For many years now I have had trouble playing my movie rips that contain Dolby Atmos TrueHD audio; I just want the audio passed over to my receiver so it can decode it. Early on I used an oDroid C2 with OpenPHT and this worked great until OpenPHT died. Then last year I stumbled upon Plex Media Player Embedded for x86, so I loaded it on a very small + cheap PC and this has been working great ever since. But the situation is the same in that Plex Media Player Embedded is dead.
- I know that Nvidia Shield will do Dolby Atmos TrueHD passthrough, but it has other things about it that I don’t like.
- I’m a macOS user and even though the new Plex app has passthrough as an option, it doesn’t work (I think this is a macOS limitation).
- Plex on Windows has its limitations.
- I haven’t tried passthrough with Plex for XBOX.
When I’m not playing a file with a TrueHD soundtrack, I use Plex on my AppleTV, as it handles all other audio perfectly fine for me (my Dolby Digital Plus with Dolby Atmos soundtracks play great!) I would even be fine with allowing Plex to decode the audio if it actually worked properly. On this page they say:
So in short; when using decoding the only drawbacks are the lack of the extended Atmos data bits, and that your receiver will not light up the TrueHD light. Don’t worry, though: even if the pretty light doesn’t go on, you’re still getting identical sound!
But I’m not getting identical sound because when I play a TrueHD Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 test file, the overhead channels come out of the front & rear speakers!
Has anyone found a good solution for this? Plex Embedded is my favorite option thus far: it’s a dedicated Plex streaming box that does everything I need (PLEASE BRING IT BACK!). What I would like even more is for Plex on AppleTV to decode Dolby Atmos and place it in the correct speakers. Thanks for any feedback!
