No, they were Blu-ray from Redbox
Atmos worked with the Blu-ray movies, but is not reproducing with Disney streaming service or the specific movie you streamed.
Quoting from the Digital trends
Disney+ also offers Dolby Atmos sound mixes on selected content, including the Marvel movies and every single Star Wars flick, including the original trilogy.Atmos, 4K, and Dolby Vision HDR are included in Disney+’s standard $7 subscription fee.
Officially, any Atmos-friendly device should be able to stream Dolby Atmos on Disney+, but that functionality isn’t working on
certain pieces of hardware quite yet. Disney told Digital Trends that it’s aware of the problem, and will be rolling out fixes for more devices soon.
When Disney was ramping up the hype machine for its
Disney+ streaming service, one of the biggest benefits it touted was the availability of both
Dolby Vision and
Dolby Atmos on a significant chunk of its banner content. Movies like the Star Wars franchise, which would be presented in 4K
HDR for the first time, and shows like the Disney+ original
The Mandalorian were also supposed to get the full Dolby treatment.
As the dust begins to settle on
the first week of Disney+ operations, however, one thing is becoming clear: Your ability to hear the soundtracks of your favorite content in Dolby Atmos could be hampered by your choice of streaming device.
Digital Trends has discovered significant discrepancies in how Disney+ content is handled by three major platforms: Apple TV, Roku, and Android TV. Here’s what we’ve found.
The Disney+ app on
Apple TV 4K presents all Dolby Vision content in glorious HDR. That goes for all of the Star Wars flicks and
The Mandalorian. But only the Star Wars movies are streaming in Dolby Atmos. When we tried to watch
The Mandalorian, the best sound quality we could get was Dolby 5.1.
Using a new
Nvidia Shield TV 2019 — which includes onboard Dolby Atmos decoding, unlike the previous Shield TV 2017 which could only pass through Atmos — Dolby Vision once again worked flawlessly, but we couldn’t get Dolby Atmos to work on any content on the Android TV device.
The
Roku Streaming Stick+ was the most capable of the three devices. It easily played both the Star Wars movies and
The Mandalorian in Dolby Atmos. Sadly, because the Streaming Stick+ does not support Dolby Vision, we could only watch this content in HDR10, which still looks amazing when compared to SDR (standard dynamic range).
This represents a very real dilemma for audio enthusiasts who signed up for Disney+ hoping for the very best in home theater surround sound. Dolby 5.1 sounds pretty great, but if you have a Dolby Atmos-capable sound system at home, you deserve to hear what the format can do to bring episodes IV-VI of the Star Wars saga to life in a whole new way.
We’re a bit stumped as to why this is happening at all. The
Disney+ support page on the topic suggests that if your device can handle Dolby Atmos, it should get Dolby Atmos:
Disney+ offers a growing library of content in 5.1 Surround Sound and Dolby Atmos. Supported audio formats for a given title can be found in the DETAILS section under each title. Disney+ will automatically use the highest-quality audio your system can support.
We know that Netflix places severe limitations on which streaming devices get Dolby Atmos audio. Apple TV 4K has always been compatible, but the Nvidia Shield TV 2017 couldn’t get it and neither can any Roku devices. This makes our Roku experience on Disney+ all the more perplexing — Disney+ is clearly not placing Netflix’s restrictions on Dolby Atmos based on a device’s ability to natively decode Atmos.
Responding to our request for a comment on this situation, a source at Disney+ did not corroborate our experiences but did tell us that the service is working with its device partners to enable Dolby Atmos playback and will be bringing Dolby Atmos to additional devices soon.
Meanwhile, you can do a trial run of different streaming services, specifically for testing Atmos channels, like Netflix, Vudo or Amazon Prime. You can also try streaming the Atmos supported movies in the Disney+ service, like Marvel movies and Star Wars.