Apple Broke Dolby Digital 5.1 Output on Apple TV 4K

Same here since tvOS 18

I have sonos beam 2 (eARC)+ Lg g1

Passtrough setting on the tv give me LPCM 7.1 (wich is not sound good)

Auto setting on tv give me stereo instead of digital 5.1 before the update

Please Apple fix this that working properly

Sadly, I couldn't get this to work on my 1st gen 4K, but I don't have HomePod so it may've worked if I did. I paired a bluetooth speaker instead and it doesn't show an option to play from both at the same time and switching back and forth between them doesn't work.

It's strange. I've bought Apple TV 3rd gen recently, It has tvOS 17.4 installed and Dolby works fine. So it seems that if you have tvOS 17.1 and upgrade it to 17.4 or 18 you will lose dolby. But if have 17.4 already installed, it works just fine.

BTW, I bought new Apple TV cause I didn't want to wait for Apple to fix this issue and I wanted to upgrade my HomeKit with new hub. But I can't use new Apple TV as a hub, because I need to update it first. And I don't want to update it because I will lose dolby…

I have the same issue. I must use a splitter to get optical from HDMI since my cheap receiver has no HDMI input.

However, the fact that the 'Change Format' option still is there in tvOS 18 should indicate that Apple haven't removed this feature, but rather messed it up with the update, no?

Adding more fuel…

Went to watch a movie tonight and discovered I’m also only getting stereo in all apps :(

ATV on tvOS 18 > LG oled > Denon receiver via ARC. It’s an older receiver that doesn’t support 4K hence why I’m using ARC. All my other devices work fine in the same scenario. So hopefully Apple fixes this ASAP.

ATV had been working fine previously. What’s funny is I specifically wanted to watch a movie on ATV+ but nope guess not

I had a vane try by pairing a non-apple pair of ear phones via Bluetooth. It hooked up alright, but didn't solve the 5.1 problem.

I switch the audio output to my Bluetooth ear phones and then back to Apple TV, but nothing changes...

I am using HDMI de-embedder out to an Integra Surround Sound Receiver.

I have dolby 5.1 via the optical from the extractor on a model A1842. I disconnect it and then connect a model A2169 to the exact same cables and lose 5.1 (only get stereo).

Both units on TVOS 17.6.1

It's weird. I don't have the 'use both' option. It's either 'TV' or my Bluetooth device.

Perhaps it's because it's a non-Apple device I connect (I down own any, so tried with my Sennheiser earphones.)?

I have th HD version (1625).

Try turning off the "B" update setting then back on and see if the update os available.. it could be you're region and/or device model which needs to wait for the update to roll out bit the fix should hit you soon

What's crazy is I have 4 Apple TVs from the latest to the earlies gen. All of them were 18.0 and the newest ATV was feeding an Atmos system. I had no Atmos all of a sudden and some of the apps were reporting either stereo of spacial audio instead of Atmos. I forget exactly what I did after that I did a factory reset and went through the painstaking task of entering all the passwords again. Then I noticed all my Apple TVs had 18.0 and the newest one was 18.1 and Atmos was now working again. This was weeks ago. And now I see the 18.1 is just now coming to some people. I wonder if it had to do with my factory reset?

So, for some time, I have noticed that my AppleTV would sometimes output in stereo. I noticed this would happen especially after it played something that was in native stereo. It seemed to get "stuck" in stereo after that, but if I restarted the Apple TV and/or my TV, it seemed to get "unstuck" and would work fine.

It didn't always happen consistently but restarting always seemed to fix it. This time, restarting did not fix the issue.

My appletv 4k gen 2 started displaying this bug out of the blue. Audio suddenly wouldn’t sync with any apps besides youtube, Then I figured out that It was an issue with the 5.1 audio and found this thread.

The B update didn’t work. Suggested fixes by other users in this thread did not work. The only temporary solution I found is to force stereo audio.

I suppose if this is anything like my iOS stickers disappearing, I better just get used to stereo audio. If It’s not a big enough bug, I just don’t think they care.

I have the Apple TV HD IOS 18 and it did break the DD5.1 as I used another box Apple TV (3rd generation)

with a very old IOS on the same cables and DD5.1 works to my BK Ref 70

I Have tvOS 18.0 (22J357). I use Update software and get I am up to date. Do not get anything related to this B update???