Google Pixel Phones no longer support ATMOS casting

[RDoc]

My main listening has been a Pixel 10 phone controlling Amazon Music -> Alexa casting -> NVidia Shield Amazon Alexa -> AVR -> speakers. I'm a total convert to ATMOS music and this method (hack?) has worked pretty well for many months. However, as of June 1 it stopped. Apparently Amazon has decided to enforce Dolby licensing and since Google hasn't paid the licensing fee to Dolby, Amazon won't stream ATMOS to Pixel phones.

My understanding is that Google is all in on Eclipsa, another surround sound codec and won't support anything ATMOS related, so this may be a permanent shut down. IMHO this sucks and reminds me of the VHS / Betamax war which wound up with both sides losing. Beyond YouTube, AFAIK, there is pretty much no media available for Eclipsa and won't be for some time if ever.

Personally, I've gotten around this by using an old One Plus 9 phone that does have a Dolby ATMOS license. Since all the music streaming is over the internet and our home network, and the Shield and AVR are doing the decoding, there's no need for a SIM card or a high performance phone. The phone is just the user interface to the casting to the Shield. Note that on models newer than One Plus 12 phones, such workarounds are no longer available since One Plus is pushing yet another standard and no longer licenses ATMOS for its phones. It never ends.

XKCD's comment:

 

[pablolie]

Nothing new... why do you think open source music encoding triumphed over licensed Frauenhofer MP3?

 

[RDoc]

Nothing new... why do you think open source music encoding triumphed over licensed Frauenhofer MP3?

Well Dolby has made a pretty solid business with proprietary encoding for some time now. Maybe Eclipsa will become dominant, but I think it may be awhile before all this settles down and the hardware and streaming services all agree on what to use as a standard.

 

[Power Pop 23]

Dolby Atmos users are free to decide whether to use a phone that licenses Atmos from Dolby or not.