbrave

@@ShoutingMan, @@vdatanet

Currently, this observation is restricted to EAC3 and tvOS 13 beta 4.

Let’s hope that when tvOS 13 is released, it will bring TrueHD atmos support otherwise it doesn’t have any practical sense.

Atoms aside, I get quite a convincing performance from DTS-Neural:X from the Front-Hight speakers. Interestingly, this is what my receiver switches to when I play atmos TrueHD tracks!

To sum-up, Emby client for tvOS is currently useless for me, for well known reasons.

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vdatanet

Plex shows us, that everything can be done with the MPV player core and even gives the user the choice, to use MPV or not.

I am not against the MPV player, on the contrary its use can prevent transcoding in many cases, but if staff resources are limited, the native player is much easier to handle and does not require such a great effort.

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Everbrave

I am not against the MPV player, on the contrary its use can prevent transcoding in many cases, but if staff resources are limited, the native player is much easier to handle and does not require such a great effort.

 

This is my opinion too; I still don’t understand why not incorporate the native player until the mpv core is ready which is obviously capacity demanding; this is the obvious fall back position, isn’t it?

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unisoft

This is my opinion too; I still don’t understand why not incorporate the native player until the mpv core is ready which is obviously capacity demanding; this is the obvious fall back position, isn’t it?

 

I agree. Apple TV is useless at the moment which is a shame because it looks visually good layout in most places.

All of my TV stuff is PAL interlaced content and that shows as a progressive deinterlaced mess of using the same frame rate as interlaced video (instead of doubled frame rate for proper de-interlacing for PAL 50hz), and for 24p movies, the lack of 23.976/24hz witching means juddery motion.

 

A switch under options for 'Experimental Player' (mpv) would be nice until MPV is sorted out.

 

Other stuff like the downloaded channel logos (from Emby refresh of TV Guide data) do not scale properly like the other Emby apps do, the EPG is awful as not table/grid style and too image intensive.

Edited by unisoft
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  • 2 months later...

Some time has past and some things have changed in the Emby Apple TV app, since last post here, so it is time for an update...

So what can we say half a year later, since last post in this topic, for users planning to buy an Apple TV 4K, for using it as a dedicated Emby Client ?

 

If I speak for myself and probably also for A LOT of other Emby users, I can say "EMBY AND THE APPLE TV(4K) STILL DON'T MATCH".

Before I sum up current issues, my current advise WHEN you don't have an Apple TV 4K yet, is to stay away from Emby on the Apple TV platform and GO FOR for Emby on the Android TV platform (like on Smart TV/Shield etc).

 

The Apple TV platform is the one, getting the least Dev resource time, due to all sorts of reasons, because users see long outstanding basic playability issues on this platform not getting fixed.

 

A snippet of current issues with the Emby Apple TV app TO CONSIDER when purchasing an Apple TV 4K:

  • No 4K HDR playback

    So you think finally, I have the Apple TV 4K version now and I want to play my shiny HDR movies on my HDR supporting TV set with Emby in HDR...... You thought wrong, you CAN NOT do that now with the current Emby Apple TV app.

     

  • No Content matching to Frame Rate

    The Apple TV 4K is capable to automatically change your display refresh rate, to match the frame rate of the content you are playing..... Also this is NOT possible with the current Emby Apple TV app, which CAN cause judder/stuttering during playback. So if you have lots of different content in all sorts of frame rates and resolutions, you don't get OPTIMAL playback the way it should be, with the current Emby Apple TV app

     

  • No sound support for DTS

    This is a licensing issue by Emby, as discussed already in this and other topics.

     

  • No in app subtitle options regarding size, color and download

    If you are depended on subtitles, like most people where English is not their native tongue.... you CAN NOT change your subtitle size and color or download subtitles in the current Emby Apple TV app

     

  • I stop here, just to point out the most important outstanding issues with the current Emby Apple TV app, users want to see FIXED when possible.

    For a full list go here

Above issues are ONLY issues that EMBY has on the Apple TV platform. They are NOT present in other apps on the Apple TV platform, like Infuse, Plex, MrMC.

So if above issues are important to you and want to use Emby, I advise to buy a Shield, because no timeline is set to FIX above issues in the Apple TV Emby client.

 

*Will update this topic too, when items of list above are fixed.

Quarterly update:

From the date of previous post quoted above (17th of July 2019), from 34 items registered at that date, still 22 items remains to be fixed/implemented since last update of above quoted post and a lot of issues not registered in that Collection topic still has to be fixed/implemented. Open issues not mentioned in that Collection topic can be added on request by sending me a PM.

 

Conclusion for now, on topic subject:

Like I said before, EMBY AND THE APPLE TV(4K) STILL DON'T MATCH, for a complete satisfying Emby user experience, like we have for example, on the Android TV platform.

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vdatanet

Before Christmas, the native player must be back. I will wait until the end of the year. If there are no playback improvements, I will look for other solutions. Maybe Emby for Nvdia Shield will become the main device, but I will have to migrate some services to Android. Now, I'm using both Nvidia Shield and Apple TV, but in the near future I just want to use one device.
 

We are working on it. It is getting there. And yes you'll have it before Christmas.


;)

Edited by vdatanet
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Chuck_IV

Before Christmas, the native player must be back. I will wait until the end of the year. If there are no playback improvements, I will look for other solutions. Maybe Emby for Nvdia Shield will become the main device, but I will have to migrate some services to Android. Now, I'm using both Nvidia Shield and Apple TV, but in the near future I just want to use one device.

 

 

;)

I just got an Apple TV 4K and was a bit surprised Emby doesn’t do HDR on it, especially when Plex does do it.

 

With that said, the Nvidia Shield will still beat the ATV 4K because even if Emby on the Apple TV 4K was doing HDR properly, it still won’t do lossless Atmos or DTS:X like the Shield does.

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Edited by Chuck_IV
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vdatanet

I just got an Apple TV 4K and was a bit surprised Emby doesn’t do HDR on it, especially when Plex does do it.

 

With that said, the Nvidia Shield will still beat the ATV 4K because even if Emby on the Apple TV 4K was doing HDR properly, it still won’t do lossless Atmos or DTS:X like the Shield does.

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

 

That's true. If you need Atmos Nvidia Shield is your device, but I don't need Atmos. Apple TV is a device fully capable of playing all kinds of media, but Emby does not take advantage of it. Other players for Apple TV, can play 4K HDR perfectly, even they are capable of converting HDR to SDR, they play HDR content on SDR screens with correct tone map, which Nvidia Shield is not able to do. Although I don't expect the Emby for Apple TV player to reach that level.

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Everbrave

I just got an Apple TV 4K and was a bit surprised Emby doesn’t do HDR on it, especially when Plex does do it.

 

With that said, the Nvidia Shield will still beat the ATV 4K because even if Emby on the Apple TV 4K was doing HDR properly, it still won’t do lossless Atmos or DTS:X like the Shield does.

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Plex client on ATV 4K will playback HDR using the native player but only if it doesn't transcode, once it does, e.g. with PGS subtitles, HDR vanishes!

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Everbrave

Before Christmas, the native player must be back. I will wait until the end of the year. If there are no playback improvements, I will look for other solutions. Maybe Emby for Nvdia Shield will become the main device, but I will have to migrate some services to Android. Now, I'm using both Nvidia Shield and Apple TV, but in the near future I just want to use one device.

 

;)

Yeah, but I believe, it is still a long way to go! (see the other thread of "Include a switch ..." you know what I mean :)

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Charlie117

Plex client on ATV 4K will playback HDR using the native player but only if it doesn't transcode, once it does, e.g. with PGS subtitles, HDR vanishes!

 

Doesn't that apply to all clients for both Emby and Plex? Considering neither Plex nor Emby is able to transcode to HEVC which is required for compliant HDR playback.

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Everbrave

Doesn't that apply to all clients for both Emby and Plex? Considering neither Plex nor Emby is able to transcode to HEVC which is required for compliant HDR playback.

 

No, the Emby client on ATV can't playback HDR even in direct play or direct stream because it uses a mpv-based player in its current state which is still not well developed enough; it also cannot match the frame rate.

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Jonathan1683

I have a HTPC with kodi which worked good for what it was, but compared to the apple tv interface speed ease of use and stability. Apple TV is bar far the best device I have used for my media. My HTPC is just a emby server now. I have a fire stick that is almost unusable its terribly slow and unstable and not anything a normal end user would be able to use. I also had roku which was crap too.

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vdatanet

I have a HTPC with kodi which worked good for what it was, but compared to the apple tv interface speed ease of use and stability. Apple TV is bar far the best device I have used for my media. My HTPC is just a emby server now. I have a fire stick that is almost unusable its terribly slow and unstable and not anything a normal end user would be able to use. I also had roku which was crap too.

 

Yes, Apple TV 4K is a very good device, but Emby for Apple TV has some issues that take too long to be fixed.

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timstephens24

No, the Emby client on ATV can't playback HDR even in direct play or direct stream because it uses a mpv-based player in its current state which is still not well developed enough; it also cannot match the frame rate.

 

It’s not an MPV issue... Plex’s “experimental” player used MPV and plays back HDR and matches frame rate. Just saying  ;)

 

I really wish the ATV Emby player was a lot better, then I could drop Plex.

Edited by timstephens24
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