My setup is Plex Media Server on a Synology DS920+ NAS - ethernet cable to LG OLED55C8PLA with the LG Plex app - HDMI ARC to Denon AVR-X1400H.
I have also connected a PS3 and Apple TV to the Denon receiver.
Playing Blu Ray movies from my PS3 I get Lossless audio, however this does not seem to happen when playing movies from the LG Plex app. The best I get is DD+ on some (not all) movies.
I assume this has to do with the HDMI ARC limitations?
Can I fix this problem somehow? Can I somehow tell Plex at least to stream in DD+? I see all kind of audio formats on my Denon receiver (Dolby D, DTS, Stereo) even though the movie say PCM, Dolby True HD or DTSMA.
I also own an Apple TV and a PS3. Can those be used instead of buying a completely new device?
I’m not very familiar with nVidia Shield. Is there a specific version I would need to invest in and then install an app? I see there is a Shield TV and one Shield TV Pro at least?
My LG TV do allow for DD+ passthrough. Is there a way I can “force” this on the Plex Media Server or is it completely dependent on what the soundtrack the movie comes with?
Apple TV: only if it is at least v4. But even then you won’t get the highest quality surround sound from it.
The nVidia Shield is still king in this discipline.
And yes, it is the Shield Pro you want.
The smaller “tube” version has too small RAM to be able to play the highest bitrate files as you can find them on Bluray und UHD Bluray.
If your file has DTSMA audio codec, Plex, I believe, should see that your TV doesn’t support DTSMA passthrough and will transcode the audio to AC3\EAC3 (DD\DD+) on the fly. It’s not a heavy lift to do audio like that so if you have files with those higher quality codecs and you’ve been hearing audio then most likely that’s already been happening. I am not familiar with the LG smart platform and Plex on it so someone with more experience there can likely give you specifics there.
Plex doesn’t really know what the other audio tracks are even if there was a DD+ track with the DTSMA track - but if it has multiple tracks, you can select a different track than the default and it will remember your choice.
You can use other devices besides the Shield Pro, it’s just that the Shield Pro covers the broadest native playback of files. Roku and FireTV and AppleTV etc all have various levels of playback support but most focus on streaming support, not local file playback so AppleTV, for example, only supports Atmos in DD+ audio format not TrueHD audio format (streaming audio support not Bluray audio support).
It’ll kinda be up to you how you want this solved - do you care about the higher quality audio formats or not so much? For example, I tend to stick with AC3 and EAC3 these days instead of DTS because it has broader support (and LG and Samsung both dropped support for it). I also use AAC codecs as those are pretty universal as well. I don’t have anything that can playback Atmos anyways so don’t worry about it too much and likely won’t for quite some time so… I’m good with “good enough for me” which my Roku’s and iOS devices support natively. So maybe a Shield Pro is a good option for you to get the most out of your media or maybe transcoding or redoing some audio codecs works for you. Luckily there are options.
Thank you for your thoughts. I do care about the highest possible output because I want to see if my Blu Ray collection can be copied over to my Plex server.
I have not figured out yet how to successfully “rip” my Blu Ray collection though, but have been testing with som other files like Dolby Atmos Demo Trailers etc.
My setup is not Atmos either at the moment, but I will be investing in that later. Playing a track containing atmos will show up as Dolby TrueHD on my AVR and this is what I’m looking for from a file streamed from my Plex Server.
