YouTube TV is not looking good at all through the Apple TV box

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Level 1

16 points

YouTube TV is not looking good at all through the Apple TV box

Hello!

I’m contacting you because my wife recently purchased an Apple TV 4K. It’s really great, BUT I was just doing a free trial of YouTube TV, which is not looking good at all through the Apple TV box. It looks fine through the Amazon Fire Stick upstairs. I have been searching for information on settings, and I ran into this:

Note: YouTube relies on VP9 for distribution and playback of 4K videos. VP9 is the industry-leading open-source code. Using VP9 results in less buffering, faster startup, and higher video quality. The Apple TV 4K model (5th generation) does not support VP9 at this time, and therefore we currently can't deliver 4K resolution on this device.

if you can help me resolve the. Thank you!

Brian R.

[Edited by Moderator]

Posted on May 1, 2020 12:48 AM

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Answer 1

May 1, 2020 1:33 AM in response to reverend2

YouTube TV, which is not looking good at all through the Apple TV box.

Please elaborate on the “not looking good at all”. We don’t know what you have seen, unless you tell us.

I doubt you reference the resolution, as --

YouTube TV (streaming service with live network channels) is not YouTube (the video sharing platform).
YouTube has some 4K or higher content, but YouTube TV maxes out at 1080p HD.
YouTube streams on 1080p HD to Apple TV (3rd generation or later), as you pointed out with the YouTube Help Center note. There is nothing to resolve there at this time.

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Answer 2

Rudegar

Level 10

173,916 points

May 1, 2020 4:16 AM in response to reverend2

the codecs apples cpu support in hardware in terms of decoding are

https://www.apple.com/apple-tv-4k/specs/

Video Formats

H.264/HEVC SDR video up to 2160p, 60 fps, Main/Main 10 profile

HEVC Dolby Vision (Profile 5)/HDR10 (Main 10 profile) up to 2160p

H.264 Baseline Profile level 3.0 or lower with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

MPEG-4 video up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 fps, Simple profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

if google wish to have their app use the vp9 codec they need to implement it in software in their app,

this may be a big task google do not wish to do, maybe good can in the future try to influence apple to have their newer arm system on a chip support hardware decoding of the vp9

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Answer 3

reverend2 Author

Level 1

16 points

May 1, 2020 3:34 AM in response to Urquhart1244

I found this:

( and the Apple TV is the 4K)

Note: YouTube relies on VP9 for distribution and playback of 4K videos. VP9 is the industry-leading open-source code. Using VP9 results in less buffering, faster startup, and higher video quality. The Apple TV 4K model (5th generation) does not support VP9 at this time, and therefore we currently can't deliver 4K resolution on this device.

is it possible that our Apple TV 4K is not compatible with YouTube TV?

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