The last video player for Apple TV you will ever need.
Astrape plays the movies on your NAS, your media server or any link at full quality. Dolby Vision, HDR10+, Dolby Atmos, MKV, 70 GB 4K files. No more buffering in the middle of a movie, no matter how hard a video file you throw at it! No subscription needed.
Why Astrape
Written in Swift for tvOS and built around the Siri Remote. Circle the clickpad to scrub: clockwise goes forward, the other way goes back, and the frame you land on is right there. Continue Watching, Favorites and Search are one click away.
Add a NAS or a computer over SMB, NFS, FTP, SFTP or WebDAV, S3 storage such as Backblaze B2 or Cloudflare R2, or sign in to Plex, Jellyfin, Emby or Nextcloud. Astrape sorts it all into Movies and TV Shows, with posters, seasons and cast.
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.
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
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 one
2015 · 4K · Dolby Vision · Dolby Atmos
Living Room · Astrape
Drag and drop any video you want to play. Astrape Companion app finds the best way to share it to your Apple TV.
Pick a Folder or even a whole Hard Drive to share! Astrape Companion creates a share automatically in your Apple TV. Leave your Mac open, go to your couch and enjoy any videos you have in it.
Add servers and streams from the comfort of your Mac. Paste the address, type the password, test the connection, and it just 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. Without you even noticing.
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 MPG VOB EVO WMV ASF FLV F4V 3GP OGM / OGV
HEVC H.264 AV1 VP9 VP8 MPEG-2 MPEG-1 MPEG-4 (Xvid, DivX) DivX 3 VC-1 WMV H.263 / Sorenson ProRes Theora MJPEG
Dolby Vision HDR10+ HDR10 HLG
Dolby Atmos Dolby Digital Plus Dolby Digital TrueHD DTS AAC ALAC FLAC Opus Vorbis MP3 PCM
SRT ASS / SSA WebVTT MP4 timed text Blu-ray and DVD subtitles Subtitle files next to the video
SMB NFS FTP / FTPS SFTP WebDAV HTTP S3 (Amazon, Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, MinIO) Plex Jellyfin Emby Nextcloud
HLS M3U channel lists Tvheadend Video files on the web 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, a shared folder on a computer or S3 storage. If you already use Plex, Jellyfin, Emby or Nextcloud, sign in and the videos there show 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.
Astrape
