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Apple has a fix to one of the biggest issues with the Apple TV 4K

Apple has a fix to one of the biggest issues with the Apple TV 4K

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Content matching is coming to tvOS 11.2... someday

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Nilay Patel, Verge Editor-in-chief and my boss, is a huge A/V spec nerd. I mean, did you read his review of the Apple TV 4K? What a dork. 

Here's one the biggest gripes extracted directly from his review:

"The Apple TV also automatically preferences refresh rate over any other setting: if your TV supports 60Hz HDR10 but only 30Hz Dolby Vision (like 2016 LG OLEDs), the Apple TV will pick HDR10, even though HDR10 looks worse than Dolby Vision. Apple told me that’s because it wants the interface and games to run as smoothly as possible; it’s found that the interface judders at 30Hz. So you’ll get worse HDR but a smoother interface, all because the Apple TV won’t switch modes."

Well, good news bossman.

Screenshot from tvOS 11.2
Screenshot from tvOS 11.2
Image: Apple

session posted to the Apple Developer site says that starting with tvOS 11.2, the Apple TV 4K can be set to automatically switch video display modes to match both the dynamic range and the native frame rate of the originating video content. To enable, owners will have to select "Match Content" from the Video and Audio settings menu where they can independently choose to match the dynamic range and frame rate (see image above). Both will be disabled by default, says Apple.

The bad news is that we have no idea when the tvOS firmware will arrive to update current 11.1 boxes. As for YouTube 4K HDR support and tripping the Dolby Atmos light on Nilay’s receiver? Those are Apple TV 4K topics for another day.