I love my Apple TV but this setting is deeply frustrating

Summary

Failing to match content settings on Apple TV 4K leads to picture quality issues.
Switching to 4K SDR, utilizing match content setting, ensures correct display format.
The complexity of technology choices increases, posing challenges for consumers.

I’ve been very outspoken about the Apple TV 4K being my favorite streaming device, and even though I have a first-gen model, it still gets the job done. I plan on upgrading in 2025, and I hope Apple has announced a 4th gen model by that point, so I have something to look forward to.

I’m also keeping my fingers crossed that a feature that has troubled new users for years is finally eliminated or at least clarified. I’m talking about the Match Content setting for range and frame rate, and how it’s a question that constantly pops up for owners about whether to have it on or off. For people with 4K HDR TVs, it might seem like the obvious choice is to have the setting toggled on, but that’s how the problems start.

It’s especially an issue if you don’t match your content, so everything displays in 4K HDR whether it was made for that or not, if that’s the setting you have on. This can lead to problems with how your shows and movies look, and instead of being frustrated and having to dig through the settings to find the problem, I wish Apple made it clearer about what people were getting into.

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Apple should fix this

More problems than good

Apple / Pocket-lint

For the best viewing experience, you want to make sure your Apple TV matches what the show or movie is designed for. For a lot of what you watch on platforms like Fubo, YouTube TV, and YouTube itself, it means you want SDR. If you’re paying for the expensive tiers of Netflix, Max, Prime Video, etc., then a lot of the stuff you watch will be in 4K resolution with HDR included.

Leaving your settings on 4K HDR all the time causes the image to look different and out of whack with what was originally intended, and it can cause a lot of confusion of why your new TV looks so bad. It’s not a problem with your TV or device, it’s just a setting you might have on by mistake. The way to avoid problems like this is to always have your Apple TV 4K set to 4K SDR, provided you have a 4K TV. There’s a match frame rate and range setting you want to leave on that’ll automatically change your settings to match what the content you’re watching broadcasts in.

Doing these small things makes sure everything you watch is in the correct format, and you won’t have any problems with picture quality. It’ll also fix the annoying flashing screen each time you open a YouTube video. I’ll admit, this was a problem I ran into for quite a while, but I eventually decided to look up what was causing it and fixed it.

As it stands right now, there’s really no reason to have your Apple TV 4K set in the 4K HDR mode unless you like looking at your Apple TV home screen pop with vibrancy. The far better choice is to keep your device in SDR and match content when necessary. Make sure you go into your settings and double-check that’s what you have going on, but it’s a nuisance if you don’t.

Change these TV settings ASAP if you have an Apple TV 4K

Make sure you get the most out of your Apple TV 4K.

Only the tech-savvy benefit

The barrier of entry should be lower

Pocket-lint / Thibault Penin / Unsplash / Apple

If you bought a new TV in the past few years, there’s a good chance it’s 4K as that’s increasingly becoming the norm in any big box store such as Walmart and Best Buy. What you might not know is if your TV supports HDR. Most of them do, but there are some that take it a step further with HDR10+ or Dolby Vision. These are improved versions of HDR, and it’s something tech enthusiasts love, but something the everyday person doesn’t concern themselves with.

The Apple TV supports these formats, but you have to have a TV that does as well, and it’s not always clear to the owner. If you don’t know what your TV has, you might just set your Apple TV 4K settings to the highest quality and forget about it. That’s not the right decision, and it’d be better if your device could auto-detect what your TV is capable of. It does that in a way by having the match content setting toggled on, but I don’t like how it’s a setting you have to check yourself.

You know what it’s like when you get a phone call from your parents asking you about how FaceTime works or how to work their new gadget — so it’d be nice to avoid the same conversation with something as simple as an Apple TV 4K. The way these should work is you plug them in and everything’s all set. Unfortunately, nothing’s really that simple, and even your TV settings have to be tweaked in order to get the best quality.

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Tech should be getting easier to understand

Complexity keeps growing

Apple isn’t the only company guilty of making things harder to understand. I already talked about how TVs have all sorts of technology, and that’s not even including the displays. You have OLED, LED, QLED, Mini-LED, etc. all available as choices for your next TV, so it either requires you to make a blind decision or research something extensively before biting the bullet.

Technology has largely always worked that way, but it feels more prevalent today. Take a video game console, for example. The Xbox has the Series S and Series X while the PS5 has the base model and now the Pro. The Switch has the base model, Lite, and OLED. There are more options than ever for video game consoles, and it now requires a lot of research to make sure you’re getting the thing you want.

Having choices is good, but it’d be nice to see things be more intuitive for the average person. Whether that’s making a setting easy to understand on your Apple TV 4K or letting a potential buyer know without research that their Series S will run games worse than their Series X will. The genie might be out of the bottle at this point, so I might have to get used to doing my fair share of research before buying something. Luckily, I enjoy that process, but I can’t imagine everybody feels the same.