I can appreciate the need to have changes in strategy from time to time, and have a long range view, but if you aim to improve on something why do it at the expense of breaking something that works as it should? To me, it looks like the focus was getting the ATV into the app ecosystem, and someone dropped the ball on one the fundamentals, which is good quality audio.
Hey, no argument here. I gave up playing with AAC and PCM multichannel when TV began supporting Dolby Digital alternative track encodes. I only brought this up as a possibly reason for Apple to "try and fix something that ain't broke already." (I.e., can't see any other reason for dropping a viable "passthrough" workflow in favor of a "multichannel decode to PCM" output strategy unless it plans to add future support for currently unsupported audio compression formats.) Even then, you'd think they'd keep the already proven bitstream passthrough device workflow. While I agree there may have been a push to rush the product to market, it does not explain the continued degradation of features that worked in previous tvOS and TV IOS releases—like allowing users to switch manually between AAC and AC3 audio tracks, passing all AC3 track audio to the receiver and only transforming non-DD/DD+ 2.0 audio to "Stereo" PCM, not requiring chapter track language associations, etc—which would hopefully restore proper LFE and DialNorm playback, as well as, correct "active" matrix decoding of "older" AC3 audio content. Who knows, maybe it would also cure the common cold.
Sorry if I seem to be repeatedly "harping" about the same things over and over. While I don't see the drastic changes in audio quality that some report, it does offend my sense of propriety that I have wasted almost a decade encoding and re-encoding thousands of files to ensure QT 7, QT X, IOS device, and now tvOS compatibility only to have Apple decide, over the period of a few weeks, not to play that content as it was originally encoded. I collect video content spanning a 9 decade period and want them to accurately represent the periods from which were taken—from the oldest black & white to latest 3D color video with audio ranging from mono to stereo, as well as, the changeover from early matrix multichannel to current DD and/or DD+ compatible equivalents of the latest discrete sensory multichannel formats retaining, as you said, "good quality audio."
Anything is possible through software, so why not add an option in ATV4 settings for no-frills pass-though so things will work just like the previous generations of devices? Surely they must know there are millions of customers with AVR home theatre systems that would be first in line to upgrade to the new ATV? Imho Steve Jobs could force things on consumers successfully because he obviously and meticulously thought things through. Nowadays, that probably happens less...
You're preaching to the choir here. And what's to add? Simply restore the already proven functionality. Unfortunately, Apple seems more interested in planning changes 2 to 3 updates into the future and less concerned with intermediate problems caused by such transitions—i.e., keeping secrets which might otherwise prepare users for such sweeping changes that suddenly seem to appear out of nowhere. If this is the result of a lack of meticulous forethought, then I agree with you.
You're right about different apps playing content differently. Have you tried using Infuse Pro? It does appear to play AC3 and DTS content quite well.
No. Just spent the last several hours playing with it. Was delighted with the ability to automatically pass DTS or AC3 audio directly to my AVR for decoding—and this includes the proper playback of AC3 1.0, 2.0, 2.1 audio with or without active matrix encoding. (However, AAC 1.0 is still output as 2-channel audio.) Also liked being able to link my entire video library (both BD/DVD source files and iTines managed library files) to a single player app. Only major complaint was that, even with the A8 chip, the TV4-InfusePro combination can sometimes stumble when playing video content in the 20-30 mbps range. Previously tried the Plex player which had smoother playback but this was likely because it performed on-the-fly conversion to IOS/tvOS supported formats resulting in more conservative data rates. Not totally satisfied with any single player at this time but, in combination, they demonstrate features I would like to see in a single app.
In any case, thanks for mentioning InfusePro. Am running half a day behind in adding new releases to my library but it was worth time and effort to find another alternative player that still properly supports my iTunes file encodes, as well as, adding a native DTS support workflow.
