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Anyone else having their Dolby Vision content in iTunes and Netflix display distorted during certain scenes throughout movies.
Turning Match Content off, fixes it but it also removes the Dolby Vision, and only plays in HDR. Worked fine before the 12.4 update. I even spent the money on new Belkin HDMI cables (Belkin UltraHD 8K HDMI 2.1 Cables), from the apple store which did not help.
Apple TV 4K
I have exactly the same fault. I have also bought the Belkin high speed cable from Apple, no better. During dark scenes it seems to ‘bloom’ the colours and can look like a painting almost. I have read that Dolby made some updates recently to correct some issues with hdmi implementation and that early Dolby enabled TVs may now be unsupported. However I have watched a couple of Netflix series in Dolby in the last few days using the Apple TV and there seems to be no issue at all with Dolby over HDMI to the LG 60UH850 and no issue using the smart TV app either. The problem seems to be isolated to iTunes Dolby Vision movies being streamed .
I don't believe Airplay will send Dolby Vision so that's why you're not seeing any issue. If you turn off match content on your apple tv in the video settings and switch to 4K SDR, you would likely not see the issues presented in this thread either.
Until now I had only seen distortion in iTunes DV movies. I had ruled out Netflix DV content played from the ATV until tonight for the first time I had persistent distorted dark scenes while watching Mindhunter from the Netflix app on my ATV. I then switched over to my TV Netflix app and played the same scenes in DV with no distortion. So to me this points to a problem with the ATV DV stream over HDMI to TV and nothing to do with the iTunes content.
Well I bought a new LG TV model UM8070PUA
https://www.lg.com/us/tvs/lg-86UM8070PUA-4k-uhd-tv
and all of my Dolby Vision issues are not showing up on this new TV. I wonder if Dolby came out with a newer version of Dolby Vision. I also had an Xbox One S hooked up to my old TV that had Dolby vision issues and in the video settings of the Xbox it always said that I could not play Dolby Vision on the Xbox because I had an older version of Dolby Vision on my TV. I Hooked up the same Xbox to this new TV and it recognized my Dolby Vision and allowed for all of the video output options. I checked several iTunes movies that were showing distorted scenes and so far all of them no longer have the distortion. I wonder if we all needed a newer version of Dolby Vision or a newer TV.
I am about to replace my TV as well with one of the current LG OLEDs. I have no idea if it will solve the problem. Your point above gives some hope that will be the case. This is unfortunate though. I still think it's a problem with Apple's Dolby Vision implementation. All other implementations of Dolby Vision from other apps and with Blu-ray work. Only the Apple TV app and Movie app version exhibit the problem.
In a copy of Sound & Vision magazine I discovered some details about Dolby Vision. I struggled with color shifts not staying consistent, especially human faces. What I read is Dolby Vision is fee based and most networks are not paying for it. Once I shifted Apple TV 4K to HDR and my LG television to HDR the problems stopped. Apparently, this is an issue with the TV networks and Dolby and not Apple TV nor any TV set.
I don't mean to shoot the messenger and truly appreciate all and any input, but as it only happens with AppleTV, and has only occurred in recent versions of TVOS, it surely has something to do with Apple TV coding?
My workaround at the moment, to save keep switching settings, is to set the default output of Apple TV to 4K SDR 50hz, set dynamic range switching to on, and frame rate switching to off.
As a result, I get HDR when it is available (albeit at 50hz which is not ideal for films) and if the source is DV , as my TV will not support DV at anything over 30hz, and I am forcing 50Hz by the default setting, Apple TV denies DV and only provides that source at vanilla HDR. Obviously it means that I am not benefitting from DV, but at least I don't have to watch distorted scenes.
Hopefully the more people that report this to Apple, the more likely they are to investigate a solution ;)
My quickest dirty workaround was to unplug the HDMI cable from the Apple TV and plugging it back in.
Since I got a new TV that doesn’t have Dolby/ATV issues, I put the old TV in the bedroom with a cheap 4k Roku Premier and I can watch my Apple iTunes library in HDR using the Roku Apple TV app.
Dolby did roll out a firmware update this year to fix some issues with brightening of black bands in letterbox format amongst other issues. I read that after the update some early Dolby compatible TVs wouldn’t be supported any more due to earlier TVs hardware limitations. I didn’t believe mine was one of the obsolete TVs until now, it was only 2016. But I got a free 5 year warranty which I believe should cover this as its one of the main features now disabled.
I may have spoke too soon; I just rented a movie with Dolby Vision called The Intruder on Apple TV, and the same problem appears throughout the movie. At least it is not as bad as it was with my old TV; other movies that had the problem with my old TV are still playing fine on this new TV.
Just joining in as another person with the same issue in iTunes movies and Apple TV+ content.
For now the only way I’ve managed to fix it is disable Dolby Vision on the hdmi port that connects to my Apple TV, but this prevents every Apple TV app from
displaying Dolby Vision content. I’m hoping if enough people shout about it then Apple will fix it (and surely it’s an easy fix because it was fine before 12.4??). It’s a huge shame because Dolby Vision is one of the reasons I upgraded my TV and Apple TV recently.
Just went back and looked at episode 4 of For All Mankind and the scene in the car that had the issue seems to have been resolved! Had no issues watching episode 8 that was just released. I have not gone back and looked at other scenes I was having issues with, but I’d assume that they’ve been resolved!
Same issue for me too with ATV+ content. (Philips 65PUS7304/12)
Was kinda hoping the reason DV was pulled was to fix the issue, but the problem remains now that DV is back.
Seems weird that it’s not as widespread of an issue.
What are the common factors for us here?
Watching Truth Be Told today and have noticed a few of the issues in the first episode that have been discussed in this thread. It’s a pretty dark show so maybe that is a contributing factor. The murder scene in the first episode had some pretty noticeable issues on my set. Perhaps these episodes do not have the same encoding fix that the other ATV+ episodes have.
Hey guys, so I actually experienced this issues outside of Apple content today while watching Lost in Space on Netflix in DV. If any of you would like to see if you experience a similar issue it's S01E04 of Lost in Space at about the 45 minute mark. It gets extremely dark in these scenes. Just tried it through the Netflix app on the Vizio TV and it looks perfectly fine.
I have also seen it in the Ranch series, in lost in space, in Predator in Netflix on Apple TV. No problem on my tv’s Netflix app (however I notice sometimes drastic change in brightness in a scene dependable on the change of light in the scene, which to my opinion is unnatural). Is it because my TV an LG UH850V is an older model with a hardware chip from Dolby that handles Dolby vision and not software handling like in the newer models? They break compatibility I think with an update, that’s why older TVs are not compatible (for Dolby vision only) on the Xbox one X also.
Dolby Vision content displaying distorted since tvOS 12.4 update.
