[Ross Hornby]

Hi I’m looking for some advice on Dolby atmos .
So the issue I’m having is , I have a c8 tv which is Dolby atmos/vision when the tv is working on it’s own a hard drive I have with a copy of my files on plays the atmos through the speakers no issue and I get the atmos symbol on the screen , lovely . Now when I connect my LG sl9y soundbar which is atmos it won’t transfare the atmos through the arc channel 🤔so you think perhaps it’s the HDMI lead , this isn’t the case as I have Netflix and the atmos transfers via the tv to soundbar perfectly , I have a uhd player and same again via the tv -soundbar atmos plays perfect . So I borrowed my sons nvidia shield and linked that up with my hard drive and that worked perfectly with atmos 🙄 so my question is why when I try to play the atmos file direct from my hard drive through the tv it only plays Dolby digital not atmos ??? Please help

[Preemptive]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Atmos

I don't know anything about this, but to get the conversation going:
You are saying that

• Your TV supports Dolby Atmos.
• Your soundbar supports Dolby Atmos.
• You can plug the sound bar into the TV and experience Atmos in all circumstances except...
• Direct connection of a hard drive to the TV doesn't work - Dolby digital only.
• You can even get it to work if the drive is connected via an Nvidia shield.

You seem to have eliminated hardware, connection and even file problems. The files play atmos direct without the sound bar or via the Nvidia to the sound bar.
So this would seem to be a configuration issue - that the TV is not being told to route the Atmos to the sound bar when playing from the HDD. Is it possible to go into the settings and find one selector to alter this behaviour?
One other thing that occurs is that all the working scenarios are software or hardware sources that are specifically AV inputs, while an HDD is a generic storage device. Could it be some security thing?

[Preemptive]

Coincidentally, I came across an article on ars technica. It seems fake HDR (SDR in an HDR wrapper) is a thing as is fake 4K (upscaled 2K). Fake Atmos? Not sure, but there's this comment:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019...mment-38325705

This one suggests that the Disney+ app itself does not support atmos, at least on external speakers (C7 tv)...
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019...mment-38325885

I can't say that these comments are correct, but perhaps you need to check
A) Is the content actually what it claims to be?
B) Does the equipment / software properly support and display the format?

EDIT: Reading on, someone states there is a known bug in the app soon to be fixed and there are claims about problems with the Netflix app on Samsung TVs. I'm not clear if your problem is consistent across apps / sources, but it might be that the HW manufacturers are supplying code to the content producers to include in their apps. If the code is buggy in some way, that might be replicated in different apps or it might be the code in the TV itself. However, I expect that as long as the H/W is actually capable of reproducing various content types, software bugs can be fixed, so check LG's support forums.