Is KD-49XF8796 Dolby ATMOS compatible?

[miparejo]

Hello everyone,

I'm planning on changing my soundbar for a Dolby Atmos compatible. I read that the TV has to be Dolby Atmos compatible too.

In Google I see answers saying that my TV (KD-49XF8796) is compatible and some others saying it's not, so I'm confused.

Does anyone have this TV and can confirm whether it's compatible or not?

Many thanks

Miquel

[Joe_Dohn · Accepted solution]

According to the "Applicable products" section in this article, seems to be supported. You can always contact Sony directly for a confirmation.

[miparejo]

Thanks Joe

[royabrown2]

@miparejo 

Your TV is described in the Sony specification as having ARC:-

https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/support/televisions-projectors-lcd-tvs-android-/kd-49xf8796/speci...

This means that it will support Atmos as passed from apps like Netflix; but it won’t support the full True Atmos that can only be passed over eARC.

Mind you, I did get wrong-footed by a Sony TV with ARC in its specification that had a later update to eARC; though I don’t think your 2018 set will get that (though again, ICBW).

But ARC or eARC Is the criterion for some Dolby Atmos, or full Dolby Atmos, as long as the TV will do audio passthrough to the soundbar, and not try to process the audio itself.

[Sonyvores]

it depends what you wanna do?

What's the source of your Dolby Atmos soundtrack?

If it's the TV app then you don't have any work around. It's not Dolby Atmos compatible so you will never have that signal out from the TV (+ it's not eArc so even it's compatible TV can't send out Atmos Signal).

If it's from a Bluray Player then just connect player to soundbar then to your TV and voilà!

[miparejo]

thanks for the answer @royabrown2 . I didn't know what you mean by full Atmos vs non-full Atmos. Are you referring to lossy vs lossless Atmos? I figure it might be that because I read somewhere that Netflix streams in lossy Atmos

[miparejo]

Thanks @Sonyvores. 

So the idea is to connect the PC to the input of the bar and the output to the TV. I was thinking that if the TV wasn't ATMOS compatible I could try to bitstream Netflix ATMOS via the win10 store Netflix app. 

[royabrown2]

@miparejo 

Yes, lossy versus lossless in another way to describe it. ARC will pass lossy, but you need eARC for lossless.

And I don’t think it matters if the TV can ‘support Atmos’ or not, as long as you use bitstream; that way the audio gets passed through unchanged, for the soundbar to interpret.

Atmos support on the TV is only important if you use PCM decoding, where the TV decodes the audio, not the soundbar.

But I concur with @Sonyvores that you do better to plug your separate devices into the soundbar if you can, where the soundbar can likely handle the audio in the best way possible, and still pass a no-compromise video stream to the TV via HDMI. Plug that device into the TV though, and while the video will be the same, the audio will only be what the TV is capable of squeezing down the narrow ARC back channel.

[miparejo]

Thanks again gents, all of your answers have been very informative. I learned a few things.

I will accept the first answer as the solution because it was the first and actually Sony came back to me last night confirming about the TV supporting Atmos (they didn't specify whether lossy or lossless but you helped understanding)

When I get the new soundbar I'll be back 

Have a good day

Miquel