This is great for those who don't mind being stuck Apple's (*cough*jail*cough*) ecosystem. Vudu has been streaming Dolby Atmos pretty much since its inception, and pretty much any device that works with Vudu UHD will receive the Atmos stream, my 4k BDP, the sh*tty smart cast app on my TV, the Roku ultra etc etc.
Does the Apple TV offer HDR to Sdr conversion? With my Samsung m8500 I can still receive HDR streams and get slightly better color and brightness on my non HDR TV than would be offered via SDR streams.
Still, it's nice to know that another streaming provider is jumping on the Atmos bandwagon. Back when I had first started getting into Atmos with my first Atmos capable AVR, I was very hopeful that Atmos would become the standard audio format to replace channel based mixes, and with over 300 Blu-ray releases andost new releases utilizing atmos, Amazon jumping on Atmos, it looks like that's what's happening.
I do wonder how iTunes quality compares to vudu. In the past with HD content, they've always matched or slightly exceeded Vudu's HDX.
The other question is whether or not iTunes will offer mixes with a 5.1 or 7.1 DD+ bed. The way Atmos works with DD+ is different than with Truehd, with Truehd, the objects are contained within sub streams, and Metadata is used both for positional purposes as well as active phase cancelation of the 7.1 objects mix down. With DD+ you get a 5.1 or 7.1 object mix down and Metadata is used to extract the objects from the channel based mix down. I have, on occasion, noticed some minor artifacts from this process (detailed in my blog). Theoretically, a 7.1 mix could offer a better result.
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