AppleTV 4K and Sony Bravia TVs - Playback issues

Some of you are experiencing the same problem I am - playback issues - where after a couple of days:

1. Hulu will start to play a video and then freeze (at the NBC splash screen for example)

2. Netflix will start to play a video; you'll hear audio, but there's no picture.

Initially, I thought this was a HDCP 2.2 issue with the AppleTV 4k and got Apple's recommended super expensive Belkin cable and then finally got the AppleTV 4k replaced. In both instances, this made no difference.

After some testing I think I've finally found what it is. It's AppleTV's inability to properly negotiate HDR10 settings on your 4k TV. In my case this is a Sony Bravia XBR 75X900E, though I have heard this with others.

Here's what you do to fix it:

1. Go into the Picture settings in your TV. You'll need to hunt around a bit for this in your TV but you're essentially looking for advanced settings that is labeled something like "HDR Mode".

2. Change it from "Auto" to "HDR10". (In other TV's this may be different)

That's all you need to do. After that you shouldn't experience HDR negotiation issues.

I have reported this fix to Apple Support. Hopefully, the AppleTV engineering team fixes the HDR sync bug shortly. In the meantime, enjoy 🙂