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Afternoon all.  I recently purchased a Sonos Beam Gen 2 and I also have a One SL.  I have a Sony KD-49XG90 TV.

I’m bamboozled by the variety of Audio in results I have showing on my S2 App.

My Beam is connected to my TV via ARC (HDMI 3), my Apple TV (4K 2021) is connected to HDMI 2 and Sky Q is connected to HDMI4.

I get Dolby Atmos for Premiership football matches I watch in UHD via Sky

I get Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 for movies in UHD via Sky

I get Dolby Digital 5.1 via Apple TV

I get a mixture of Dolby Digital 5.1 and PCM 2.0 for normal channels on Sky

Can anyone explain the disparity between the results I’m getting please, is layman terms if possible.

I would at least like to get Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 on Apple TV and I don’t understand for the life of me why I only get Atmos for the football on Sky UHD but for no other programme, not even UHD movies on Sky!

Many thanks in advance

Sky has limited Dolby Atmos content:

Dolby Atmos is currently available on live Ultra HD broadcasts of English Premier League matches, selected Ultra HD Sky Cinema downloads and at times, selected Box Sets from Sky One and Sky Atlantic (if you have the Sky Signature or Sky Ultimate TV packages).

Dolby Atmos is not available via TV apps on Sky Q, such as Disney+, Netflix etc. If you want to experience Dolby Atmos while using these, you'll need to switch to the app on your Smart TV.

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/setting-up-dolby-atmos

 

Your TV is only equipped with HDMI ARC not eARC. The Apple TV 4K requires a TV with HDMI eARC to play any audio better than Dolby Digital. And when your TV has eARC, Dolby Digital Plus audio will play as Multichannel PCM to the Beam because the Apple TV 4K uses a Dolby MAT encoder.

You might consider getting the HDFury Arcana if you want to get Dolby Atmos or multichannel PCM from the Apple TV. The Arcana allows the Apple TV to bypass your TV’s limitations and send audio directly to the Beam. I use the Arcana with my Apple TV and older plasma TV and it works great.

https://hdfury.com/product/4k-arcana-18gbps/

Thanks so much GuitarSuperstar for taking the time to respond and providing such a genuinely useful response - very much appreciated.  I’ll take a look online for the Arcana Fury 4K.

 

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