All Roku players except the base Express support 4K. All Roku players support 5.1 Dolby Digital, but they must be connected to an audio device that supports DD. Atmos is supported in the Ultra, Express 4K+, and I believe the Streaming Stick 4K. But again you must be connected to an audio device (usually an AVR or soundbar) that supports Atmos.
However, Atmos availability on streaming services is hit or miss. I don't know anything about Hulu, as I don't use it. Prime Video has very little content with Atmos. MAX requires a subscription to the highest tier for 4K and Atmos. Disney+ seems to have a fair amount of content with 4K/Atmos.
That's helpful. Thanks. It's still so general though.
I guess I will need to research more about the statistics of app-specific 3+ audio channel content.
I'm thinking asking here via roku won't get real answers and I might get better details asking at a place like amazon prime video tech support forum since it reduces the number of variables, unless someone chimes in saying that they already research this question and got the real answers. (But to be clear that's only one app of dozens I use.)
You asked a general question, so I provided a general response. I can't be specific about Hulu since I don't use it. But I did provide more detail specific with Prime Video, MAX and Disney+. If you ask something more specific we can likely provide you with a more specific answer.
Asking about Hulu on a Prime Video support site will get you nothing. Hulu is owned by Disney, not Amazon.
That image you posted shows an example of a Prime Video title. Notice it doesn't say anything about Atmos, so it's highly unlikely that title has it. On Prime, the vast majority of titles with Atmos are Amazon Original titles. I have a number of movies that I have purchased with digital copies. Many of these are UHD titles with Atmos audio on the Blu Ray discs. I can access those digital copies on Prime Video, along with Vudu (now Fandango), Google Movies, Apple TV and Movies Anywhere. But when I look on Prime Video, even if the title is available in UHD (not all are) none have Atmos. But if I use the Movies Anywhere app I can get Atmos audio. So don't count on Prime Video to offer much of anything with Atmos.
I actually upgraded to Dolby Atmos just to get surround sound once Roku programmed obsoleted their older models. (They disabled TOSLINK.)
"Atmos availability on streaming services is hit or miss"
This might be the most important sentence you wrote, Dan. I'm wondering if the best place to ask the question might be avforums then. It looks like because Roku now requires Atmos to get surround sound content, and most content is not actually encoded in Dolby Atmos, that Rokus, statistically speaking, are not the best streaming solution as compared to Amazon Firesticks, for example.
jasontaylor7 wrote:I actually upgraded to Dolby Atmos just to get surround sound once Roku programmed obsoleted their older models. (They disabled TOSLINK.)
"Atmos availability on streaming services is hit or miss"
This might be the most important sentence you wrote, Dan. I'm wondering if the best place to ask the question might be avforums then. It looks like because Roku now requires Atmos to get surround sound content, and most content is not actually encoded in Dolby Atmos, that Rokus, statistically speaking, are not the best streaming solution as compared to Amazon Firesticks, for example.
You would never have gotten Atmos with an optical out connection. Toslink doesn't have the bandwidth to pass that much data.
No, Atmos is not required to get 5.1 audio on any Roku. The basic Express will pass 5.1 audio from any source that offers it. The issue is if the provider is offering 5.1 audio in the first place, which has nothing to do with the Roku itself. Some providers will default to stereo sound and you must enter the menu during playback and select the surround audio feed. Paramount+ was bad about that for one.
There's no difference using a Fire TV device, or some other Android based player. I have Nvidia Shield players on several TVs, along with Roku players and one Fire TV Cube. There's no difference between any of them for accessing content from any provider, with the exception of Fire TV sometimes offering better access from Prime Video. Makes sense, since Fire TV is owned by Amazon as well, although I don't like them favoring their own device over other brands.
Remember that Atmos from an online provider is going to be using Dolby Digital+, which is an improvement over the original Dolby Digital. It's not the same as the Atmos that is available on a Blu Ray disc, which uses Dolby TrueHD, a lossless audio codec. The only player I have that can pass that form of Atmos is my Shield players, which can bitstream all of the lossless codecs to my AVR when watching my ripped discs.
You seem to think that Atmos is just another audio codec. It is not. Atmos merely adds height channels to the standard 5.1 audio. In home theater parlance, Atmos is 5.1.2, or 5.1.4 (depending on how many ceiling speakers one has). If you don't have an AVR or soundbar that has the channels necessary to process the Atmos channels, they are mixed into the primary 5.1 channels. DTS has a similar height channel (their trade name for it is DTS:X) but it too is based on a lossless codec, and it is not used by any online streaming provider. Almost everything streaming now uses Dolby Digital+ as their 5.1 audio codec. The vast majority of online content does not have height audio channels, so there is no Atmos for that content. They don't stream Atmos unless the content actually has it encoded in the audio.
