This video is in a format that can’t be streamed to this tv. WHY?

I am having an issue with Apple TV. I downloaded season 1 & 2 of News Radio. Season 1 plays fine. Season 2 won’t AirPlay/mirror on my iPad Pro at all to my Apple TV, but the first 3 episodes of season 2 will AirPlay from my iPhone XS Max. All other episodes of season 2 say “this video is in a format that can’t be streamed to this TV.” All my other content streams fine. Why would one season not AirPlay off my iPad, only 3 episodes AirPlay off my phone and all others give me an error message? Apple TV is updated. Restarting Apple TV does nothing.


Does anyone know why this is? Any settings to change? I deleted season 2 episode 1 and re downloaded it on my iPad and that didn’t fix it.


Thanks for any all all help!

iPad Pro 10.5-inch, Wi-Fi, Cellular

Posted on Apr 16, 2020 7:25 PM

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Posted on Apr 21, 2020 4:52 AM

kslksl wrote the following reply to a similar query (Reference: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251021809?answerId=252158133022#252158133022). It fixes my problem, basically I couldn't play .movpkg files; doing this saved the files in .m4v format which works.


I went to TV app > Preferences > Playback and made sure both "Download Multichannel Audio" and "Download HDR when available" were unchecked. When I restarted the movie download it came down as an m4v file.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Apr 21, 2020 4:52 AM in response to WESiii

kslksl wrote the following reply to a similar query (Reference: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251021809?answerId=252158133022#252158133022). It fixes my problem, basically I couldn't play .movpkg files; doing this saved the files in .m4v format which works.


I went to TV app > Preferences > Playback and made sure both "Download Multichannel Audio" and "Download HDR when available" were unchecked. When I restarted the movie download it came down as an m4v file.

Apr 17, 2020 1:31 AM in response to WESiii

I downloaded season 1 & 2 of News Radio.

Would this be downloaded from the iTunes Store? If it isn’t, then the format is ‘unknown’, and could be incompatible. If it is from there, then it would also be available directly on the Apple TV (no need for AirPlay).


Check your download files. Is there a distinction between the episodes that play and that don’t play? E.g. MP4 vs. HLS (.movpkg).

May 6, 2020 1:58 PM in response to William_Foster

Sorry for the late reply. I think this might have something to do with it. Currently mine is set to fast downloads. Are you saying to set it to high quality downloads?


I don’t understand this issue. Most everything I have from movies to tv shows airplay’s fine and I have never had any other setting but what I am using now. Yesterday I downloaded another movie and it too says this format won’t stream.


if I can’t solve this I am done buying anything from iTunes. I already left amazon who won’t let you stream most anything.



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This video is in a format that can’t be streamed to this tv. WHY?

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