Server Version#: 1.21.0.3711
Player Version#: Plex for Android 8.10
thanks to black friday i finally pulled the trigger on 4k tv. a philips 65PUS8505 to be precise, which runs android tv. the TV is connected via HDMI to an onkyo receiver which can handle anything up to dolby true hd / dts ma.
i set up everything but to my confusion, DTS passthrough doesn’t work, no matter what i do. instead, it gets downmixed to stereo. dolby / ac3 works fine. in the dashboard, it always says “direct play: dts hd ma”.
now, this is extra confusing, because DTS used to work on my old 2016 samsung. tizen isn’t really known to be a particularly good piece of software but it would passthrough DTS no problem.
so far i tried:
-any combination of HDMI passthrough enabled / disabled in the app AND the TV
-any combination of changing the h.264 level
-the trick with switching “passthrough” to “optical”, then disabling DTS and switching back to HDMI
-TV has latest firmware
in the tizen app, you could manually enable / disable DTS support, but you can’t with the andoid TV version. the latest patch said that DTS passthrough was disabled, but shouldn’t the server then recognize this and transcode to AAC?
Restore the H.264 level to the default setting. It is for video, not audio. Setting it incorrectly can cause unnecessary video transcoding or the video may fail to play.
Disable the TV speakers.
Audio Out Settings: Settings > Sound > Advanced > Audio out
Enable dts passthrough:
Digital out format: Settings > Sound > Advanced > Digital out format.
• Multichannel (bypass): Select to output Dolby Digital Plus or DTS content to your audio playback devices or Home theatre system.
Note the difference between Multichannel and Multichannel (bypass). The manual says to use Multichannel (bypass) for dts and DD+.
thanks for the input! i wasn’t clear in the OP - all the settings are (again) as you are describing them. in fact, that’s how I did it when first setting everything up.
so after doing abit of diagnosis, here’s the thing: it’s not transcoding.
i thought it was, but it isn’t. i tested with both the DD and DTS. both audio formats are sent to the app on the TV via Direct Play. zero transcoding. TV and app are set to “bypass” and “passthrough” respectively.
any DD signal reaches the recevier and plays perfectly.
any DTS track, however, does not. the receiver only outputs 2ch PCM.
i’m completely confused right now. maybe it’s a bug in the TV settings?
edit: another data point - i tried playback via DLNA, as some have suggested in the past. even worse deal: DD plays flawlessly, but DTS has no sound at all.
good call. i connected my trusty PS3 to the tv to test ARC with some blu ray discs.
DTS works.
so. it is a plex app issue, yes?
edit: so i dug some more and apparently over the years it used to work, then stopped working, then worked again and is now - again - broken. quite frustrating. if only there was a global setting to force transcode of specific formats…
Play a video with dts 5.1 audio for 20 - 30 seconds.
Stop playback. Do not exist the Plex app on the TV, or you can’t pull logs.
Pull the logs from the TV. http://[IPofAndroidDevice]:32500/logging
For the IP address, go to the Plex app settings page and look at the overlay in the lower right corner of the display.
Reference: Android, Android TV, Fire TV Logs
Pull Plex Server logs. Settings -> Server -> Troubleshooting
Attach the device and server logs to the thread (drag into the message window, they will insert at the cursor location).
I’ve took a look through your logs and it seems like your TV doesn’t have passthrough support for DTS (or isn’t advertising that support via the Android HDMI capabilities API), it however has a DTS decoder that only supports a single channel (Plex assumes this is wrong and that it can handle stereo). Because it seems like your TV doesn’t have passthrough support for DTS, the local DTS decoder is being used, as this is being passed to your AVR via ARC, the only option is to playback in stereo (ARC doesn’t support 3+ channels over PCM).
When you use your PS3 to test out ARC, you will be testing it from a pure hardware standpoint and won’t be touching the Android OS.
Inside of Plex, can you switch to Optical for the passthrough setting and make sure DTS is checked (don’t change the setting back to HDMI). Then retry and see if you get DTS passed through?
i think that may have something to do with it, since DTS is specifically mentioned in the manual under the “multichannel bypass” option.
i did, and via HDMI there was (as expected) no sound at all.
HOWEVER
i had an old optical cable lying around and decided to test it. so i connected the TV and my receiver via optical S/PDIF and kept the plex app at “passthrough (optical)” with both formats enabled.
this works. to me, that is acceptable for now. my receiver automatically detects the optical signal and uses it instead of HDMI ARC for both DD / DTS.
which is a bit counter intuitive since there is no dedicated option within the TV audio settings to enable/disable the optical out. it is still set to “HDMI sound system”.
anyway - if you want DTS passthrough you can have it via this workaround. but it is entirely dependent on you having optical output / input available.
the question remains why it’s not working via HDMI.
It’s not working because the tv either is not correctly reporting dts pass through support through android tv (to plex), or it is doing it correctly and simply doesn’t pass through via software, but does via direct hdmi connection (which skips android tv).
When you tried this, did you keep using a HDMI cable? Despite the name “Optical” in the setting, its more of a manual override, it can be used whilst the device is connected over HDMI (has channel limits so its not a full solution, but it should tell us what happens when we force DTS over HDMI).
i did! when i switched it to optical and played a DTS source, there was no sound at all. in fact, my receiver did not see any incoming audio signal whatsoever, just video.
If you don’t mind, that would be fantastic. Slightly confused on what is going on. It’s starting to sound like the DTS decoder on your device is broken and is refusing to pass the content over.
will do tomorrow, just a heads-up: when using the TV’s built-in chromecast functionality, DTS gets transcoded to DD. i will add those logs to my next reply, too.
Hey I have basically the same setup as you. I have the Philips 65OLED805 also going to an Onkyo receiver and had the same issue with dts. However I was able to solve it (for now at least) by selecting optical passthrough in the Plex settings.
If @sixones wants me to provide logs anyways I might be able to help.
Using TV apps will never give you a good result especially when you pass through to an AV amplifier. I think you might be better off passing the video through the Onkyo to the TV.
