When Was Dolby Atmos first Broadcast on BT Sport?

[RichieT]

I have an HDFury Arcana ( for those that don't know it's the only device that can extract Dolby Atmos Lossless TrueHD from a signal and split it into audio and video) I'll try the BT4K Box with that direct to the Sonos Arc to see if it makes any difference , just to be completely to sure it's not my TV. But the TV is in passthrough mode for the audio so I'm pretty certain it's not that. It's also allowing lossy Dolby Atmos from the Shield and Apple TV so another reason to think it's not the TV, but you never know.

[RichieT]

Just tried running the BT 4K Box directly to the HDFury Arcana. This splits the video and audio. The video goes to the TV and the audio then goes directly to the Sonos Arc. As I suspected it made no difference. Tested on Jack Ryan S02 and still broadcasts in 5.1. (Just wanted to check it didn't make a difference) I'm assuming Amazon are not broadcasting in Atmos at the moment????

I'll wait for a morning kick off match on Ultimate (games that are supposed to be broadcast in Atmos) and try with this setup again.

When I've noticed the games not being broadcast in Atmos I've also tried the BT app on my Nvidia Shield and it wasn't in Atmos on that either, but I can see from reading these threads that there have been some problems with Android TV.

This doesn't excuse BT Sport not broadcasting in Atmos when they state they do here.."All of BT Sport's 52 live Premier League games per season, as well as selected live UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League and FA Cup matches, will be supported by Dolby Atmos." on this link https://www.bt.com/sport/features/dolby-atmos-on-bt-sport

Especially when you use their own 4K box (confirms that ANY 4K box outputs Atmos here...https://www.bt.com/help/bt-sport/dolby-atmos-with-bt-sport-ultimate-channel )and receiving the feed via BT smart Hub2 and from BT broadband.

BT can't wriggle out of it by blaming anything else when they supply ALL the kit 🙂

If any of the information I've put here is incorrect, please correct me as all this is coming from the BT website today.

[DarrenDev]

I released an update to the Android TV app on Wednesday night that tells me much more about the device capabilities and also exactly what it's playing. Could you please update and give it a go? From that, I'll at least be able to tell you straight away whether the app will even offer you the Atmos stream.

My schedule doesn't currently list any events in the next 30 days as being Atmos enabled, however they've been making a LOT of last minute decisions with it lately, so I'd expect that to update on Saturday morning. If you could give the Burnley v Watford match on Saturday 6pm a try on your Shield, I'll at least be able to confirm for sure:
1. What your device says it can do
2. What the content says it contains
3. What your device ended up playing

[RichieT]

Thanks @DarrenDev 

Don't know if you know but Android TV recently had a major upgrade that managed to brick the Nvidia Shield. Hotfixes have been released and streaming functionality doesn't seem to have been affected but just putting that out there for the sake of completeness when trouble shooting.

So I've turned off auto updates until Nvidia gets a proper fix out. I've just updated the BT Sport app on the Shield as you suggested and I'll keep an eye on the Burnley v Watford match.

I can see in the BT Sport app on the Shield that it has a "device checker" it would be good to put the audio capabilities on that as well. The device checker on my Shield has every box ticked by the way 🙂

I'm also well aware that some 3rd party devices can report wrong codec information occasionally ie: You can set your TV audio settings to Auto and it might not always automatically pick up the changes. I've had no such issues with my TV and I've got the audio settings on both the Shield and the TV set to "passthrough" so the Sonos Arc does all the audio processing. It does this perfectly with everything that I've thrown at it.

I realise some of these questions can be quite technical for a BT employee, especially if they haven't been trained but if they don't know what the customer is talking about it shouldn't be the default setting to try and upsell at every opportunity. The fact the complaint resolutions person still parroted the same line can only leave someone in my position to conclude this is a deliberate sales strategy. 

Unfortunately this is the 3rd major screwup since joining BT where I've been told complete nonsense by numerous BT people only to have it confirmed they were all wrong, with absolutely no ownership of the mistakes at any time. 😞

[DarrenDev]

OK, so the good news is that your device is reporting full Atmos support with 8 audio channels. There's no reason that it shouldn't offer you Atmos when an event is broadcast. Let's wait and see what it reports when it actually attempts playback.

There was discussion about adding a test video to the app to allow users to verify Atmos behaviour, but nothing has happened yet unfortunately.
I've just chatted with the team about adding Atmos to the device checker - most platforms don't offer a way of identifying audio channel support which is why it's not there, but Android does so we're going to try to add something soon (subject to business approval).

I'll raise your upsell concerns with the product owner. Atmos support is a very niche product, and with so many thousands of consumer devices out there it's very hard to support. There's no excuse for saying a set top box upgrade is required if you already have a 4K capable model though.

[RichieT]

Thanks @DarrenDev  that's good to know were both having the same info from the Shield.

What do you mean by "the product owner"??

[DarrenDev]

Every product or service that we sell in BT has a "product owner" - someone who is ultimately responsible for everything related to it. This includes making sure that the service desk and bt.com are fully up to date with the latest product information. If the service desk are telling you incorrect information, it's either because they're acting on incorrect briefings (which we can correct) or they're relying solely on their memory (unlikely in this case, as you've heard it from more than one person).

[zulu17]

An observation @DarrenDev   which could explain why if Customer Services received a similar brief could believe incorrectly  that ATMOS was a new feature launched  with the BT Pro Box.

If i look at the original news releases for the BT Pro box

eg 

BT unveils BT TV Box Pro

the article wording  includes

BT TV Box Pro brings a new range of features to BT TV customers:

• 4K HDR - up to four times the detail of HD offering vivid, pin-sharp detail

• Dolby Atmos - offering the best immersive audio experience

• 1TB of storage - double the capacity of the previous BT TV box, with up to 600 hours of recordings

• 4 Tuners - allowing customers to record up to 3 shows and watch a fourth simultaneously

• Bluetooth remote - offering a quicker, smoother experience and allows the box to be stored out of sight, if needed

[RichieT]

@zulu17appreciate you are trying to solve the problem of misinformation.

Just feeds my complaint even more that the first selling points is...4KUHD

Exactly what the 4K box does, it's even in the name 🙂

So I'm not buying that as a reason, but do appreciate where your'e coming from.

[DarrenDev]

First selling point of the Pro box is 4K HDR. It's the first HDR capable box provided by BT.