Front presence speakers

General
#1

Hi,

My wife bought me front presence (height, elevation- I see different people call them different things) speakers for my Atmos setup. I use two different players- a Himedia box using Kodi and an Apple TV with Infuse. I prefer the Apple TV and have been trying to phase the Himedia box out. No matter what I do with the Apple TV, the presence speakers do not work and those channels do not light up on my receiver. When I play the same movie with the Himedia box, those light turn on on my receiver and I do have presence sound.

I’m guessing this is an Apple limitation and there is no way to have elevation when using the Apple TV, but wanted someone to confirm I’m right.

Thanks so much.

#2

I’m using Infuse Pro 6.5.6 (3387) if that makes any difference for those answering.

#3

If your files contain TrueHD atmos it’s not going to work because the AppleTV doesn’t support TrueHD atmos (found in blurays). They will playback in either 5.1 or 7.1. The only atmos that’s supported is that found in web rips (iTunes, Netflix, Disney+)

#4

Thanks Jarvis- Is there any hope that it ever will? Does anyone know if the NVIDIA Shield (or any other streaming device that) will play TrueHD atmos?

#5

I doubt it. For that to happen Apple would need to enable bitstreaming and right now they don’t need to as no content provider streams TrueHD.

I have an nvidia shield and it supports bitstreaming. The Zidoo boxes do as well. If you get a shield go with the pro version. The cheaper tube shield is under powered and has constant freezes and crashes with apps.

#6

Yes, the Shield can do true hd Atmos and dts:x as well.

It’s a pity, that the atv doesn’t support these formats. Android and kodi are not as smart as infuse and atv.
But since I want Atmos, I had no other choice.

#7

Thanks Jarvis and Gramophone. I think I’m going to hold out for one more refresh on the Shield to hopefully get Wifi6 and HDMI 2.1. I will limp along with the Himedia box for a bit more (It does well enough, but I would prefer one device instead of 2 though).