Is it necessary to buy a TV box that supports Dolby Atmos?

Felia

Member
The TV boxes currently on the market have many functions. During the selection process, users will surely find that some TV boxes are equipped with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos functions. What are their effects? Do I have to choose a TV box with this function when I buy a TV box?

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1. What is Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos?


First of all, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos are two different concepts. They represent picture quality and sound quality, and can present different visual and auditory effects to users. Dolby Vision is the highest standard format for HDR, enabling the picture to have better details and image levels. Dolby Atmos can combine movie content to present dynamic sound effects, creating a more realistic sound effect from far to near.

Dolby Vision

Dolby Vision can achieve more visual effects through higher brightness and richer color volume. Generally speaking, its peak brightness is closer to the brightness range that can be observed by the human eye to a greater extent, and it is more obvious than ordinary video images in HDR display effect, and can better show the details of dark parts.

While having high brightness, Dolby Vision also added wide color gamut and high color depth effects, which can bring more three-dimensional color performance. Under normal brightness, it supports richer color levels, such as fireworks, night scenes and other scenes can be clearly presented.
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Dolby Atmos

Dolby Atmos has greatly improved the listening experience on the basis of 5.1 and 7.1. It combines the mixing and sound orientation methods of dynamic objects and playback channels to make the played audio sound more three-dimensional and surround, allowing users to be surrounded by sounds in all directions, giving people an immersive feeling.

At the same time it also has accurate sound field positioning. With the support of Dolby Atmos, the dialogue in the film has a sense of direction. Various sound effects can be transmitted to the user's ears from different places. For example, if a bird flies across the screen, the user can clearly hear the sound of the bird flying by.

2. Is it necessary to buy a TV box that supports Dolby Vision/Atmos?


At present, there are not many TV box brands that support Dolby audio-visual on the market. Representative products include Apple TV and Tencent Aurora Box 4 Pro. Although Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos have relatively excellent audiovisual effects. But for the TV box, when watching the video with the corresponding effect, the following conditions must be met at the same time.

  • The video or audio to be played must support Dolby Audiovisual.
  • Playback devices including TVs, power amplifiers, and speakers must support Dolby decoding.
  • Ordinary TVs need external power amplifier audio equipment.
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Therefore, the effect of Dolby Vision cannot show the best effect on ordinary TV, and it needs to be combined with equipment that supports Dolby decoding to fully reflect its picture effect. Similarly, a complete speaker system is needed to achieve the stereo sound effect. For example, in addition to installing speakers in the front, rear, left, and right squares, a theater will also add two rows of speakers at the top. In order to achieve a complete audiovisual effect, additional equipment costs are required.

In addition, the current video sources that support Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos have not yet been fully popularized, and the overall resources are relatively small. Most videos do not yet support this feature. Therefore, as a daily home viewer, when choosing a TV box, you should pay attention to its own performance, such as CPU, GPU, etc., which are related to system fluency and picture output quality.

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To sum up, if the TV and audio equipment at home does not meet the requirements, you can choose products with better chip performance. If you pursue better audio-visual effects and have corresponding professional equipment at home, you can choose a Dolby audio-visual box product appropriately.
 
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