So basically, because the Plex app on the tv’s Operating System has to send the signal back to the soundbar over HDMI-ARC “which doesn’t have the bandwidth”, the audio gets converted down. Thanks for clarifying this, i had no idea.
But this doesn’t explain why my computer which is connected directly to the sound bar via HDMI will play TrueHD+Atmos audio in VLC player but not in either of the Plex desktop or Windows store players. If it were a bandwidth issue for HDMI then why is it working in VLC.
The only thing i can think of is maybe the Plex players for windows also does the same auto trans-coding conversion of the TrueHD audio that the tv’s Plex player does regardless of bandwidth limitations. Which begs the question would the Plex Player on the Shield also do this as well? Or can you disable audio trans-coding? i checked in the windows plex player and couldn’t find that option.
As a side note, my pc is connected to the sound bar via hdmi in, then the sound bar is connected to the tv via hdmi-arc out. I am able to achieve 4k HDR 12bit 4:4:4 @ 30hz, i do encounter artifacting sometimes when i play games, and to get it to work i had to buy 2 cables that were rated at hdmi 2.1 to be able to get it going. When i tried hdmi 2.0 cables it wouldn’t work, took me quite a while to figure that out.
4k @ 60hz will work but i have to disable HDR.
As you eluded to before though, i am sure it is just an hdmi 2.0 limitation for now. The only thing i think the hdmi 2.1 cables help with is they allow the hdmi 2.0 ports on the devices to send the maximum bandwidth possible for hdmi 2.0.
