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Stereo - no surround sound

Hi gang,

Setup of my 2nd Gen ATV has gone very smoothly. Only one problem. All movies play as stereo, even when there is a 5.1 surround track. When I go into the Audio settings, if I turn Dolby Digital from Auto to On and then play a movie, my receiver say "Stereo Downmix". My ATV and receiver are connected by an HDMI cable.

Any ideas?

Cheers!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.1)

Posted on Sep 30, 2010 5:30 PM

77 replies

Dec 24, 2012 2:13 AM in response to miw1163

You should be getting surround with ATV on Netflix, there was a recent update that allows Netflix to transfer the 5.1 via Apple TV. I left Netflix when they changed their subscription policy but at that time weren't streaming 5.1 surround, so I left. Saw in an update that the 5.1 was added to Netflix (downloaded last week to Apple TV)

Nevertheless, I havent ever had a problem with getting Dolby 5.1 sound to play from iTunes store movies that stated they were 5.1 or from ripped disc's so long as I set handbrake to passthru and not try to alter the audio portion of the rip. I have my Apple TV v2 connected to my receiver via optical cable because the audio via HDMI never seemed to get above virtual surround. So the optical cable fixed the issue for me.

Feb 21, 2013 6:55 AM in response to Phil McFarlane

There is an app called Beamer that streams any video file, MKV, AVI, etc. to the ATV 2 and 3 (I am not affiliated with the app). Their beta 1.6 streams 5.1 audio.

There is a trial that you can download to test. If you buy it it's $15. Worth every penny.

Stereo - no surround sound