Apple TV interface low res - plays 4K content fine, though

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Apple TV interface low res - plays 4K content fine, though

Well, this is a weird one. I have a brand new Apple TV connected to a brand new Samsung 'The Frame' QLED 4K UHD TV, but the ATV interface is really low res. For instance, the icons showing content look like cartoons instead of actual photos. But when any video content plays, it looks great - very sharp and high res.

Here are two pics, showing one of the featured thumbnails for 'What to Watch' for TV and a movie suggestion for iTunes Movies - both from the home interface. I have two other Apple TVs attached to other TVs in the house, and even though they're older, they don't have this issue.

The third pic is an image of a streaming TV show (Grantchester - I think via Prime Video). Sharp as a tack.

Anyway, any idea of what's going on here?

Apple TV 4, tvOS 12

Posted on Jul 24, 2019 2:59 PM

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Answer 1

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QuickPost

Level 10

103,365 points

Jul 25, 2019 8:55 AM in response to Chappsnet

Hello,

This one is stumping me! I’ve been doing some research on this and there might be a setting on the TV itself that could be causing the distorted graphics. Do you have another TV you could test the Apple TV on? Just so we can verify if it is the TV or the Apple TV.

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Answer 2

Chappsnet Author

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Jul 26, 2019 10:03 AM in response to QuickPost

Me, too - although it's not as effortless as my LG tvs. I think I would be cautious about a Samsung tv in the future, but I wanted The Frame, because it's so low profile, and it's in our very small home office. The nice part is that it displays art when it's not working as a tv. It's good enough for now - and as usual, I'm enjoying my Apple tv. Thanks!

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Answer 3

Chappsnet Author

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Jul 25, 2019 8:32 AM in response to QuickPost

Yeah, it's a brand new, top of the line HDMI cable - which is obvious when the 4K videos play. Settings are 1080p for resolution, and HDMI output is YCbCr. It's really odd that this seems to only affect the interface, not the videos.

I did notice some stuttering of the video output, but that resolved when I turned on 'Match Content'. That setting had no affect on the interface, which still looked like cartoons, as you can see from the photos. Maybe I'm not seeing video as well as I should ... but it seems fine.

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Answer 4

Chappsnet Author

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Jul 25, 2019 3:46 PM in response to QuickPost

Aha! After fooling around with the complex advanced settings for my Samsung TV, I noticed that when I set it to 'movie' mode (which is really, really dim), the posterization in the thumbnail images of the Apple TV interface disappears. So, I went into the advanced settings for Movie mode and discovered that 'sharpness' was set to 0. Then, I changed it to 'Natural' mode, and noticed that the Sharpness setting was set to 10. When I tuned that down to 0, all of the posterization disappeared. Everything now seems just right.

Amazing that one default setting could so horribly distort the Apple TV interface. I never noticed any problem, though, with streaming content - I wonder why? There's very little way that someone who isn't comfortable with advanced video settings would ever be able to discover this issue - I'm surprised that Samsung has developed it as a default for at least two of the picture modes. Wait ... Samsung. No, no I'm not surprised.

Sigh.

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Answer 5

Chappsnet Author

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32 points

Jul 25, 2019 3:48 PM in response to Chappsnet

Oh, seems there's still some posterization going on in the interface, but it's no longer so distinct, since the sharpness has been turned off. Well, as long as it doesn't badly affect streaming video, I guess it's fine.

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