[SOLVED]: No Atmos with Samsung Q700a soundbar and Fire TV

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I recently purchased a Samsung Q700a soundbar. I have connected the HDMI ARC port to my old 1080p BenQ projector and the other HDMI port to a Fire TV stick 4K. The soundbar is advertised as Dolby Atmos, but I don't get any Atmos from Amazon prime, Netflix and Apple TV plus apps.

Anyone got Atmos working with similar setup?
 
The Soundbar can decode and playback content encoded with Atmos or upmix non-Atmos content to provide some form of overhead effect.

When your Display is 1080p it is unlikely your Source is going to play any content encoded with Atmos as that is generally tied to 4K content and even then providers such as Netflix require you to have a Premium subscription.

When you select content to playback on your streaming device you will see which options your hardware and subscriptions allow.

Joe
 
The Soundbar can decode and playback content encoded with Atmos or upmix non-Atmos content to provide some form of overhead effect.

When your Display is 1080p it is unlikely your Source is going to play any content encoded with Atmos as that is generally tied to 4K content and even then providers such as Netflix require you to have a Premium subscription.

When you select content to playback on your streaming device you will see which options your hardware and subscriptions allow.

Joe
Hi Joe, thanks for your reply. I do have the Netflix premium subscription. I have a 5.2.1 home theater with Sony AVR which can play Atmos audio when the same fire TV stick is connected to it. But the video output was to a 4K TV.

From what you suggest, it looks like Netflix will not play Atmos audio for 1080p content. Also Apple and Amazon.
 
I also posted this question on Amazon customer questions and got the following reply from Samsung. Looks like there is no way I can get Atmos working on this.

A: We are aware that some apps that are available on Fire TV do not work in conjunction with some of the sound technology built into soundbars, such as Dolby Atmos, or our own Q-Symphony, although we do not have an exhaustive list of such apps. We hope this helps!
 
You could stick a suitable Converter between the Source and the Soundbar to allow you to play the 4K with Atmos content and down convert the video to 1080p on its way through the converter - will cost £250+

The Source ‘sees’ the capabilities of the converter rather than the capabilities of your HD projector.

Joe
 
I have now resolved this problem. The issue here is not that Netflix doesn't provide Atmos for 1080P outputs. Apparantly The fire stick 4K comes with Fire OS 6 and Netflix doesn't support Atmos on this version. It is supported on Fire OS 7.

I have a Fire TV 4K Max as well which has Fire OS 7. So I connected the 4K Max to the soundbar and now I have Atmos from the Soundbar for both Apple TV and Netflix even when the video is output to 1080P projector.

Prime apparantly only provides Atmos when playing in UHD. So I only get 5.1 on prime.

With the old fire stick 4K connected to my Sony AVR and output to a 4K Oled TV, I still don't get Atmos on 4K content from Apple TV and Netflix. This confirms the issue is specific to Fire OS 6. A few UHD titles on prime get Atmos on fire OS 6, but not all.

This solves my problem as I don't need these apps anyways when connected to my 4K TV. These are all natively available on the TV and they all output Atmos just fine on ARC from the TV.
 
Good you arrived at a working solution - so many variables with 4K UHD and Atmos playback.

ARC can support ‘lossy’ Atmos as DD+.

Joe
 
Good you arrived at a working solution - so many variables with 4K UHD and Atmos playback.

ARC can support ‘lossy’ Atmos as DD+.

Joe
Yes. Finally getting Atmos on my soundbar. I believe all the streaming apps only support lossy Atmos anyway. Shouldn't be an issue.
 

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