Features, settings & updates

[jasontaylor7]

I own some rukus but the hulu app isn't working on them. I need surround sound 5.0 or better, probably dolby atmos. Which rokus can I purchase, including older models, and which are 4k compatible?

[atc98092]

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. 

[jasontaylor7]

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.  

amazon prime random video

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.)

[atc98092]

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.

[jasontaylor7]

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. 

[atc98092]

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@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. 

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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.

[jasontaylor7]

"You would never have gotten Atmos with an optical out connection. Toslink doesn't have the bandwidth to pass that much data."

So, I was explaining, Rokus used to give surround sound out via toslink.  IMO they broke that on purpose so we'd upgrade, but, I had thought that the upgrade required you get a receiver that supported Dolby Atmos HDMI, even though it's a rather stupid thing to begin with.  You disputed this.  But, I wasn't meaning to imply I am getting Atmos out of TOSLINK, as there are 2-3 different hardware upgrades they made me go though so far.

It's unclear to me that "The issue is if the provider is offering 5.1 audio in the first place, which has nothing to do with the Roku itself." because I am not convinced all Rokus can do re-encoding on the fly.  I actually think they don't allow it to work with most apps and movies on purpose as a conspiracy between all of the companies to end up boosting ticket and blu-ray sales and to reduce piracy. I even think that's why the official Roku tech support don't even know what surround sound is and I am asking this question here for like the 5th time.  To convince me otherwise point to the testing videos on each of the apps allowing one to test each channel using each of the various codecs.

Since I've been alive, if I had just know that the only way to see a movie in full resolution and sound is to go to an actual movie theater, I'd have not wasted like thousands of hours of my time.  It's a shame because at the end of the day Hollywood is delivering a sub-par experience to 90% of their customers.

[atc98092]

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@jasontaylor7 wrote:

"You would never have gotten Atmos with an optical out connection. Toslink doesn't have the bandwidth to pass that much data."

So, I was explaining, Rokus used to give surround sound out via toslink.  IMO they broke that on purpose so we'd upgrade, but, I had thought that the upgrade required you get a receiver that supported Dolby Atmos HDMI, even though it's a rather stupid thing to begin with.  You disputed this.  But, I wasn't meaning to imply I am getting Atmos out of TOSLINK, as there are 2-3 different hardware upgrades they made me go though so far.

It's unclear to me that "The issue is if the provider is offering 5.1 audio in the first place, which has nothing to do with the Roku itself." because I am not convinced all Rokus can do re-encoding on the fly.  I actually think they don't allow it to work with most apps and movies on purpose as a conspiracy between all of the companies to end up boosting blu-ray sales and to reduce piracy. I even think that's why the official Roku tech support don't even know what surround sound is and I am asking this question here for like the 5th time.  

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They did not "break" 5.1 over optical. That is simply not the case. What has happened is that most (all?) online providers have switched to Dolby Digital+, and DD+ will not pass through an optical connection. Only a small number of Roku devices have a DD encoder that can convert DD+ to DD. The original Ultra (4640) had such an encoder, and the latest 480x players do, as do all Roku TVs. No other Roku is capable of converting DD+ to DD, which is why older devices with an optical output did not offer 5.1 audio. 

Other than what I just mentioned, no Roku is capable of transcoding audio "on the fly". There is no conspiracy. Providers switched to DD+ because it is capable of the same sound quality as DD with a lower bitrate, which reduces costs for them. It's still a lossy audio codec, but DD+ also offers enough bandwidth for additional channels, which is why they can offer a version of Atmos. But again, most of the content available online does NOT have an Atmos audio track. Atmos only came into being in 2012, and it was likely several years later (at least, maybe 2016-17) before it became available for online streaming. It is simply technological progress, and the only way to keep pace is to upgrade equipment. I still use an old receiver that doesn't have HDMI inputs, so can't even process Dolby Digital. The old Dolby Surround, which was analog, is all it can process. But it does just fine with two speakers for music in my garage.

EDIT: you added that last paragraph while I was typing. It is absolutely possible to get an equivalent theater experience in your home. But you won't get it with a Roku player. To match a professional theater, you need a large screen (most likely with a projector), a dedicated room, a sound system that supports 7.1.4 and all the lossless codecs, and a Blu Ray player to play the content with full video and audio support. Those discs can be ripped to a media server, and you can stream the content using a higher end player such as the Shield. A Roku can also stream that media from a server, but because they will not bitstream the audio to the system, you can't get the lossless audio with height channels (TrueHD/Atmos or DTS-Master Audio/:X).

[jasontaylor7]

Thanks for your reply.

There are hundreds of threads with comments like this https://community.tablotv.com/t/roku-4-vs-3-worth-the-upgrade/4317/38  (I will cut and paste the content since there's so much censorship now):

"

I am not sure if it was official or not, I think it was, but I have seen quite a few posts on the Roku Forums indicating that Roku decided to NOT update the 4 firmware to handle the conversion…

Since the Ultra came out with it from day one, I REALLY doubt they are worried about adding that feature to a now older model…

I did pick up an Ultra and yes it converts it properly. It has some of its own issues (some are having issues with HDR and at first it didn’t play well with h.264 videos with high reference frames) but they are working through those and for me, it is now the best Roku I have had since cutting the cord."

This is probably why there's a Roku Ultra. But, it's like they don't tell customers of the features because at the end of the day you won't get good surround sound for most movies you can stream and it is nearly impossible to get any actual technical support.  

[atc98092]

The Roku 4 (I had one) was a bridge device. It was their first 4K player, but it did not support HDR, so it was not going to be a good long term device. They could not add HDR support or Dolby encoding with a software update. Both require different hardware, and for Dolby encoding it also requires a license from Dolby. Since they couldn't pay for the license by raising the price of the player (they had already all been sold) it wasn't a viable business plan to add it (even if it could be done with software, which it could not).

The Roku 4 also used a hardware platform (silicon on chip, usually referred to as SoC) that differed from all previous Roku models, and for whatever reason only know to Roku was never used again. There was likely some issues with that SoC that made them switch to a different platform. For one, the Roku 4 required an internal fan, which no other Roku has ever had (before or since). So they ended support for the Roku 4 fairly early in its lifespan compared to other, older Roku players. Since it lacked support for HDR, and it could not be added via software, it really was not a reasonable device for moving forward. Almost all 4K content today has either HDR, Dolby Vision or HLG for an extended color palette.