This week on TechHive: What you need for 4K and Atmos streaming

Jared Newman
|
August 20, 2021
4K HDR indicators in HBO Max

Having more to watch for less money isn’t the only benefit of cord cutting.

While the traditional TV world drags its feet on supporting 4K HDR video, streaming services such Netflix and Amazon Prime have offered those formats for years, letting you watch higher-resolution video with richer color detail. They’ve also been steadily adding support for Dolby Atmos, an object-based form of surround sound that adds an element of height movie and TV show soundtracks. All of this means you can replicate more aspects of the movie theater experience without leaving your couch.

Still, buying a fancy 4K HDR TV and Atmos soundbar doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be watching TV in those formats. Getting the best picture and sound quality requires connecting your hardware in specific ways, using specific streaming services, and watching specific content.

Over at TechHive, I put together a list of all the ingredients you need to get your money’s worth from 4K and Atmos hardware. Read the full column here.

Weekly rewind

Fox’s 4K football workaround: Related to this week’s column, the Fox Sports app will once again stream Thursday Night Football games in 4K HDR, albeit upscaled from 1080p resolution. Those games will commence in week five, and they’ll require pay TV authentication, meaning you’ll need to log in with your cable, satellite, or live TV streaming provider.

As The Streamable notes, the app will provide a handy workaround for YouTube TV subscribers, who would otherwise have to pay an extra $20 per month for the service’s 4K Plus add-on. While the add-on does offer other benefits, including offline mobile downloads and unlimited in-home streams, you won’t need it just to watch higher-fidelity football this year.

Roku’s Spectrum TV app is back: After an eight-month impasse, Roku and Charter Communications have struck what they call a “mutually beneficial agreement” to restore the Spectrum TV app to the Roku Channel Store. While existing users had access to the app this whole time, it’s been unavailable for new users—and to anyone who deleted the app from their devices—since December.

The app’s return is good news for Spectrum customers who’ve dropped cable TV service and received an offer for the company’s cheaper streaming offerings, or who want to defray the cost of cable by renting fewer set-top boxes. Still, it doesn’t explain why Roku and Spectrum clashed in the first place. Neither company has gone into details, and I’ve yet to see any explanation by way of the rumor mill.

In any case, the truce leaves just YouTube TV as Roku’s last major carriage dispute to sort out. That app has been unavailable since April, forcing Roku users to access the service via a backdoor in the regular YouTube app.

Streaming movie sanctimony: Finally, I can’t resist commenting on these comments from Dune director Denis Villeneuve, who likened watching his upcoming film on your television to “[driving] a speedboat in your bathtub.” The movie, he insists, is made to be seen in a theater, though it’ll debut simultaneously on HBO Max in October just like every other WarnerMedia film has throughout 2021.

Let’s assume this is a good-faith argument and not a proxy for concerns over how talent gets paid in the streaming age. It’s always tiresome when directors and actors poo-poo how people decide to watch their work (see also: The Hollywood hand-wringing over Netflix’s playback speed controls), and as a parent who could seldom get to the movies even in the Before Times, being able to watch from home has been one of the pandemic’s unexpected silver linings.

But also: Have any of these people shopped for a TV lately? You can get a 4K HDR television practically the size of your entire wall—plus a surround sound system to match—for less than a year’s worth of family trips to the movies. Coming within about 90% of theater’s audiovisual experience with none of the theater’s distractions doesn’t seem so sacrilegious to me.

More catch-up

Spend wisely

Paramount+ home screen

If you don’t currently have an active Paramount+ subscription, you may be able to redeem a free month with the code PAWOFFER. Just enter the code on the final checkout page via the Paramount+ website.

As I’ve written before, Paramount+ (formerly CBS All Access) routinely offers free months of service to anyone who doesn’t have an active subscription, including former subscribers, and I’ve been redeeming them on a nearly monthly basis since the spring of 2020. They work with either the ad-supported or ad-free versions of Paramount+, and if you cancel one day after signing up, you can still use the full month without getting billed at the end.

Having said all that, I’m still in the middle of an earlier free month, so I can’t test the latest code myself. Let me know if it works (or doesn’t) for you.

A couple other notable deals:

Thanks for reading!

A shout-out is in order for Cord Cutter Weekly reader Sandy G., who inspired this week’s TechHive column. Getting story ideas from you all has always been one of the great rewards of writing this newsletter—especially during the slow summer months—so please keep them coming by replying to this email.

Until next week,

Jared