Apple Broke Dolby Digital 5.1 Output on Apple TV 4K

Are folks with modern receivers also having this problem? I spoke with a friendly customer service rep with no immediate fix. It is strange that the Youtube app works properly while none of my streaming services such as Netflix works.

Same :/

Have had my Apple TV 4k work flawlessly for years until tvOS 18. Only PCM coming out of it now. Can verify that everything else connected to my Sony AVR sees all other codecs fine.

C’mon Apple…

The email from apple instructs me to use Atmos on my receiver or sound bar. As my perfectly functional, until the update, receiver predates this by several years that is not an option for me. Hope Apple solves this. Perhaps creating an option do go back to whatever setting was before this current update. Or make that setting for 5.1 actually output a 5.1 signal.

I have Apple TV HD and after the update to TVOS 18 a few days ago, I no longer get Dolby 5.1 except in the YouTube app.

It has been connected to an older Bose Lifestyle system and older Sharp TV and has never had this issue. I tried restarting, unplugging cables, forcing Dolby 5.1 but nothing worked. Is this only affecting folks with older TVs and surround systems?

I have the same problem with my AppleTv 4thgen herein Rio, Brazil. Only Stereo via Apple TV to my Receiver Pioneer, not Dolby Digital 5.1 anymore. After the last update, who knows?

How to fix this Apple people ????

Yes, that's exactly what I'm seeing and hearing. I had to use the change format setting to get DD5.1 in the past with tvOS17 but can't be exactly sure of the version numbers. But since tvOS the change format option does not work. Maybe that's what tvOS18 has broken i.e. the change format option.

Apple Tech support: Can you please respond to these posts/thread regarding the loss of Dolby 5.1 encoding after Apple TV 4K’s were updated to iOS 18. Some acknowledgment of our posts would greatly be appreciated.

kind regards.

Now I am really confused. I was playing a movie that was supposed to be Dolby Atmos (on Netflix) but was reporting on the Netflix banner as "Spacial Audio" ...but going in and out of the movie did something.

Now all of a sudden - it said Dolby Atmos again and when I hit play, the upper right said Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision.

I did the same in Prime and I once again got Atmos there.

Seems there is a handshake that is not correct initially but eventually kicks in correctly.

Just to be safe, I rebooted the ATV and rechecked Netflix.....it was still reading Dolby Atmos and playing Atmos correctly.

I'm not sure what happened but it is working again.

If I disable Charge Format I lose 5.1.

Re-enable it and 5.1 comes back.

This was the way it had always been with my 1st Gen 4K until tvOS 18 came along. However, the 3rd Gen doesn’t seem to be affected by the Stereo PCM problem.

Just to cover all the bases, this is a 3rd Gen Ethernet model.

So far the beta bug report I made says that there are less than 10 similar reports. I think the threshold needs to be 'more than 10' before apple really starts to take it seriously, but I could be wrong.

@llee: you might be able to either skip that, or enroll and just not download beta updates. I have them turned off on my iPhone and iPad. Either way, no worries, just trying to get this issue resolved as quick as possible.

Sadly, I couldn't get this to work on my 1st gen 4K, but I don't have HomePod so it may've worked if I did. I paired a bluetooth speaker instead and it doesn't show an option to play from both at the same time and switching back and forth between them doesn't work.

Agreed. I have two Apple TVs and this update broke them both. They work perfectly fine except the crippling the update has done and no reason they should be replaced. I'm not purchasing another one because of that. I'll switch to something with more freedom. Updates breaking important features is not something I will look passed. I really hope Apple makes good and fixes this soon but so far, it seems they won't even acknowledge it.