Apple tv streaming (was:Dolby/DTS over HDMI setting)

Platforms iPhone & iPad
1

Can anybody explain me should I turn on or off “Dolby/DTS over HDMI” setting?
Since nor iPads nor iPhones have HDMI, I do not understand what does this trigger mean?

The reason I’m asking is I am trying to optimize my Airplay-to-AppleTV streaming experience which is pretty miserable with HD movies. It is quite OK with iPad mini 2 and 3 (some artifacts and/or sluggish loading still occur) but is totally unusable with my iPad mini 1st gen. I guess Apple A5 CPU just doesnt have enough horsepower to adequately serve Infuse codec needs. And I am pretty sure the bottleneck is not my wifi - it is 5Ghz 300Mbps router, AppleTV connected via Ethernet.
My hope is that if I put some workload off Ipad (like decoding Dolby - just transfer sound as is) - maybe I will have better experience with my weaker device?

2

The Dolby/DTS over HDMI setting comes into play if you are using a Lightning to HDMI adapter, and it won’t have any effect for AirPlay settings. The Dolby over AirPlay setting will have an effect on AirPlay, and leaving it enabled can actually result in better streaming.

What kind of videos are you streaming? Are these videos being mirrored to the Apple TV?

3

I am streaming mostly BD rips in mkv containers.
As for mirroring - not sure, Infuse insisted that I turned mirroring ON together with AirPlay but after I did so it switched to kind of streaming mode when nothing is showed on iPad screen and movie is playing full-screen on my 42’'TV. I guess that is not mirroring.

4

Yes, it sounds like you are in fact using mirroring. Infuse supports 2 types of AirPlay. Native and mirroring.

Native AirPlay will support any video that is h.264…even if it’s an MKV, or some other non-Apple friendly container. Native AirPlay will provide the best possible performance, and can be used in the background or while the device is locked.

Mirroring can be used for some of the more obscure formats, like WMV, but will have lower performance and cannot be used in the background.

Infuse will always auto-select the best method to use.

5

Wow, didn’t know that.
So in fact, some movies will use native airPlay while others are ‘mirrored’, and there is no way of telling which is which?

6

The easiest way to tell is to see how AirPlay is enabled.

If a list of devices appears when tapping the AirPlay icon while a video is playing in Infuse, then you’re using native.

If no list appears when tapping this icon, Infuse will then instruct you to enable Mirroring.

7

Thanks for the answers.
What about “dolby effects” setting, how does it affect streaming performance?

8

It will have virtually no impact, and will actually only apply when content is playing on the iPad itself.

If you want a 1080p video to try that will work over native AirPlay, you can find one at the link below.

9

Here’s what first 5-10 seconds of the test movie look like when streaming to apple tv http://gyazo.com/64ec0cc926d29d6038f7e712a896d6b1.png
Lots of artifacts and weird green color.

No problems when playing on iPad without streaming.

10

Whoops, looks like that was a bad upload.

Link has been updated with a new file.

11

So I made a little research with a handful of devices that I have, streaming from an smb shared folder to an Apple tv.
A medium-sized 720p mkb 5000 kbit/sec. Ipad mini 1st gen: (apple A5 cpu) very slow and laggy, progress wheel all the time. Iphone 5c: (a6 cpu) slightly better, but still movie periodically stops and progress wheel displayed. Ipad mini 2nd and 3rd gen(A7 cpu) - no problems at all. Smooth and cool.
So I’d conclude that to stream HD movies from Infuse minimum hardware requirements for an apple device would be A7 cpu. Which means ipad minis 2gen and higher, iPhone 5s and higher.
Everything weaker than that is bound to have major problems streaming HD to a big screen.

12

James, is there a DTS over Airplay option? Or is that something in the works? Thanks.

13

We hope to add it in the future, but not sure it’s technically possible.

1 Like
14

I guess a related question.

With my ATV4 when I play mkvs with DTSHD-MA its only outputting regular old DTS core audio to my avr. Is that how its supposed to work? Why is it not just passing on the full lossless audio to my AVR? Is that a hardware issue or a licensing issue?