I currently run the Plex media center on a Synology DS415play (Plex Ver 0.9.9.10.459), it is perfect on my Sons Imac, and I.e. explorer, I have two HDTV' both running Ac-rayn media players which is OK. I want the same experience on the TV's as the Mac and IE, I have looked at the APTV, Amazon Fire TV, Roku and others but none of them are fully compatable. I need a Optical ToSLink for my surround sound system and obviously HDMI to the TV. so my questions are:
1. Will the HiFiBerry Digi+ work with Plex and the new Raspberry Pi model B+ (most of my Movies are MKV with DTS or Dolby 5.1)
2. will my Panasonic Viera TV remote work with the Pi and Viera link?
3. any other issues or hardware I may need or expect.
4. Will it play 1080 high bitrate MKV's with 5.1 sound? via the 10/100 ethernet?
1. Will the HiFiBerry Digi+ work with Plex and the new Raspberry Pi model B+ (most of my Movies are MKV with DTS or Dolby 5.1)
2. will my Panasonic Viera TV remote work with the Pi and Viera link?
3. any other issues or hardware I may need or expect.
4. Will it play 1080 high bitrate MKV's with 5.1 sound? via the 10/100 ethernet?
1) Good question. I don't know. But it's one of many reasons why people want the Cubox or Hummingboard to work with Rasplex. It's all built-in! Regrettably, the RPi2 may halt that now. The cost benefit of the Raspberry Pi goes out the window if you want to buy a S/PDIF & IR receiver for it.
2) Yes it will. In fact, Rasplex comes with that remote built-in if you use an IR receiver too.
3) Sandisk Micro-SD, good case, WiFi if needed, IR receiver & remote if needed.
4) Depends on what you mean by high bit-rate. I've not had any problems playing any standard MKV/MP4 rip available.
5) If you have MPEG2 videos, you might want to fork up a couple bucks for the license.
thanks for you advice, just a couple more to clarify:
1. So I will need to buy the HiFiberry Digi+ and give it a try, this maybe a deal breaker if I cannot get SS5.1 working through optical, although the TV has an Optical out not sure if i can pass through the HDMI sound to the Optical and then to my Amp?
2.Will the Panasonic remote work via HDM1 CEC, or will I need to buy an IR receiver?
3. I have several 4/8Gb SD cards (camera0 will these work OK, what is the minimum size needed?
4. all my films are MKV, one example is Avatar which is 1920:1080 with a bit rate of 10MB/s and DTS 6 channel sound, will the Pi cope?
It appears the HiFiberry Digi+ may be supported in the next Rasplex release due any moment, so you should be good to go. There is a thread about it if you search.
The Panasonic will work with CEC (Viera Link), however, the number of commands it recognizes is limited compared to an IR receiver and using LIRC (Linux built-in IR app). But you will get the basics to navigate and it works 'out of the box'. If you don't want to deal with the headaches of IR, you might simply want to get a USB keyboard (wired or wireless) for those moments you need to do something else, like setup. Any 4GB card will theoretically work, but the Raspberry Pi can be a picky breed. Sandisk is a known good quantity. The Pi or Pi2 can play the video for that Avatar rip just fine, however, it will either need to pass that DTS through to the end device (AV Receiver, TV, etc) or have it transcoded on your Plex server first. Seeing you are talking about the Digi+, I presume that is not an issue. :)
With the exception of decoding HD audio, the Raspberry Pi2 and Rasplex is a nifty little combination. If you need more horsepower or other capabilities, there are some small Intel NUC type options which are north of $120 that work well too, but if Panasonic Viera-Link is a requirement, you're on the right track with the Raspberry Pi 2.
Thanks again for answering my questions, I have ordered Pi and cannot wait to set it up. I will try a test config with just the Pi and order the Digi+ and if needed an IR receiver at a later date.
I probably will be back asking more questions once I have the Pi, stand by.......
@georgestart, I'm in the same boat as you regarding the optical setup. interested in what you find out.
Check with the manual for your TV or search the Internet AV forums, some TVs can output DTS and DD signals through their optical out, notably Sony TVs, not sure about Panasonics as I don't have one.
I have one of my Pi B+'s connected via HDMI to the TV and the optical out of the TV connected to a Sony A/V Receiver. You must enable Passthrough for DTS and DD in Preferences.
OK, After a few attempts and installing Rasplex and a few multi-coloured boxes and blank screens I finally found the correct 0.5.1 image and installer, ran through the wizard and so far so good.
I cannot get the Panasonic TV to pass through HDMI DTS/Dolby to the optical out and it seems this is a limitation of the TV. so more questions.
1. Will the highberry DIGI+ work with Rasplex 0.5.1, if not will a USB sound card with optical out work?
2.I can obviously shutdown Rasplex from the GUI, but how do I power back up, without toggling the USB P?S?( I don't want the kids to have to pull the USB power every time they want to start it)
3. if there is no easy answer can I leave it on all the time?.
4. CEC works OK but I would like to get the Play/pause, FF buttons working on the bottom of the remote is this possible? ( I am actively working on this and have found some keymap info)
Overall I am very impressed and finally have a consistent experience across all platforms, and it look amazing on the Big screen ( apart from my cover/Thumbnails art look a bit rough).
Great solution, I know it is early days yet but I'm impressed, thanks again for all your help in the past and hopefully going forward.
Leave it running all the time. The power consumption is much less than a light bulb. This is the primary reason I disabled CEC and went with a traditional IR remote so that any TV (hdmi-cec) activity would not affect it. Otherwise you are right, you'll need to manually unplug/plug in the Raspberry. Or you can disable those specific CEC functions within Rasplex on the CEC adapter.
If you need more functions than what CEC offers, then you'll need to explore the world of LIRC and IR remotes. I recommend one of the MCE remotes, and some of my threads regarding that configuration may help you.
4. CEC works OK but I would like to get the Play/pause, FF buttons working on the bottom of the remote is this possible? ( I am actively working on this and have found some keymap info)
I have a similar setup as you; Panasonic plasma 2012 (VT50) and RPi2. Still top of the line picture! Just love it.....Too bad it suffers from lack of support from Panasonic regarding "apps", upgrades etc etc. Have left some comments in the Plex Panasonic forum in here....Someone did have a Plex app built but that was rejected by Panasonic....strange behaviour to customers i must say. Originally had the Pi2 connected to TVs USB but that was unstable so went with a wall socket....Leaving the Pi2 on at all times.
However the same discovery was made by me early on; TV does not passthrough other than LCPM to the recevier with HDMI-ARC Have no optical but suspect the same there. Only works if the source is Panasonic internal, i.e. DLNA, app etc.
So i decided to plug it into the AVR directy. Solved the audio issue. Also all my lower remote buttons work (play/pause/stop. Not FF/RW but that is a known issue with RasPlex). No changed/added CEC commands, out of the box. My Pi2 is connected with a 2.1A charger and i think the CEC demands (or suffers from) bad Amps. Becuse when i tried to overclock it increasing the voltage by 2V the lower part buttons stopped working (and also sound was downmixed to LPCM). But i got a fast browsing experince within Plex :) Really looking forward to the next 0.6.X version that all the amazing guys work on....
I think you might need to try a charger with higher Amps. And also if over clocked remove that when nailing this down....
