If i want to play files with AAC/Opus 5.1 audio, it direct plays via HDMI passthrough and outputs pcm 5.1 (i assume).
My dac/AVR does not handle 5.1 PCM correctly. So i would like a option to encode pcm/lpcm outputs to AC3, similar to what the optical settings do. This should only apply to decoded surround output formats that would than send via pcm 5.1/7.1, stereo pcm works fine.
If it is direct playing, then it’s your TV decoding it to PCM and sending that via hdmi. Check your TV’s settings and see if it has an option for digital output and set that to dolby if available. Your TV will then either convert the audio to AC3 or tell Plex to transocde to AC3.
Do TV’s actually live encode a surround pcm/stereo stream into AC3? I’m curious this would need a Dolby Digital Live license and some extra hardware/software stack. Usually this is only offered on PC/Mac via software.
My TV (Hisense) has the dolby MS12 engine, but can only handle converting DD+/TRUEHD to DD if output is set to spdif mode. It does not live encode surround pcm to ac3 or convert DTS to AC3.
Also correct handshaking between TV/Shield/Plex seem wonky at best, so a user option similar to what the “spdif” mode does for hdmi would be great.
So as noted i don’t know how many TV’s will actually live encode pcm->ac3, so if we could have a option just for this case, this would be great. There is also the bitrate issues, since a 7.1 surround pcm signal needs much more bandwidth compared to a 7.1 AC3 stream.
Set the client player to optical with both checkboxes marked. Its a workaround, but its effective. I’ve been doing that for over a year now. Has worked very effectively in almost all cases.
In the event i have a eac3 or a true hd audio track, i switch to hdmi pass-through right before playing and get the right audio stream passed through.
The switiching is annoying. I would prefer they add a eac3 option under the optical settings (and they had under beta build 8.26, but that never made it into the release build).