Arc/Atmos - TV support for passthrough from Apple 4k?

The amazon app on it also works but the appletv+ does not support atmos yet but lg said they will update it on a future update but I suspect that’s going to be more like November rather than tomorrow. It’s all very frustrating especially when we have x all spent a lot of money to get something that should have been available immediately on all set top box and apps either on lg tv or ATV

Does anyone know anything about how a Vizio 2018 P series TV (P55-F1) can play with Apple TV 4k and the Arc? I see lots of discussion about LG, but no one talking Vizio…

The Vizio supposedly supports Atmos via its built-in apps (Vudu, Netflix, etc), which I have not tested yet since I have never bothered with them before. But something is preventing compatibility with Apple TV 4k.

Despite best efforts, I cannot seem to get my new Arc to register as an Atmos compatible device with Apple TV... Apple TV does not show the “immersive audio” menu option at all. When playing what should be Atmos compatible 4K content from iTunes on Apple TV 4k, the Arc system settings shows the audio output it’s getting as Dolby Digital 5.1. Not sure if that’s DD+ or not.

As I understand it, ATV4k will only output LPCM, which Sonos can’t handle right now, so the Vizio TV must be recompressing the LPCM to Dolby? (Not sure if Vizio would passthrough LPCM anyway even if it was supported by Sonos?)

I see on this site https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/vizio/p-series-2018 that my TV should support “DOLBY DIGITAL 5.1 PASSTHROUGH VIA HDMI ARC” but I’m not sure if that’s DD+ or just plain old DD.

How do I know if the TV will support LPCM passthru from the Apple TV to the Arc, once that feature gets enabled?

Overall, backreading this thread is pretty depressing, because I realize how complex getting all this stuff to work together is, and how few people will actually have a supported scenario for Atmos, which is the whole reason I bought this soundbar. Tempted to return it and go back to my Beam.

Vizio, based on my discussion with them, will not pass anything other than Dolby Digital from an HDMI input, although some TVs can generate Dolby Digital Plus from internal apps. 

I won’t be purchasing another Vizio TV. I am thinking strongly about the device mentioned here until I can afford to replace the TV I purchased 12 months ago. 

Same experience here with Apple TV via LG TV. Atmos content results in no sound on Arc or on the internal TV speakers.

Tested the Vizio Smartcast built-in apps on my 2018 Vizio P55-F1 last night, and was able to get Atmos on the Arc by using the Vizio apps (e.g. Vudu, Netflix) to play Atmos content instead of the Apple TV.

Of course, these apps suck compared to the Apple TV interface…. but it’s hard to blame Sonos for the problem when multiple other companies (Apple, Vizio) are clearly being obstinate with their software and how it outputs to other devices. At the end of the day, it’s just software standing in the way. The hardware is capable. Ugh.

Many varying experiences here indeed. Reading through this thread while I was waiting for my preordered Sonos Arc to arrive made me really nervous that things just wouldn’t work at all. Luckily I’m happy to report otherwise for my particular setup. I have a LG C8 and ATV 4K (connected using ARC mind you, the C8 doesn’t have eARC) and I’m getting Atmos from Netflix and movies purchased from iTunes — which is what I care about. 

I thought I had to upgrade to the C9 that has eARC for things to work properly, and ordered it before the weekend since I found it at a sale for a great price. However, I’m unsure if I actually need it since things seems to be working fine with the C8 and ARC.

What’s weird though, and what I’m having a hard time understanding is that Apple undeniably states that atmos isn’t supported over arc in this article: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204069

(“Apple TV 4K uses a high bandwidth form of Dolby Atmos that doesn’t work over ARC connections.”)

I mean, I’m definitely not complaining that it works for me! I just don’t completely understands the workings here and what’s really going on. As I see it there are 3 possible options:

1. The article from Apple is outdated and they now support Atmos over ARC.
2. The Sonos app is being tricked somehow into thinking that it's getting an Atmos signal, when it in fact isn’t.
3. The LG C8 is doing some sort of voodoo magic to make it all just work.

No idea if any of the these are true, or if something else is going on. But for now I’ll just enjoy the content I guess :)

@batsabode

Are you able to get the Apple TV 4K to play Dolby Atmos through the internal LG 75NANO90UNA TV speaker?   I disconnected my Sonos Arc to see and all I can get is Dolby Digital on the internal speaker.     I could get Dolby Atmos with the Xbox One X on the internal speaker.

When I plug the same Apple TV 4K into my LG OLED55B7D I get Atmos On the internal speaker and also when I connected the Sonos Arc.

I am just wondering if this is a problem with the 75NANO or if it is related to the firmware.  I would expect we at least get Atmos on the internal speaker with the Apple TV 4K.    This is so frustrating.

I tried getting atmos on the lg internal speakers and its exactly the same as going to the ARC Zero sound for any Atmos movie. I do keep hearing that some of the LG tv’s (generally OLED) seem to play Atmos both on the tv and relaying to ARC ,so it might also be a passthru software problem on the LG along with Sonos not accepting LPCM and coupled with the fact that Apple sends out a MAT signal. All in all too frustrating, I know it will get fixed but how will we all have to wait with our brand new over 3K systems

If your TV does not have/support eARC passthrough there is a new solution! 

New Arcana device from HDFury solves the problem. https://hdfury.com/product/4k-arcana-18gbps/

Device separates out full audio up to Dolby Atmos over Dolby TrueHD from any external HDMI source and sends it to the Sonos Arc and passthrough full 4k video up to 18gbps!  They are accepting pre orders now.

Apple says the Apple TV will not pass Atmos (even compressed to DD+) over HDMI Arc.  Apple requires eARC.  “Apple TV 4K uses a high bandwidth form of Dolby Atmos that doesn’t work over ARC connections.”  https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204069

That’s a limitation Apple has imposed.