Apple Broke Dolby Digital 5.1 Output on Apple TV 4K

I have the same problem with my AppleTv 4thgen herein Rio, Brazil. Only Stereo via Apple TV to my Receiver Pioneer, not Dolby Digital 5.1 anymore. After the last update, who knows?

How to fix this Apple people ????

I took the 2015's Apple TV back to the other apartment where i normally sleep, so i can test that only tomorrow, but, i checked the 2017 and 2022 versions. Neithers can plays back 5.1 audio on the tested contents, which was the trailer for "The Family Plan" and for the "Kingsman: The Secret Service".

But according to the previous checks, the 2015's version will plays back it with 5.1 audio (i will get back tomorrow).

In the past, I never tried to play anything with 5.1 audio from the Apple's own services, so I did not know if it was worked in the past or not.

Edit: Are you sure that the trailers has any 5.1 audio?

Thank you so much. We should indeed continue to send feedback to Apple on this. The number of Apple TV 4K 1st gen, 2nd, gen and 3rd gen users who seem to be affected by this extremely annoying bug is simply too large for Apple to ignore this.

I’ve had the same experience on my Apple TV HD. tvOS 18 seems to break Dolby Digital playback. I downgraded to 17.6 and it was all ok. Stupidly I forgot to switch off auto update 😩. So now all audio is stuck Stereo PCM and it sounds awful.

I know that it was working before 18.0 for two reasons. First, I've been bitten by similar issues before, and I have a button on my Marantz AVR's remote that shows me the input schema and the output schema. I used that almost daily. Second, I change the setting almost daily for my Apple TV HD. I'm switching sound output devices, and have to know which setting gives me surround sound.

I have left my update settings on auto, but for reasons I don't understand, I always have to apply updates manually on both my HD and 4K units of Apple TV. That part of it is a huge question mark for me.

I'm posting a subsequent reply, but due to some gray area concerning posting guidelines, I'm not sure whether it's permitted. If you see it, great, if not, then this will have to suffice.

I was also interested in trying a version of tvOS that comes after alpha, and it appeared to work momentarily. When I turned off after alpha updates, then enabled subtitles, the issue returned. That is very much vexing for me, and I found it difficult not to become flamingly livid.

None of my Apple TV's (A1625, A1842, A2843) will produce an 5.1 sound when watching trailers from the Apple TV+ application (Kingsman: The Secret Service; The Family Plan). The "Change Format" setting still configured to "Dolby Digital 5.1".

Apple Tech support: Can you please respond to these posts/thread regarding the loss of Dolby 5.1 encoding after Apple TV 4K’s were updated to iOS 18. Some acknowledgment of our posts would greatly be appreciated.

kind regards.

 I had a play this morning and connected my Apple TV 4K 1st Gen tvOS18 to my LG SN9YG (plus wireless rears) via the HDMI connection on the soundbar. Unfortunately it made no difference. Atmos is fine, but everything else is PCM 2.0. No PCM multichannel and no DD.5.1 even though the Change Format option shows DD.5.1 selected. Reconnected the Panasonic 4k blu ray player to the soundbar and it plays Atmos, DTS X and DD5.1. So, it's got to be tvOS 18 that's broken audio for the Apple TV. Nothing else to do but keep bunging in feedback to Apple and wait I guess. Frustrating doesn't come close. I (and I'm sure many others ) have invested a lot in Apple movie purchases, and at a stroke those purchases have effectively been downgraded in quality. At least they can't remove DD from a Blu ray or DVD.

Here's what I've observed on my two ATVs (3rd generation HD, and 1st generation 4K) since installing tvOS 18.0. I have about three Dolby Digital 5.1 compatible sound systems that I use interchangeably. If I disable Change Format, one of the sound systems (Marantz AVR) receives multichannel audio. The other two don't. If I enable Change Format and choose "New Format: Dolby Digital 5.1", none of them receive multichannel audio from either ATV. I'll admit, I'm old, and I couldn't care less whether the audio is described as PCM or Dolby Digital or Atmos. But (on a good day) I can still tell where sound is coming from (at full frequency range, at least).

I have an Apple 4k (1st gen) and off-brand earbuds that are seen as "AirPods" but couldn't get this to work. I wonder if it's because they are off-brand or some other reason. Are you running 18.0 or 18.1?

Amazoon has got a Fire TV HD Stick on sale for less than $20 today. (Fire TV 4K is $25).

Both claim to do Dolby Atmos.

But that would be an awfully big investment.

Though their web page says you can "Save 20% with Trade-In". That would certainly help.

I am experiencing the same issue after the tvOS 18 update. I contacted Apple Support and opened a case. They informed me that the issue will be escalated to the backend engineering team and addressed in the next tvOS update, which is expected to be released in a couple of weeks.

I am experiencing the same issue after the tvOS 18 update. I contacted Apple Support and opened a case. They informed me that the issue will be escalated to the backend engineering team and addressed in the next tvOS update, which is expected to be released in a couple of weeks.

I also shared this discussion forum link with them so they can read posts from people experiencing the same issue.