Apple TV Screen goes black intermittently using YouTube connected to Samsung tv

This issue has been noticed before, especially for this app. Apparently YouTube doesn’t match content for ads with the rest of the video, so that a shift in dynamic range or a shift in frame rate may happen. It takes a while for TVs to notice and adjust to such changes over HDMI, unless the TV supports QMS (Quick Media Switching). You could contact the app developer about fixing their app, as I think they could prevent this in the stream.

One way to prevent this on your side, is to set Apple TV to use a constant signal of the same frame rate and dynamic range. I.e. turning off the Match Content options in Settings﹥Video and Audio﹥.

Adjust video and audio settings on Apple TV - Apple Support

Turn on (or off) Match Dynamic Range or Match Frame Rate on your Apple TV - Apple Support

Watched a video on YouTube today that gave a solution. Even if you have a HDR capable TV, set the display type to 4K SDR. Then toggle on Match Resolution and Match Frame rate. If a video or other programming is in SDR your Apple TV 4K will send a SDR signal to the TV.

BUT, since you have Match Resolution toggled on when a source is in HDR it will then send HDR to the TV.

Solved the problem for me.

It’s akin to strobe lighting. Gives me a headache. I thought I had defective Apple units and returned 2 of them. It’s so annoying, it makes me want to return this 3rd one. It’s pretty much useless and does exactly what the tv does on its own. The only benefit I find is having great metal remote. The remote is the only reason I keep this.

Thank you for the help on the settings. Thus apple4k is on a smaller tv, so it doesn’t matter (yet that I see) in non-dynamic, non-matching frame rate.

denimcloak wrote:

You often sacrifice some image quality with transcoding, especially at low bitrates. But one of the posts below identifies a workaround.

Well, some transforms used for video compression are lossy, but I disagree that color transforms or motion manipulation in frame rate conversions will hurt quality - unless they're wrong.

Consider:

1. The video bitstream received, at whatever resolution, determines the maximum 'image quality'.
2. Unless you're watching a 1080p stream in a box consuming just 25% of your 4K TV screen, you're watching the results of video scaling algorithms (be it the ATV4K's, your AVR's, or your TV's).
3. The ATV's dynamic range color transforms, and its ability to smoothly transcode 24 or 30fps to 60fps, are fine. Pretty dern good, in fact!
4. Whether your TV's motion compensation features or ability to render SDR & HDR color, and then tweak color (vivid vs. sports vs. cinema vs, etc.) look better to you then the ATV4K's is subjective.

My point is, you're not seeing "original content" when you turn on Match Dynamic Range and Frame Rate! You're just seeing how your TV chooses to render it (with less help from the ATV4K). It's all digital video 'transcoded' in various ways as it's rendered to fill the 8,294,400 pixels of your 4K TV.

I've seen the ATV4K fail miserably rendering some old SD TV shows, delivered with compression artifacts, when compared to my LG TV. People also complain of new Dolby Vision-encoded content being too dark (for most of these instances I blame too many cheap TVs claiming "Dolby Vision" or HDR10 without the recommended brightness levels, as well as content producers being too f*ing artsy while drinking Dolby's Kool-Aide with their high-end studio equipment :-).

There may be the rare content where you'll want to tweak settings, but my experience is that in general, the ATV4K does a better job of rendering video to my TV than does the TV itself. I know for certain that the ATV4K certainly has more powerful and expensive silicon in it than my TV does.

I also turn off all my TV's "TruMotion"-type or "noise reduction" video processing stuff. With the ATV4K, I basically want the TV to be a dumb monitor with bright support for Dolby Vision, etc. Layering video enhancement processes that don't know about each other isn't optimal.

Anyway, if all the video experts who suggest turning Match Content ON honestly like the results so much better that they're willing to put up with constant mode switching by their sans-QMS TV, so be it. I personally feel it's bad advice and that Apple's engineers made the right call for default settings. This is particularly true for people who just want to watch TV and don't give a hoot about invisible dynamic ranges and indistinguishable frame rates.

denimcloak wrote:

You often sacrifice some image quality with transcoding, especially at low bitrates. But one of the posts below identifies a workaround.

Well, some transforms used for video compression are lossy, but I disagree that color transforms or motion manipulation in frame rate conversions will hurt quality - unless they're wrong :-).

Consider:

1. The video bitstream received, at whatever resolution, determines the maximum 'image quality'.
2. Unless you're watching a 1080p stream in a box consuming just 25% of your 4K TV screen, you're watching the results of video scaling algorithms (be it the ATV4K's, your AVR's, or your TV's).
3. The ATV's dynamic range color transforms, and its ability to smoothly transcode 24 or 30fps to 60fps, are fine. Pretty dern good, in fact!
4. Whether your TV's motion compensation features or ability to render SDR & HDR color, and then tweak color (vivid vs. sports vs. cinema vs, etc.) look better to you then the ATV4K's is subjective.

My point is, you're not seeing "original content" when you turn on Match Dynamic Range and Frame Rate! You're just seeing how your TV chooses to render it (with less help from the ATV4K). It's all digital video 'transcoded' in various ways as it's rendered to fill the 8,294,400 pixels of your 4K TV.

I've seen the ATV4K fail miserably rendering some old SD TV shows, delivered with compression artifacts, when compared to my LG TV. People also complain of new Dolby Vision-encoded content being too dark (for most of these instances I blame too many cheap TVs claiming "Dolby Vision" or HDR10 without the recommended brightness levels, as well as content producers being too f*ing artsy while drinking Dolby's Kool-Aide with their high-end studio equipment :-).

There may be the rare content where you'll want to tweak settings, but my experience is that in general, the ATV4K does a better job of rendering video to my TV than does the TV itself. I know for certain that the ATV4K certainly has more powerful and expensive silicon in it than my TV does.

I also turn off all my TV's "TruMotion"-type or "noise reduction" video processing stuff. With the ATV4K, I basically want the TV to be a dumb monitor with bright support for Dolby Vision, etc. Layering video enhancement processes that don't know about each other isn't optimal.

Anyway, if all the video experts who suggest turning Match Content ON honestly like the results so much better that they're willing to put up with constant mode switching by their sans-QMS TV, so be it. I personally feel it's bad advice and that Apple's engineers made the right call for default settings. This is particularly true for people who just want to watch TV and don't give a hoot about invisible dynamic ranges and indistinguishable frame rates.

Ironically, the newer higher-end TVs with QMS support than can quickly cope with mode changes will also be the TVs with enough brightness & contrast to look best using the ATV4K's "All 4K, 60fps, color-calibrated Dolby Vision all of the time!" defaults.

Thank you so much, it works!

You’re welcome! :-)

denimcloak wrote:

Thanks. Your explanation for this behavior is correct upon testing. Your workaround of turning off the Match Content options is interesting but would mean converting content to a constant specified signal of the same frame rate and dynamic range which is undesirable. [...]

I'm curious, why is the Apple TV 4K's transcoding undesirable? I mean, Apple's TV team decided it's the best default setting - does your TV or some other video processor in your system do a much better job of video upsampling or are you seeing specific video defects introduced by the ATV4K? Thanks.

this solution worked for me

Adjust video and audio settings on Apple TV - Apple Support

Turn on (or off) Match Dynamic Range or Match Frame Rate on your Apple TV