The most recent notes on the TVOS enhanced player it lists TrueHD to lossless FLAC output. So will this be multichannel FLAC and equivalent to original quality or is there some quality loss during transcode? What about DTS-HD? Does that get transcoded to FLAC as well? Thanks. Also any plans to just decode TrueHD and DTS-HD to multichannel PCM so there is zero transcoding?
But there is something that I don’t understand. If the server is transcoding TrueHD for example to flac or OPUS or whatsoever, why can’t it be done on the player locally as well to avoid this transcoding?
A first step would be to do the conversion to flac on the client side (at least for the enhanced player). If the server can do it, so does the client. There shouldn’t be any fees problem.
A second step would be to output LPCM (decoding on the client side, so DirectPlay), paying fees or not. But Plex should communicate about that. There is nothing on the subject. We need to know what are the plans.
A last step would be to wait from Apple to enable bitstream of HD audio (But i guess we can wait for a long time). There is yet nothing to do for this point yet, except as Infuse asks users to, request that feature from Apple. (As well as Dolby Vision I guess)
But Plex, please tell us. have you in your plans to output LPCM locally from the Apple TV side? At least, even using flac or Opus, are you planning to decode on the player side and avoid unnecessary conversion ?
Just communicate once and for all, for the Apple TV, but also for all players, what are the plans for audio, and what is officially actually working. You do already have a page explaining LPCM, HD Audio, etc etc. But there is nothing on where is the decoding (server, client) for the different devices.
The Plex player is great, but having to use Kodi, MrMc, Infuse for just a matter of audio is painful. Just fix the licensing issue. We are kind of all ok to pay for it.
But we need communication.
Huge fan.