Whenever I play a video with EAC3 (DD+) audio in the Plex player on my Chromecast with GoogleTV, it gets transcoded to OPUS. However, this is not necessary, since EAC3 is supported natively as evidenced by:
If I play the same item in the KODI Plex plugin on Chromecast, it direct plays fine, with no transcoding.
If I play the same file on the Samsung TV’s native Plex app (horribly outdated), it direct plays fine, with no transcoding.
I’ve tried all possible audio settings (passthrough etc.) on the TV and on the Plex player, with no luck. I have two different Samsung TVs, each with its own CCwGTV (one with external speakers, one without), and both have the same problem. The audio always gets transcoded.
I don’t think I completely understand the technology here then. The thing is that the Plex app on my CCwGTV can direct play AC3 (not EAC3) only when I set HDMI Audio Formaton my TV to Bitstream - if I set it to PCM it fails to direct play AC3. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but to me this implies that it’s in fact the TV (or my sound system) that is decoding the audio in this case. I mean, surely there must be a way to pass raw bitstream through to the TV (and/or the speakers), no?
We don’t know what the TV will do, just that it indicates it supports that as an input. It may decode and output the sound, it may only support passthrough, it may internally convert to another format. At this point, the app passes the audio and it’s up to the TV to do whatever it should.
So it sounds like while the TV supports eAC3 for it’s native apps, it might not report the ability to HDMI connections? Otherwise the CCwGTV would attempt to direct play the eAC3, right?
