If I am reading this correctly, this is the behaviour I would see (for my setup)…
Pass Through Setting = Optical
5.1 AAC transcode to AC3
7.1 AAC transcode to AC3
5.1 AC3 Direct Play
7.1 EAC3 transcode to AC3
DTS Direct Play
Pass Through Setting = HDMI
5.1 AAC transcode to OPUS
7.1 AAC transcode to OPUS
5.1 AC3 Direct Play
7.1 EACs Direct Play
DTS Direct Play
This just brings the old problem back… The TV (Hisense U8G) identifies as supporting 8 channel PCM, but from the ARC it only outputs 2 channel PCM. So, PMS will take the 5.1 AAC sound, convert it to 6 channel OPUS, and the TV will down mix it to 2 channel PCM to send to the receiver via the ARC
Your right for optical connections, for ARC though if you are transcoding the video for some reason then AAC 5.1 / 7.1 would be converted to AC3 and OPUS wouldn’t be chosen.
If you use HDMI without ARC (so full passthrough) then AAC 5.1 / 7.1 won’t be converted, OPUS would be used if you can’t direct play the audio (for instance if your watching a video with TrueHD but your soundbar doesn’t support TrueHD, we would transcode to OPUS).
Normal passthrough, you would use it when connecting an Android TV device to your AVR / soundbar directly, when you use a SHIELD or FireTV these would not need to use ARC.
I just meant if you had to transcode the audio for instance if you can’t play it on your device, or if the video stream needs to be transcoded sometimes we need to transcode the audio to keep the audio and video in sync.
FireTV has WiFi/Network multichannel audio (called Home Theater mode) in addition to HDMI.
Amazon’s WiFi multichannel audio has almost the same constraints as ARC. It can direct play 5.1 EAC3, 5.1 AC3, and 2 channel PCM.
Anything that is not AC3 or EAC3 is downmixed to 2 channel PCM by Amazon’s WiFi audio service (including DTS).
The FireTV would benefit from having the same ARC passthrough option you are describing for AndroidTV, to be used for WiFi multichannel audio. @sixones
Are you assuming people don’t plug their FireTVs directly into their AVR / soundbar? There definitely are users doing this. I’m not sure why you are saying ARC would not be needed?
Not at all, I’m saying when your Fire TV is plugged directly to your AVR or soundbar you would not use ARC. If your AVR or soundbar has multiple HDMI inputs, it’s best to plug your FireTV into that rather than into your TV as it allows for full passthrough rather than going through the limits of ARC. If you can’t do this and plug your FireTV into your TV, then you would use ARC.
Hmm in the latest beta, this would not be detected in the same way that ARC does, depending on how Amazon identifies this setup via the Android OS. Someone would need to try it and confirm the behaviour they see. Until we can refactor the way the selection works to support manual selection for passthrough the best option for this setup would be to use Optical.
If you can generate a FireTV APK of that beta I can test audio with ARC enabled/disabled on my TV while using WiFi audio to see if the ARC codec configuration carries over to them.
I have tried the Android APKs but they force close immediately when I try to open them after installing.
Uninstall whatever version is installed, sideload the beta, then restart the FireTV device.
I installed the beta on my FireStick 4K Max yesterday. I had to uninstall the app store version first
Install failed when I tried to install the beta on top of the app store version. Not sure if the restart is really required. Just force of habit on my part.
This still appears to be a problem with the latest beta. “An Error Occurred While Attempting to Play Video”
Turning off audio passthrough fixes the problem but it only plays 2 channel audio instead of 5.1.
Android Version: 8.29.0.30247-beta
Device: Chromecast w/google tv (or whatever they’re calling it these days) with a Sonos Playbar connected via optical. Optical passthrough enabled with AC3 selected as the transcode format.
My setup through eArc to an STR-DN1080 which supports all HD codecs, why then through the android Plex app does it say TrueHD not supported by your device? Proceeds to transcode to this opus codec!
Can you supply logs after attempting TrueHD playback? With your passthrough setting to Auto in Plex it relies on your HDMI device to indicate what it supports. For TrueHD support your Android device also needs to support TrueHD, are you using an NVIDIA SHIELD?
I have the same problem as the rest.
I am using Sony XH9096 (X900H) android TV and AVR via HDMI (ARC only).
All TrueHD formats were transcoded to DD+ before, now everything goes to 2 channel Opus.
I have just installed the latest Plex for android TV, its 8.28.0.30077 from Aptoide TV, still the same.
Which is the last version where this is not broken, so I can revert back?
Thanks!
