Dolby Digital / Atmos support on Apple TV

[techbri 12]

We use Apple TVs as our preferred devices ( have tried Shield and others) and I really prefer the Apple TV. I came to emby from the other platforms and have used Infuse with them in the past. I setup Infuse to work with Emby and I can play Atmos files that have the compressed lossy format. I understand the Apple TV only supports this version of atmos and not TrueHD. Would you please add support for lossy Atmos to the app so that we can play these files without needing to use Infuse? I would rather use the native app. I have seen a number of users request this from the "other platforms" and they have not gotten there. I expect this will bring a lot of new customers to Emby and sell Premiere subscriptions. If there is a licensing fee that Emby has to pay to enable this, I would also be willing to pay a one time enablement fee to add the feature to my server in addition to the premier subscription. Thanks.

[Luke 42077]

Hi, yes this is something that we hope to add in future updates to the Emby Apple TV app. Thanks.

[techbri 12]

On 1/26/2024 at 7:18 PM, Luke said:

Hi, yes this is something that we hope to add in future updates to the Emby Apple TV app. Thanks.

Hi Luke. Circling back on this as I wonder if you have a method to poll on this feature request to determine the need and I also wonder if we might be able to sponsor this feature request. I for one, would be willing to prepay for the feature as there may be licensing costs involved.

[techbri 12]

In the meantime, I picked up a Chromecast 4k and it is able to play the the Atmos files I have without needing Infuse on the Apple TV. I tried the shield but I did not like that it wasn't getting updated. This will suffice for now until we can get Atmos playback on the Apple TV.

[techbri 12]

On 1/26/2024 at 7:18 PM, Luke said:

Hi, yes this is something that we hope to add in future updates to the Emby Apple TV app. Thanks.

Hi Luke. I wanted to circle back on this request as it's been over a year and I would like to understand the roadmap on this if there is one.

The AppleTV does not currently support TrueHD so uncompressed audio is not an option. We ATV users and those who review them always hope for passthrough support in either a new tvOS release or with new hardware but no one knows if that will ever happen.

There are some android clients that will play compressed Atmos using Dolby Digital Plus in the Emby app even if the hardware does not support passthrough. On Apple TV, we can use Infuse but it requires going back and forth between the Emby app to use live tv and using Infuse to watch an Atmos encoded file.

I am not sure of the percentage of Apple TV Emby users vs other clients but I wlll say for those in the Apple ecosystem, it's harder to use an alternative client.

Has consideration been given to adding Atmos playback support for DD Plus to the Emby app? Is there a license cost which prohibits this? Is it possible to poll ATV users to find out if they would support a one-time fee to enable this support?

Thank you!

[bakes82 167]

Just use infuse. It will always be superior than anything Emby can do because it’s an apple only device and the only thing the developer focuses on. Emby will always be lacking compared.

[techbri 12]

I get it and I use infuse currently. What I was looking for was the ability to do everything in one app including live TV.

[bakes82 167]

Who’s using Emby for iptv… they don’t even support all the auth methods providers use. Again Emby isn’t that great at a lot of things there are far better iptv apps als.

[aberthil 10]

Any update on this? Any ETA on when we could expect this feature?

[Luke 42077]

Hi, we are looking into it. Thanks.

[Louis93 3]

On 06/08/2025 at 21:13, Luke said:

Hi, we are looking into it. Thanks.

Doesn't the new tvOS 26 have AVAudioContentSource.passthrough that can be implemented into Emby? 

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfaudio/avaudiocontentsource/passthrough