Apple TV 4K - force 4K output quality on 1080p TV.

[xapp]

Typically, if you have a 1080p TV, Apple TV 4K is going to work in 1080p mode and output a "low-res" picture.

Turns out, it's possible to force Apple TV 4K to work in 4K mode and using 4K assets - go to Settings > Video and Audio > Format > Other formats and select 1600x1200 resolution.

Obviously, 1600x1200 is smaller than 1920x1080, but it actually looks better...because for some reason Apple TV, like hi-res Macs, draws image in 4K and then outputs it to TV.

 

[Richard Tillard]

That's the best Apple TV tip I've ever seen.

But, I have no idea why you need a 4K Apple TV with a TV without 4K.

 

[ouimetnick]

That's the best Apple TV tip I've ever seen.

But, I have no idea why you need a 4K Apple TV with a TV without 4K.

Thread support, HomePod stereo pair, Dolby Atmos, etc. Also a smart choice to buy Apple TV 4K if you are going to get a new TV in a few years.

 

[McScooby]

That's the best Apple TV tip I've ever seen.

But, I have no idea why you need a 4K Apple TV with a TV without 4K.

Chip's faster so no delays on opening apps, switching between, using infuse/plex etc. Using a non 4K version is painful by comparison (of which I have both and no 4K TV).

 

[mikelj]

Actually, I force my ATV 4K into believing it's connected to a 4K SDR TV by using a HD Fury Linker, which also downscales the 4K to 1080p for my Panasonic plasma.

The benefit of doing this is that you then achieve the much higher 4k streaming bitrate over the HD bitrate, which results, imo (and my wife's), a better picture. It's not quite HD Blu-ray quality and the sound quality takes a hit over HD Blu-ray, but as mentioned above, if you're going to change your TV to a 4K one eventually you'll be able to watch all those purchases in HDR.

I had the idea a few years ago after reading up on Profile 5/LLDV and coming to the conclusion that a device implementing this should be able to perform HDR to SDR conversion correctly (there's not many non-profile 5 devices that can achieve this correctly, or at least, there wasn't at the time). The downside is that you have the extra HDMI handshaking between the ATV/Linker and Linker to (in my case) AV amp; which adds a few more seconds to the handshaking.