Atrium: Media Player
Your media library at home
Only for Apple TV
Free
Atrium plays your library — the one on your own server — with the look and the manners the
television asks for.
There is no Atrium account. You type your server's address, sign in with the user you already have,
and that's it. What you see and hear is what you put there.
WHAT YOU GET
• Movies, shows, collections and music, each with a screen of its own.
• Continue Watching and Up Next: pick a film back up, or jump to the episode you're due, straight
from the first screen.
• HDR10 and Dolby Vision video, with Match Frame Rate. Multichannel audio.
• Audio and subtitle language selection, chapters with thumbnails, and an info panel while you
watch.
• When an episode ends, the next one. Automatically or on your say-so — your call.
• Search across the whole server, sorting, genre and decade filters, and a letter bar that crosses
a thousand titles in two moves.
• Music: artists, albums, songs and playlists, with a queue, shuffle, repeat and background audio.
• Live TV, if your server has it: the channel list with what's on now, the guide grid with what's
coming, a mosaic to find them by their logo, your favourites first, and whatever you have
recorded.
• Featured content in the Apple TV's top row (Top Shelf).
• In Catalan, Spanish and English.
PRIVACY
Atrium collects nothing. No analytics, no advertising, no tracking. Your server's address and your
session live in your device's Keychain and go nowhere else.
WHAT YOU NEED
A media server of your own, compatible with Jellyfin (10.9 or newer) or with Emby. Atrium is an
independent client; it is not affiliated with, nor does it represent, the Jellyfin or Emby
projects.
more FIXED
• "RECENTLY ADDED" FOR SHOWS NOW USES POSTERS. When what's new is an episode, the card showed the
episode's own image: a landscape frame inside a poster-shaped card, of which you saw a strip down
the middle. And shows without a poster showed nothing at all. Now the card takes the show's poster
and, if there is none anywhere, tries the thumbnail and the backdrop before giving up. It applies
across the app and to the tray on your TV's home screen.
• WITH MORE THAN ONE APPLE TV, WHAT YOU WATCHED ON ONE SHOWS UP ON THE OTHER WITHOUT CLOSING THE
APP. Reopening Atrium didn't refresh anything, so you had to force close it to see in Continue
Watching what you'd just watched on the other TV. It now refreshes when you come back to the app,
and so does the resume point of a title page you'd left open.
• "CONTINUE WATCHING" IS AGAIN WHAT YOU LEFT UNFINISHED. With the newer Jellyfin servers, the row
filled up with whole shows and seasons that could not be resumed. It now asks for video only, the
way your server's own web client does, and the row tells the truth.
• WITH EMBY, A DOLBY VISION FILM NO LONGER ARRIVES CONVERTED TO SDR. When the server is the one
sending it, Atrium now tells it your TV accepts Dolby Vision: it sends the file as it is, without
re-encoding, and your TV lights up in HDR. Emby's HDR10 films behave as they did before.
• IN THE GUIDE YOU CAN NOW MOVE DOWN FROM THE BUTTONS AT THE TOP, even when the first channels have
no listings. Until now, pressing down did nothing and the remote seemed unresponsive.
1.93 Sep 21
FIXED
• LARGE GRIDS NO LONGER SIT WAITING FOR POSTERS. Scrolling fast through a long library, the poster
you stopped on went to the back of the queue, behind every one you had just scrolled past: with 124
collections it took ten and a half seconds, where a single poster costs a quarter of one. The one
you are looking at now goes first. And it was never a collections oddity: any large grid had it,
your movie library included.
• AN EPISODE'S PAGE NAMES THE SHOW ONCE. The show is on top — its logo, if your server has one —
and under it the season, the episode number and the episode's name. Until now the show's name was
also written just above the logo, which already says it. And if your shows have no logo this
changes too: the big title is the show's name rather than the episode's, which is what the
"Continue Watching" cards already did.
1.92 Sep 10
WHAT'S NEW
• COLLECTIONS, like a film's page: the backdrop across the whole screen, the title over it and the
titles it holds below. Until now, opening one made the screen jump and left the collection's name
above with no way back up to it.
• And a collection can be marked as a favourite.
• BUTTONS LOOK THE SAME ON ANY APPLE TV. Two boxes on the same version of tvOS drew them in
different shapes and colours, because the system drew them; now Atrium does. And the colour comes to
mean something: a button at rest has none, the one you have selected turns white, and blue is kept
for what is switched on — watched, favourites, the season you picked, the filters in use.
FIXED
• The Live TV guide has the channel-group filter, like the list and the channels. It could stay
filtered by the group you picked in the other view, with no way to see it or undo it from there.
• In the guide, each channel's first programme no longer touches the channel column.
• And the line marking the current hour ends where the grid ends.
1.91 Sep 9
WHAT'S NEW
• THE LIVE TV GUIDE. What's on now and what's coming, in a grid of hours. You enter by the channel
and walk it with the remote: up and down always change channel, right steps into the grid, and
going down keeps you at the same hour. Channels with no schedule are there too, in a slimmer row:
of 340 channels on a real broadcast list, the guide covers 97 — and that is not an error.
• RECORDINGS, inside Live TV: "Recordings" for the whole lot in posters and "Latest" for what was
just recorded. It is what your server's recording folders hold. Watching only: recording and
scheduling are done from the browser.
• A filter by channel group, if your tuner tags them. And sorting and favourites are in the guide
too — both remembered for next time.
• The Home spotlight can pick at random (Settings ▸ Home). It ships off.
FIXED
• The audio you pick is the audio you hear. On a film with more than one track another one could
play — commentary, or another language — without you asking for it.
• The audio and subtitles sheet can be scrolled through. With many tracks it was cut off, and some
languages could not even be selected.
• Home follows the section order from your server, and the Live TV tile sits where you put it in
"Library order". It always went last.
• Channels sort the way they do on your server: default, number or name. And the number sorts as a
number: 10 no longer sits between 1 and 2.
• Genre tiles can be read from the sofa: four per row, with the name underneath. And the alphabet
letter is bigger.
• On a title's page the remote no longer stops at the synopsis: it goes from the buttons to the
cast.
• A person's page no longer runs away downwards when they have a biography, and you can get back up
to it from any column.
• Cast faces are portraits in the player too, like everywhere else in the app.
1.9 Sep 8
NEW
• A NEW HOME SCREEN, IF YOU WANT IT. Settings ▸ Home has "Enhanced Home Screen", and it starts
off: if you don't turn it on, Home is exactly what you have now. Turned on, the header stays put
and only the bottom row scrolls, and the screen's background becomes the card you're on, with its
name, its details and its story. For an episode it tells you which one; for an album, the artist on
top and the record below.
Try it and tell us whether you keep it: write to info@vdata.net. It's the one part of the app we
can't test for you, because every Apple TV and every TV moves differently.
• From an episode you can go to its series. "Continue Watching" opened the episode and there was no
way to pick another one without leaving and finding the series.
• A person's page shows their biography, and their work is split into films and series.
• Genre tiles show the genre's artwork, if your server has it.
• Music can be stopped: "Now Playing" has a button for it. Until now the mini player at the bottom
only went away when you started a video.
FIXED
• The "Recently Added" rows showed sixteen things and now show 128. The sixteen came from no
measurement at all, and in a real library it ran out at once.
• Going back to Home leaves you where you were. Focus jumped to the featured item or to the first
card: Home reloaded itself from scratch on the way back, and the card you were on vanished from
under you.
• The "Next Episode" button no longer runs away: it used to leave thirty seconds before the episode
ended, and when the credits start shortly before that point, it disappeared while you were reaching
for it.
• Your channels come in your server's own order, the one you see on its dashboard. With two tuners,
number order left repeated numbers and the two sources interleaved. And the sort pill now says what
it does.
• Live TV now shows up on the server: watching a channel opened no session, so whoever runs it
couldn't see who was watching TV or stop the stream.
• The Apple TV top row speaks the right language. Its titles came out in Catalan or Spanish even
with the TV set to English.
• People's photos are no longer cropped square: they're shown as portraits, which is how they come.
• The alphabet in your libraries is the size it should be next to "Sort" and "Filter".
1.8 Sep 4
NEW
• LIVE TV. If your server has channels, Home gets one more tile and the list behind it. Each row
says what is on now and how long is left, with the channel's logo or its number. Beside it, the
focused channel's detail with the programme's image and synopsis.
• And a grid, to find a channel by its face: with four hundred channels and half the list without
guide data, the logo is how people recognise them. The pill at the top switches views, and you
always come back to the one you left.
• Your channels first. Hold "Select" on a channel to make it a favourite and show only those. The
filter is remembered.
• List order or by name, with the alphabet on the right as in your libraries.
• A channel's detail: what is on now and what comes next, with the time of each.
• A player built for live, not for a film: no total duration, no scrubbing bar, no chapters, no
resume; instead, which channel you put on, what is on now and how long is left of the programme.
Press down for the synopsis.
And here we need your help, because no two Live TV setups are alike. Ours is a list of internet
channels; yours may come from a terrestrial, satellite or cable tuner, and then the signal is
interlaced and often MPEG-2 with MP2 audio — three things no Apple TV can render or decode on its
own. The app detects this and asks your server to convert it, and we have tested that with signals
built here, but not with yours.
Try your channels and write to info@vdata.net: whether they show, whether they sound, whether they
run smoothly. If one will not start, tell us which and where it comes from.
FIXED
• There were whole servers where the app was useless. One library of a kind the app did not know
about — audiobooks, games — and it loaded none of them, for every account on that server. For the
same reason, a child account with parental controls blocking unrated games could not sign in at
all. The app no longer holds your server to a fixed vocabulary.
• "Who's watching?" now has a way out, and if an account fails to open it says so instead of
returning you to the same screen in silence. An account is only forgotten when the server says it
is no longer valid.
• The screen saver no longer appears in the middle of a film.
• The time bar no longer disappears after two or three jumps, and scrubbing forward no longer
leaves the video hanging.
• A flicker from the TV no longer sends the rest of the film through the server's converter.
• Music no longer keeps playing under a video started from the featured area.
• With "Playback Information" on, the remote works again.
1.7 Sep 2
This release shows what the app was hiding, and sharpens what was already there.
NEW
• Libraries that mix films and shows now appear. If you have one with both kinds together — or if
your server keeps its TV recordings there, which is where it puts them on its own — you couldn't
see it anywhere before, while its contents did turn up in search and in Continue Watching. It's now
a library like any other, with its own grid — films and shows, no loose episodes or folders in the
way — its genres, its suggestions and its count.
• And a recording in progress looks like the episode it is, while it's still being recorded.
CHANGED
• The app icon and mark are new. Where there was a columned facade there is now the atrium itself:
the inner courtyard, with the opening in its roof that lets the light in and the basin that catches
it. It reads far better small — which is where an icon lives — and it's the same mark across the
app, the Apple TV top row and the website.
• The featured item on Home no longer crops the artwork. About a fifth of it used to fall above the
band and the same below, and with tightly framed art what landed on that edge was the top of
someone's head. The artwork now fills the screen with the rows sitting on top of it. A user
reported this, asking whether it was just him.
• And a title's page no longer enlarges it either: it was 5% bigger than on Home and lost a strip
down each side. Both screens now show it the same.
• In Settings, the number next to each featured source now says what it counts: "16 eligible", with
a line underneath explaining it — of the library's 16 newest items, the ones with a background
image.
FIXED
• New favourites show up without restarting the app.
• And the featured item notices: if you feed it from favourites, adding and removing now shows, and
changing what feeds it takes effect immediately.
1.6 Sep 1
This release comes almost entirely from what you've written to us. Thank you: the first item below
was found by a user, and we would never have seen it from here.
FIXED
• You can now reach the last row of any poster grid. When the last row isn't full — which is
almost always — and you came down on a column sitting above the gap, the remote did nothing at
all: those titles couldn't even be opened. It happened in movies and shows, and also in search,
genres, collections, favourites and music.
• Focus now lands where it should. Coming down from the top bar takes you back to the artwork you
were on rather than the middle one; on a title's page, coming up from a row returns you to the
buttons; and coming down from the bar reaches the Home feature, which used to be skipped.
• In Settings you can now reach the bar from the right-hand column. Before, you never could.
• In search, the bar no longer overlaps the text in the field.
• In Favourites, no artwork is left off the edge of the screen any more.
• Selecting any artwork now moves its text down with it: it used to grow and half-cover the title.
Everything moves the same way now.
• The titles under artwork are readable from the sofa. They were smaller than the ones in Continue
Watching for no reason; the whole app now uses that size.
• The progress bar in Continue Watching reads over any thumbnail, bright ones included.
• With Emby, music playlists now show up — and only your own.
CHANGED
• Continue Watching shows the episode name. Where it said "Up Next" it now says "S1:E8 - The
episode name", always, the way your server shows it. What tells a half-watched episode from one
you haven't started is the progress bar. A user asked for this.
NEW
• A switch to hand video preparation back to the server (Settings > Tools and Information). Since
1.4 the app prepares almost your whole library on the device; if some title doesn't play well for
you, this switch gives it back to the server and lets you compare both paths. If everything works,
there's no need to touch it.
1.5 Aug 30
NEW
• Most of your library is now prepared on the device. The server just serves the file and the app
prepares it: no transcoding, no heat. It covers H.264 films and shows, which are the vast majority,
and also MP4 files — which now light up in HDR — and HDR on Jellyfin.
• You notice it most at the end of episodes: with Emby, the last stretch often stalled and never
arrived. Now it finishes.
• Dolby Vision is signalled to a TV that announces it. On a TV that doesn't, nothing changes at
all, and if playback fails with DV on, the app redoes it without.
If you have a Dolby Vision TV, testing this would help us a great deal: play a DV film, open
Settings > Playback Information and write to info@vdata.net telling us whether your TV lit up its
Dolby Vision indicator. We have no such TV here, and it is the only way to check.
• Skip Intro on episodes that carry the marker. With Emby.
• Next Episode when the credits start, to move on without waiting for the end.
• Local network discovery now finds Emby servers too. They could never show up before.
• Audio and subtitles can be chosen from the detail screen before you start, and its badges say the
resolution and the dynamic range.
• Playback Information, in Settings: what is playing and by which path. It is in English and off by
default; it is there to go with a request for help.
CHANGED
• Profile 5 Dolby Vision films are prepared by the server: they have no base layer, and prepared on
the device their colours came out broken.
• Jellyfin 10.9 or newer is required. It was tested against real servers: from 10.9 onwards
everything works; on 10.8 it does not.
FIXED
• The audio menu showed two languages for three tracks: two tracks in the same language were given
the same name and the system picker collapsed one. They are now told apart by codec, and all of
them are there.
• With Emby, 1080p HEVC was re-encoded needlessly: the server converted video the Apple TV plays
as it is.
• Large films no longer pause for a moment when you resume them or jump to a chapter.
• With Emby, marking favourites and watched works: the buttons were there and did nothing.
• Home now knows what you did on a detail screen: Continue Watching no longer shows the old one.
• The names of servers found on the network can be read; they came out nearly invisible on blue.
• The address field's example is no longer in a language you did not choose: it now shows a full
address, http://192.168.1.10:8096.
1.4 Aug 28
NEW
• Real HDR with Emby. HDR films light up in HDR on your TV, with Emby too: the app prepares the
video on the device itself and the server just serves the file, no transcoding. The picture is
the original 10 bits.
• HDR10+ metadata is preserved and reaches your TV intact. Works with both servers.
CHANGED
• Resume is now the first button on the detail screen: picking up where you left off is one click.
• The detail screen refreshes when you open it: position and watched state are current, even if
you watched from another device.
1.3 Aug 26
NEW
• Atrium now speaks Emby as well as Jellyfin. It recognises which kind of server you have when you
connect and adapts on its own — nothing to choose. Everything that was already there works:
libraries, search, Continue Watching, the featured banner, music and the Apple TV top row.
• With Emby, HDR video is tone-mapped to SDR: its server doesn't say which range the video is, and
the Apple TV won't switch to HDR without knowing.
CHANGED
• Subtitles are chosen with the system picker: it gives you the list and the on/off switch,
remembers what you want between films, and switching is instant.
FIXED
• Switching subtitles often didn't work: each change opened a new connection to the server, and
sometimes you were left with no subtitles or the video stopped.
• The app will no longer go blank when you update your server.
1.2 Aug 24
FIXED
• Starting a video the server re-encodes no longer makes a double attempt: playback would start,
pause for a moment and start again.
• Resuming, jumping to a chapter or switching tracks no longer makes the server work twice: a
single encode starts, right at the point where you were.
• Durations no longer carry a comma: "1 hr, 41 min" becomes "1 hr 41 min".
• In Spanish and Catalan, "Next episode" used a gender and number borrowed from other settings.
• "Audio language" was clipped in English; it now fits.
• The library sort pill said the same thing twice.
• In Music, sections no longer ask for a click: Artists, Albums, Songs and Playlists switch when
focus rests on them, like the system's own controls.
• Artwork on the Apple TV's Top Shelf row looked soft; it is now requested at the right size.
• An episode's cast was missing the show's leads; regulars now come first, with guests at the
end.
• Songs showed a grey music note instead of the album cover.
• The connection screen now says what actually happened — a missing path, a gateway asking for
credentials, an untrusted certificate, a port where nothing answers — instead of a generic
message.
1.1 Aug 23
FIXED
• "RECENTLY ADDED" FOR SHOWS NOW USES POSTERS. When what's new is an episode, the card showed the
episode's own image: a landscape frame inside a poster-shaped card, of which you saw a strip down
the middle. And shows without a poster showed nothing at all. Now the card takes the show's poster
and, if there is none anywhere, tries the thumbnail and the backdrop before giving up. It applies
across the app and to the tray on your TV's home screen.
• WITH MORE THAN ONE APPLE TV, WHAT YOU WATCHED ON ONE SHOWS UP ON THE OTHER WITHOUT CLOSING THE
APP. Reopening Atrium didn't refresh anything, so you had to force close it to see in Continue
Watching what you'd just watched on the other TV. It now refreshes when you come back to the app,
and so does the resume point of a title page you'd left open.
• "CONTINUE WATCHING" IS AGAIN WHAT YOU LEFT UNFINISHED. With the newer Jellyfin servers, the row
filled up with whole shows and seasons that could not be resumed. It now asks for video only, the
way your server's own web client does, and the row tells the truth.
• WITH EMBY, A DOLBY VISION FILM NO LONGER ARRIVES CONVERTED TO SDR. When the server is the one
sending it, Atrium now tells it your TV accepts Dolby Vision: it sends the file as it is, without
re-encoding, and your TV lights up in HDR. Emby's HDR10 films behave as they did before.
• IN THE GUIDE YOU CAN NOW MOVE DOWN FROM THE BUTTONS AT THE TOP, even when the first channels have
no listings. Until now, pressing down did nothing and the remote seemed unresponsive.
more Version 1.93 Sep 21
Data Not Collected The developer does not collect any data from this app.