HDR/Dolby Vision not activating on TV when playing HDR File - Apple TV

[MrWGT13 24]

On 9/12/2025 at 4:49 AM, Lazarus_Long said:

Yep I know. I’ve been trying to get it into a correct format using ffmpeg and this is the latest test and it still won’t trigger. Not sure what else it could be?  I did remove the audio track just to make sure it wasn’t causing any issues. 

It does show direct play with AVKIT as the renderer (not MPV)

In my case the reason where external subtitles. Try to remove them and play again. I changed my workflow to internal subtitles which works on my side.

[Lazarus_Long 80]

13 hours ago, MrWGT13 said:

In my case the reason where external subtitles. Try to remove them and play again. I changed my workflow to internal subtitles which works on my side.

I just gave up on trying...I was able to get one video so that it would trigger properly, but not worth the hassle.  For now I'll stick with using Infuse on my Apple TV until (hopefully!) a newer version of MPV comes out with better HDR/DV support.

[Luke 42077]

Hi, HDR playback has been improved in Emby for Apple TV 2.0.1. Thanks !

[stephen_hill 46]

@LukeI've not had time to try this, but just want to say Thank You for making the improvements. I really appriciate it.

[chander421 15]

Thanks!

[ubercoke 1]

I tested both HDR/DV and will now switch between formats. After using Infuse I think it’s safe to now use the Emby app. Thank you for the fix! 

[stephen_hill 46]

I've now had time to test this myself, and it is indeed working for me too. Confirmed for both DV and HDR10 content. So thank you so much for fixing this issue.

 

[benoitvinc1 9]

OOOO such a great suprised ! Thank you @Lukefor all the efforts ! HDR and Dolby visio is finally working on 2.0.1 !!

Thank you so much for you effort. 

[WhiteStig 2]

On 10/22/2025 at 3:19 PM, Luke said:

Hi, HDR playback has been improved in Emby for Apple TV 2.0.1. Thanks !

Assuming we still have to follow the rules here?
https://emby.media/support/articles/Apple-TV.html

[Luke 42077]

On 11/7/2025 at 11:58 PM, WhiteStig said:

Assuming we still have to follow the rules here?
https://emby.media/support/articles/Apple-TV.html

Things should be a little more flexible now so I would say that we need to work on updating that.

[jon_ 27]

On 11/14/2025 at 12:35 AM, Luke said:

Things should be a little more flexible now so I would say that we need to work on updating that.

Any possibility of having the server remux files on the appletv clients behalf in a more logical way?

Eg. playing an HDR / DoVi mkv file using the native player causes the server to remux the file to HLS due to it not being a compatible container, but this also triggers tone mapping to SDR.

Remux the mkv file manually using ffmpeg to MP4 (ffmpeg -i source.mkv -c copy -tag:v hvc1 -strict unofficial output.mp4) and it plays natively with both DoVi and Atmos. 

Any chance we can have the server do the remux (without tonemapping) to prevent having to batch remux potentially thousands of video files for compatibility?

[WhiteStig 2]

Just chiming in to say it seems to trigger HDR or Dolby Vision on my TV but I think jon_ is on to something about the tonemapping. The video doesn’t look quite right. 

[jon_ 27]

32 minutes ago, WhiteStig said:

Just chiming in to say it seems to trigger HDR or Dolby Vision on my TV but I think jon_ is on to something about the tonemapping. The video doesn’t look quite right. 

You should be able to look in the server status when the file is playing - it will show if it's being transcoded/tonemapped.. Also check that you are using the native player, not MPV as that has it's own set of issues as well...

[Luke 42077]

@WhiteStighas this helped?

[WhiteStig 2]

6 hours ago, Luke said:

@WhiteStighas this helped?

Not exactly. I'm seeing a bit of the opposite behavior in practice.  The native player is failing to direct play and converting it.
Stream
MP4 (78 mbps)
HLS (116 mbps)
Converting video to compatible codec
Recovering from playback error

The MPV player is not transcoding the MKV according to the server but it still feels like it has the "green tint" or just in general darker than it should be in some scenes.

[Luke 42077]

17 hours ago, WhiteStig said:

The native player is failing to direct play and converting it.

@WhiteStigthis would be a sign that the Apple TV doesn't support it natively, no?

[Geordie 11]

On 19/11/2025 at 20:30, Luke said:

@WhiteStigthis would be a sign that the Apple TV doesn't support it natively, no?

@Luke

Just ran into this minutes after starting another thread here

 

Emby seems to be breaking HEVC streams when remuxing mkv to HLS by not tagging them as hvc1 (ffmpeg -vtag:hvc1 is missing).

 

If this gets fixed, it will massively improve compatibility of Emby with HDR/DV using the native AVKit.

 

[vdatanet 1617]

1 hour ago, Geordie said:

@Luke

Just ran into this minutes after starting another thread here

 

Emby seems to be breaking HEVC streams when remuxing mkv to HLS by not tagging them as hvc1 (ffmpeg -vtag:hvc1 is missing).

 

If this gets fixed, it will massively improve compatibility of Emby with HDR/DV using the native AVKit.

 

That's not the problem. The problem is that HLS HEVC in Apple devices requires fmp4 container and that is unsupported by Emby. The only possible fix is add hls in fmp4 container like Jellyfin and Plex.

[Geordie 11]

7 minutes ago, vdatanet said:

That's not the problem. The problem is that HLS HEVC in Apple devices requires fmp4 container and that is unsupported by Emby. The only possible fix is add hls in fmp4 container like Jellyfin and Plex.

I thought ffmpeg did that by default. If not, then that's a second problem.

The hvc1 tag is still required even with fMP4 and it is definitely missing at the moment.

Is there a reason this isn't the case? fMP4 can be easily forced by ffmpeg -hls_segment_type fmp4 if not happening by default for whatever reason.

[vdatanet 1617]

Yes, HLS streams using HEVC on Apple devices must be delivered in fragmented MP4 (fMP4) containers rather than MPEG-2 TS. In addition, each fMP4 segment carrying HEVC video needs to be properly identified with the vtag:hvc1 (or equivalently the hvc1 four-character code) so that Apple’s playback stack can correctly recognize and decode the HEVC video track. Failure to use fMP4 containers or to tag the segments with vtag:hvc1 may result in playback incompatibility on Apple platforms.

[vdatanet 1617]

By the way, I have been pointing this out for quite a few years on multiple occasions, and it has consistently been ignored.

[vdatanet 1617]

As of today, in order to play HEVC MKV content in Emby on Apple devices, we can only either use the MPV-based player or remux the MKV to MP4 with the appropriate hvc1 tag

[Geordie 11]

9 minutes ago, vdatanet said:

By the way, I have been pointing this out for quite a few years on multiple occasions, and it has consistently been ignored.

That is mind-blowing

It's such a simple change that will yield massive compatibility & performance improvements.

It's literally just 2 extra flags to the remux command. No actual code changes, everything is already there.

-tag:v hvc1

-hls_segment_type fmp4

 

Here's hoping we get a comment from Luke or another team member.

[jon_ 27]

18 hours ago, Geordie said:

That is mind-blowing

It's such a simple change that will yield massive compatibility & performance improvements.

It's literally just 2 extra flags to the remux command. No actual code changes, everything is already there.

-tag:v hvc1

-hls_segment_type fmp4

... adding the ability to stop a remux of HDR content due to unsupported container not actually remuxing but also triggering tonemapping down to SDR is also a must have..

[Geordie 11]

1 hour ago, jon_ said:

... adding the ability to stop a remux of HDR content due to unsupported container not actually remuxing but also triggering tonemapping down to SDR is also a must have..

I’m not entirely sure I understand but Apple’s native AVPlayer does an excellent job tone mapping when required. 
 

I tested by forcing the Apple TV to stay in SDR mode (disabled “match dynamic range” in tvOS settings) and direct playing a Dolby Vision mp4 in Emby with native player and the tone mapping was probably the best I’ve seen.