Stereo - no surround sound

When you say that you "hold down select", can you please explain what that means? I'm not sure what device you are referring to when you hold down select?

And switching audio tracks? Are we talking about the same thing here? I'm talking about watching movies and TV shows through Apple TV. I'm not sure I understand how/why you would switch audio tracks on a movie? This is getting me even more lost.

+Apple tells me that with the new Apple TV (which people are referring to as "ATV2"), Apple **DOES NOT** support 5.1 surround-sound if you run an HDMI cable from your Apple TV into your surround-sound amplifier. Apple will *ONLY* support 5.1 surround-sound if you do one of two things+

I don't doubt Apple Care told you this, but this is insane and very unlikely to be technically correct. It completely violates both Apple's design principles and HDMI's purpose (as you yourself noted).

I bought my first Apple TV last night and experienced the same problem. This morning, it auto-updated and when I played some iTunes TV stored on my computer my home receiver automatically senses the Dolby Digital stream.

So it at least works for previously downloaded TV shows encoded in 5.1. I haven't had a chance to try it with movies streamed from the iTunes store. Someone earlier noted Netflix does not stream 5.1 so we're out of luck there.

Dave Ings
Toronto, Canada

If your movie or TV show has two tracks (a stereo track and a 5.1 surround sound track), you have the option of holding down the select button on your Apple TV remote and choosing which audio track to use.

Depending on how the video was encoded, the 5.1 track can be listed first or second plus it can either be enabled or disabled when encoded. If stereo track is listed 1st and enabled and 5.1 is listed second and also enabled, the Apple TV apparently defaults to the stereo track because it always chooses the first one. That's the problem you're probably running into. You can manually choose which one you want to use as I described above.

I believe Handbrake encodes video with *the 5.1 track listed first* which is why it doesn't have the problem. Also, I believe if you go in to settings on your Apple TV and switch the surround sound setting from "Auto" to "On", it will play the 5.1 track no matter which order it is encoded. I haven't played around enough with different encodes and different settings to be exactly sure but I think this is how it works.

Was having the same issue of no surround sound being recognized by my sony receiver that was connected by optical out from the apple TV. Even with movies I purchased from the itunes store and streamed from my imac to the apple TV. I then rented a Simpson's episode that was HD and Dolby Digital 5.1, and this seemed to fix everything. The simpson's episode played with DD5.1 on my receiver, and then movies I had purchased from itunes which previously would not play DD5.1 on my receiver have started to work with DD5.1.

I had tried all the other suggestions of reseting the appleTV, and changing the dolby digital to on etc., and nothing else had worked.

Give this a try if you are having trouble. It might work for you.

Wow, all sorts of answers being given here. Okay, so the one thing I have NOT tried yet is to play a previously downloaded movie from iTunes on my iMac that I know is in 5.1. I have several movies that I have downloaded over the last year or so that fit this category, but I have not yet played any of them on my new Apple TV. (By the way, Apple TV did an update last night....took about 15 minutes, turned the screen green, and then went back to normal....but I still have "stereo" only).

So I'll go ahead and try playing a previously downloaded movie in 5.1 and see what happens. Technically speaking, I have no idea why this would "trigger" the 5.1 to turn itself on----that makes no sense to me. But if it works, then I certainly won't complain.....I just want it to work.

I also want to clarify something if I may: Earlier in this thread, someone said that Netflix does NOT stream ANY program/movie/TV show in 5.1----do I understand that correctly? So in other words, no matter what I stream from Netflix, it's going to be in stereo only? Is this right? Thanks in advance.

smitty - newagemac explained better what i was talking about. if a movie file has a stereo track and a 5.1 track, it appears that the appleTV is sometimes defaulting to the stereo track. if you tell it to switch, it seems to remember what audio track you want to use when you quit watching the movie and go back to it later.

and yes, for now netflix is only sending stereo audio. this is the lowest common denominator - look at all the problems we're having here! netflix probably does not want to deal with the support nightmare that 5.1 audio would represent.

i did try downloading an iTunes store movie with 5.1 and although that did work (as one might expect it to), i don't think it "triggered" anything with respect to my handbrake-encoded movies.

Okay....thanks Robert. So then if I'm following all of this correctly, what I will do right now is play something that I know is 5.1, and while the movie is playing, I will hold down the "Select" button. And this is what will allow me to change----do I have this correct?

And thanks for the Netflix info also...very much appreciated.

you might need to press "up" first (to bring up the scrubber and other onscreen info) and then press and hold select. you should get a new screen with a menu that shows the audio tracks. usually in my case, because i have not set up the audio track metadata right, it gives 2 choices of "unknown language". select the one that's not selected and it should start playing in 5.1 (that is of course if the other track is actually an 5.1 AC3 track...)

Well, I can now happily report "success". Although I must admit, I'm not sure why it is working correctly now.

I did what someone above suggested----I rented (for 99 cents) an episode of "The Simpsons" which is in 5.1 surround-sound. As soon as I played it, my Marantz surround-sound receiver switched over to 5.1 by itself without me doing anything. I'm curious to see if I really needed those Optical Audio cables (TOSlink) after all?? My guess is that I did not need them. But I'm so tired of dealing with this thing that I'm not going to experiment any more----maybe some other day.

By the way, the 30 second preview for this particular Simpson's episode that I rented, the sound was only in stereo. But the rented program itself is in 5.1 surround sound. Does this sound normal? I also went to the "movies" section and played a few movie previews (such as Harry Potter), and those were also only in stereo, even though the sound is listed as 5.1. So then does this mean that Apple's previews will only come across as stereo, and you won't get the true 5.1 surround sound until you pay for the rental?

Whew!! I thought Apple TV was supposed to be easy to set up. I've spent so much time on this thing.....

I would just like to add one more thing that might be of help to some folks out there. Since I've already gone insane trying to figure this out, hopefully might comments might help someone else from following in my footsteps. 🙂

I just got off the phone with Marantz. Marantz is the maker of my surround-sound receiver. The person I spoke with was extremely knowledgable, and we ran a few tests to see if the information that AppleCare gave me was correct or not. I hate to say this, but AppleCare was not correct regarding the HDMI/TOSlink cable information. Here is what I discovered:

When I plug my Apple TV into the back of my Marantz surround-sound receiver (using the HDMI cable), it DOES allow 5.1 surround-sound to happen! This is the opposite of what AppleCare told me. They told me that I had to go out and purchase a TOSlink (Optical Audio) cable, and connect that to the back of my Marantz receiver in order to receive 5.1 surround signals---and this is wrong. (In one of my earlier posts, I said that AppleCare told me that you CAN use the HDMI cable for surround-sound if you'd like to, however, you can NOT run it directly to the receiver. They said you have to run it first to your TV, and THEN to your receiver in order to make 5.1 work).

So it turns out that the common sense answer is correct after all. If you run the HDMI cable from your Apple TV to your surround-sound receiver, that is just fine and you will get 5.1 sound. I just did it, and it works perfectly. I rented a 5.1 surround-sound episode of "The Simpsons" (for 99 cents, as another person suggested earlier), and it worked great----WITHOUT the TOSlink (Optical Audio) cable. Since the Marantz receiver self-detects the audio signal, then according to Marantz, that means that the previews I was looking at (previews of TV shows and movies in the iTunes Store) are only in stereo, even though the actual program itself is in 5.1. So don't expect to have preview clips in 5.1 surround-sound----you should only expect them in stereo.

I hope this makes sense. Please feel free to ask me any questions, and I'll do my best to answer. I've spent days on this thing, and I just wish that AppleCare would have provided me with the correct answer to begin with. That would have saved me a lot of trouble.

One final comment: in this 11/18 story at

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/11/18/reed-hastings-leader-of-the-pack/

the Netflix CEO says (in the video interview at the bottom) they have begun streaming audio in 5.1. Presumably this means new additions, given no one here has noticed it to date.

i think for now they are only doing 5.1 if the client is a PS3? not entirely sure.

Like smitty195, I found ATV2 -> Marantz via HDMI -> TV just works for DD5.1, except for one additional caveat. My Marantz SR6005 kept playing in Stereo mode only, even with 5.1 content, until I set the *Apple TV optical output to "Auto" in Settings*. That one change was the key for me to get 5.1 audio working.

There's an official Netflix blog:

http://blog.netflix.com/2008/11/encoding-for-streaming.html

bogiesan

I've had the same issue using the Turbo.264HD which successfully manages to capture both the 5.1 DD track and the stereo tracks in an MKV file. However, as usual the ATV2 only plays back the Stereo irrespective of using Subler to turn off tracks etc. (in fact Subler just stops the video playing in ATV2 if I disable the stereo track).

The thing that HAS WORKED for me so far, and I'm guessing this is a problem a lot are having here is the suggestion that once a film (you suspect or know has a 5.1 track) begins playing, press UP on the Apple remote, under the description of the film you should see 'Hold SELECT for more options' (if you don't there's probably only a stereo track). If you hold it, you'll be presented with a couple of audio or language tracks, tick the first and you'll probably find it's the 5.1 track.

If you try this and it works let others know as it does look like this is causing people a lot of stress.