Video player for Apple TV 4K
Astrape plays the movies on your NAS, your media server or any link at full quality. Dolby Vision, HDR10+, Atmos, MKV, 70 GB 4K files. You press play and it starts.
Move your pointer over the icon, like focusing it on Apple TV.
Why Astrape
MKV, MP4, AVI, WebM, TS and more. HEVC, H.264, AV1, VP9, MPEG-2, VC-1 and DivX. HDR stays HDR, and Atmos, TrueHD, DTS and FLAC soundtracks all play.
Playback starts at once and keeps going, even on a 70 GB 4K file. Jump to any minute and it picks up right there.
Add a NAS or a computer over SMB, NFS, FTP, SFTP or WebDAV, or sign in to Plex, Jellyfin or Emby. Astrape sorts it all into Movies and TV Shows, with posters, seasons and cast.
Codec, bit depth, bit rate, Dolby Vision profile, mastering display, MaxCLL. Open Media Info on any file, or keep a live readout on screen while it plays.
video HEVC Main 10 · 3840×2160 · 23.976 fps hdr Dolby Vision 8.1 · PQ · BT.2020 master P3 · 0.0001–1000 nits light MaxCLL 1000 · MaxFALL 401 bitrate 74.2 Mb/s audio Dolby Atmos · 7.1 · English buffer ahead 28 s
Written in Swift for tvOS and built around the Siri Remote. Circle the clickpad to scrub and see the exact frame you land on. Continue Watching, Favorites and Search are one click away.
Under the hood
Every HDR file carries numbers for light and color. Astrape reads them and gets them to your TV intact. These are the curves and color spaces it works with, drawn from the published standards.
SMPTE ST 2084 · ITU-R BT.1886
HDR10 and Dolby Vision describe brightness with PQ, from 0.0001 to 10,000 nits. SDR video tops out near 100. The same signal value means a very different light level, so it has to reach the TV exactly as mastered.
CIE 1931 · ITU-R BT.709 · BT.2020 · DCI-P3
The horseshoe is every color the eye can see. 4K HDR is graded inside the BT.2020 triangle; HD video lives in the small BT.709 one. Percentages are the share of BT.2020's area.
HTTP/1.1 RANGE REQUESTS · RFC 9110
A 70 GB film is never downloaded whole. Astrape asks your server for the next few megabytes at a time and keeps about 30 seconds ready ahead of you. Jump anywhere and it asks for that part of the file instead.
Live simulation: 74 Mb/s 4K file, 400 Mb/s home network, real time.
Astrape Companion for Mac
A small Mac app that works with Astrape on Apple TV. It sits in your menu bar and does the things a remote can't.
No other Apple TV player has oneDrag a video onto the menu bar icon or choose Share › Astrape. It starts on the TV, and you pause, skip and stop from the Mac.
Pick the folders to share. Your Apple TV finds the Mac by itself and lists them in Browse. There are no addresses to type.
Add servers and streams from the Mac. Paste the address, type the password, test the connection, and it appears on the TV.
A video on the web, an HLS stream, an MPEG-DASH stream. Paste it and it plays on the TV.
The rare file Apple TV hardware can't decode, your Mac converts while you watch, on its own hardware encoder.
And also
Add an HLS stream or an M3U channel list. Pause live TV and scrub back.
Search OpenSubtitles from the sofa. Set your languages once and Astrape picks the right track.
Scan the QR code on the TV and send any link from your phone. Lock it with a PIN.
No account, no ads, no tracking. Your passwords stay in the Apple TV's Keychain.
Formats
MKV·MP4·MOV·M4V·WebM·AVI·MPEG-TS·M2TS·VOB·WMV·FLV·OGG
HEVC·H.264·AV1·VP9·VP8·MPEG-2·MPEG-1·MPEG-4 (Xvid, DivX)·VC-1·ProRes·Theora·MJPEG
Dolby Vision·HDR10+·HDR10·HLG
Dolby Atmos·Dolby Digital Plus·Dolby Digital·TrueHD·DTS·AAC·ALAC·FLAC·Opus·MP3·PCM
SMB·NFS·FTP / FTPS·SFTP·WebDAV·HTTP·Plex·Jellyfin·Emby
HLS·M3U channel lists·MPEG-DASH with the Mac companion
FAQ
Apple TV 4K with tvOS 18 or later. For HDR and Dolby Vision you also need a TV that shows them.
No. Astrape reads files straight from a NAS or a shared folder on a computer. If you already use Plex, Jellyfin or Emby, sign in and that library shows up too.
No. Astrape always plays the original file, so a small NAS is enough. Your server only sends the file.
No. Install it, add a server, press play.
A Mac with macOS 14 or later, on the same network as your Apple TV.
Astrape for Apple TV 4K. Astrape Companion for Mac.
Your Mac