Server Version#:
Player Version#: 5.91.0
While playing personal media through the Plex for Vizio app, the English (DTS-HD MA 6.1) actually plays the Portuguese (AC3 5.1) instead. This appears to only occur on the Vizio and only when attempting to play direct. If I transcode the audio or video it plays the English track but loses audio fidelity.
No other client appears to have this issue when playing direct.
Reviewing the server logs I’m not seeing anything standing out as to WHY the English DTS-MA channel is playing in Portuguese. There’s no indication that it is transcoding. The only thing that populates that may be nothing is:
Apr 27, 2025 21:25:34.118 [139770200169272] DEBUG - [Req#1ede20] [Now] Device is Vizio SmartCast (Living Room).
Apr 27, 2025 21:25:34.118 [139770200169272] ERROR - [Req#1ede20] Unable to find client profile for device; platform=Vizio SmartCast, platformVersion=3.3.3-2506.0001, device=Vizio SmartCast 3.3.3-2506.0001, model=P75Q9-H1
But if it’s agnostic I would think there’s not an associated profile–maybe a hold over from a previous iteration/architecture of Plex?
Inspection of the file itself seems to show nothing amiss: DTS-MA-6.1 in English, DTS 5.1 in English, followed by a few DD (and the first instance of Portuguese). Is there a limitation on DTS perhaps?
are you sure the language code is english? People sometimes assume that just because the title says English that it’s coded as english.
Look at the XML or the info page on plex.
Looking at the xml, it seems to be correct to play in English, unless I’m missing something?
<Stream id="91144" streamType="2" selected="1" default="1" codec="dca" index="1" channels="7" bitrate="1536" language="English" languageTag="en" languageCode="eng" audioChannelLayout="6.1" bitDepth="24" profile="ma" requiredBandwidths="5534,5415,5215,4992,4819,4794,4794,4794" samplingRate="48000" title="Surround 6.1" displayTitle="English (DTS-HD MA 6.1)" extendedDisplayTitle="Surround 6.1 (English DTS-HD MA)"> </Stream>
Doing a bit more digging into the server logs there’s more indication of an issue with the Vizio Client than with the server or an encoding issue:
From my search in the server logs: the server is requesting and providing the 91144 audio stream. Inspecting the file directly on VLC shows the DTS-MA audio stream is English. I’ll investigate the client console output to see if it actually is requesting the 91144 stream.
Is this happening on a lot of files or just this one file?
I’m wondering if it’s encoded wrong. If this is just one file, I would try remuxing it with mkvtoolnix to see if that fixes it. Make sure you use a different filename so Plex doesn’t associate it with the old one. That way you don’t have to do the plex dance.
So far just this one file.
Encoding looks fine… I can try Remuxing, but I don’t believe that would fix my problem. So here’s some more flys for the oinment:
I can cast it to the exact same TV from my phone and it works perfectly. Correct Audio and no transcoding (at least from what I can see). This, to me, indicates the muxing and encoding are correct–but there’s an issue with the Vizio specific client to which I’m not sure if there’s a fix I could do beyond transcode a version ahead of time, but that seems to give poorer audio for some reason.
I am going to go ahead and Re-Rip the discs since it appears that at some point I remuxed what should have been a two part file into one. So I think that may be the issue. I will know more once the RIP is completed.
This is just a shot in the dark, but it still is peculiar to me that the issue as described:
For these reasons I suspect it is a bug in the Vizio client itself in how it handles DTS audio tracks.
After reripping and remuxing the result is: The problem persists.
I have also noted that with the push of the new mobile app the audio is now garbled and does not stream the DTS anymore (note: it does not play any audio correctly with the new app).
After doing some digging it looks like this is not an uncommon issue with certain chipsets on Vizio TVs. I will create a new post asking for clarification or a comprehensive list of known chipsets/models that have this issue.
So that may not be the “Solution” but just a work around. And may have nothing to do with the whole Vizio chipset issue that search returns.
Here’s what I know:
Attempting to play DTS-MA-6.1 doesn’t pass thru and instead of transcoding will play the next available audio track (Skipping the next DTS-ES-6.1 track and playing the AC3 5.1) the only reason this was caught is because it was a different language. In that instance turning off DTS(DCA) capability forces an audio transcode and seems to work reasonably well.
Here’s where it gets interesting: casting that same movie from an android phone to the same TV results in a direct play of the audio and does not indicate a transcode via the dashboard.
Playing a different movie that has DTS-HD MA 5.1 is able to play without transcoding.
Now, I don’t know if the issue lies with Plex, Vizio, or the receiver communicating the speaker arrangement back to the TV (current arrangement is 5.1 and I would have expected the receiver to remix to 5.1 on the fly).
Alternatively maybe there’s a difference in DTS-HD MA and DTS-MA and how Plex handles that information.
Long story short: unless someone from Plex is able to discuss/direct the line of inquiry for figuring this out I’m out of ideas.
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