LE9 and mpv has changed so much and not in ways that are positive for embedded PMP. I honestly do not know what the future of embedded PMP is anymore.
Interesting, I was wondering if I should move back to a Windows Setup for the Media Room, I gues that answers that question.
Honest truth: The moment that both Roku and Fire TV allowed direct-play of MPEG2, I gave up on PMP embedded. I converted my PMP NUC into a hardware-accelerated PMS instead.
I really miss how quickly you could FF/RW on PMP, though. And the larger options for button-mapping. Roku/etc just canāt compare to that. But I gave up.
Hello @Achilles, I was hoping to get a bit of advice from you. Itās apparent that getting surround audio in PMP Embedded on Apollo Lake is not a priority for different teams for whatever reasons.
I am basically thinking I should buy a new NUC for HD/surround/HDR video playback, and I was hoping you could share whether the latest NUCs (not sure what models are out there now) do work with PMP embedded for these scenarios? Or if problems still exist?
Thank you!
Do you want to play 4K HDR10 content?
Ideally yes, if possible.
If you want to do so then you do need support for Apollo Lake and newer. Your only choice is to use LE9 and the PfK addon
Thank you. Iām not certain what the PfK addition is however?
That said, what I think I am hearing from you is that LE9 is a key prerequisite, and even a newer NUC like the new Bean Canyon based ones will not work with both HDR10 and 7.1 surround when using PMP until LE9 is released?
Is it possible that LE9 will unblock my older Apollo Lake-based NUC and make it just work as well? If so, it may make more sense to wait.
Thank you again for your expertise here!
PfK is a Kodi add on developed by Plex.
So you run Kodi on the embedded and install the Plex for Kodi add on. Basically after installing you can more or less forget that Kodi is the underlying system.
Itās actually pretty good however, last I heard, development had stopped. A real shame in my opinion.
It was my go to for 4K HDR. In the end I just abandoned the whole HTPC idea and bought an Apple TV 4K.
Ah, thank you! Certainly worth taking a stab at moving the existing NUC over to LE9 with PfK then. Appreciate all of the tips!
@Xhaka Iād be curious how well the AppleTV is working for you with HDR content when using Plex?
I have the latest 4K generation ATV on my upstairs Samsung TV. Unfortunately, even with the beta Plex updates with the new playback engine, I get stuttering on HDR demo clips and movies. I have to use a third party media player (Impulse maybe? Iām blanking on name) to get non-stuttering support.
There is no perfect client for 4K HDR at the moment but the following three solutions are quite acceptable.
- AppleTV 4K with latest beta builds of Plex works well enough. Devs were able to resolve the frame stuttering.
- AppleTV 4K using FireCoreās Infuse connected to Plex
- nVidia Shield with either Emby or Plex app
Does atv 4K support 7.1 atmos and dts hd ma, now?
With Infuse it supports decoding TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio to Multichannel LPCM. Until Apple support HD audio bitstreaming via CoreAudio stack, you wonāt get the 3D spatial audio metadata of Atmos or X. If that is important, Shield is the only viable solution for now. Hopefully we get HDR support in Linux by end of 2019 or sometime in 2020.
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@avrignaud.
To add to @Achilles wise words, I love my ATV 4K. Iām not personally feeling the love for Atmos even though I have a capable receiver and speakers.
Infuse as mentioned is versatile and I do use it occasionally. The Video Preview thumbnails (if you use them) are done on the fly so there is actually no need to generate them via the CPU intensive process that Plex requires.
That said, if and only if pure Atmos and DTS-X are gonna be important to you then for me at least, the Shield offers nothing over the ATV 4K.
As I also have a few Dolby Vision files, the ATV 4K was a no brainier.
Thanks for all the feedback! I recently built out a basement home theater with Atmos and surround, and so I think Iām basically stuck for now on a Windows 10 NUC (with as many notification settings disabled as I can), and the Shield as a backup. Iāll cross fingers for HDR support in Linux and that weāll eventually get to an updated LE9+Plex embedded build that can duplicate the functionality of the Win10 system.
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Iām not holding my breathe on this happening.
Btw where is the download for embedded plex anymore? I went to the download page and donāt see Raspberry Pi or Intel NUC for devices.
Is embedded officially dead?
Do the Roku or Fire TV allow for passthrough of audio to an AV receiver?
Do they Direct Play HEVC?
Roku can pass through Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital+ and DTS. It canāt pass through TrueHD/Atmos, DTSāHD MA, or DTS-HD HRA.
IIRC the Fire TV 4K can pass through Dolby and Dolby+ but DTS is always transcoded. Pretty sure the FireTV actually transcodes it itself, but Iād need to take a look again.
Yes. Roku does HEVC all the way to 10-bit, including 4K HDR. FireTV 4K can also direct-play HEVC up to 10-bit, but my understanding is that HDR has problems and it doesnāt handle it.
Thanks for the response and info.
So the Roku is almost perfect.
Iām trying to establish an Atmos system with a Yamaha receiver. My biggest hurdle is Plex and the proper player client. So for Atmos and 4K HDR that only leaves ATV or nVidia Shield.
I wonder if Roku will establish Atmos/DTS-HD MA passthrough?
