Server Version#: 1.19.2.2737
Player Version#: 5.0.2
TV: V405-G9
Chipset: MTK-5597(1)
When trying to play MKVs with DTS audio (blu-rays with H264 video), the app states it cannot Direct Play these items and forces transcoding. I am pretty sure that the tv supports DTS audio decoding and it is connected to my AVR via optical digital output set to “Bitsreaming” anyways. Note that I can play MKVs with TrueHD audio without transcoding.
The same forced trancoding takes place with MPEG2 video (DVDs with Dolby Digital audio).
DTS is disabled by default. I have that exact model, and tested various DTS media and none of it was able to play.
If your AVR is capable of DTS and the TV is properly configured, then you should be able to play DTS, but you’ll need to enable it in User Options->Settings->Audio.
All Dolby codecs should work (including True HD) on these models. It’s pretty common for a chipset to support decoding either Dolby or DTS but not both, and at least for TVs its tends to be Dolby.
MPEG2 also failed in my testing, but if you can verify that these are working in the old app, I’ll give it another look.
My AVR is DTS-capable and I have the DTS output option enabled in the Plex app settings, but it still is transcoding instead of bitsreaming via optical.
I tried MPEG2 with the old app and it does also transcode. This is odd because this set has an ATSC tuner which of course is MPEG2?
Yeah generally if you had that setting enabled, it would either work, have no sound, or fail totally - but not transcode (unless the transcode is not due to DTS but something else). I’ll look into it and see if I can figure anything out on my end. If not I may need to get a log.
This is pretty common with TVs. The tuner hardware is totally separate from the hardware that runs the rest of the TV.
@cncb: Nothing yet. On the browser client, could you go to the details page for the video in question, click the ⋮ in the upper right corner, select Get Info and then select View XML in the lower left of that dialog and share the XML with me. I’ll see if I can figure out anything from that before asking for a log.
@cncb: Check Settings ->Video->Local Quality. If that is not Original, you may be getting a transcode because of bitrate (so changing to Original may help). Also, just FYI, selecting the second audio track for this file will force a direct stream (but shouldn’t cause a transcode of the audio).
I have Original for Local Quality and Allow direct play and Allow direct stream checked in the settings. But it also transcodes when I select the second audio track. It says it cannot direct play due to the player not supported selecting a different audio track and for some reason says Direct stream is disabled.
Yeah, sorry for not getting back to you. It does look like I’ll need logs. Here’s some instructions:
First on the web client: Click the settings button in the upper right, click General on the left sidebar and enable Enable Plex Media Server debug logging
Then on the Plex app: Go to Settings at the bottom of the sidebar. Change Advanced -> Log to media server to your PMS server.
Then ob the web client: Click the settings button in the upper right, click Troubleshooting on the left sidebar and the select DOWNLOAD LOGS and the PM that to me.
If the DTS setting enabled, the app basically assumes that DTS is direct streamable when making it’s decisions. So if the audio and subtitle streams are direct streamable, the app will try to direct play the item, which basically means the media is stream directly to the TV unaltered. If it fails (apart from network issues and such) it means that the TV can’t actually play it for some reason.
For the audio, this could mean something is not configured correctly on the TV, something is not configured correctly on the external receiver, the receiver doesn’t support DTS, the receiver doesn’t support every variant of DTS, the receiver doesn’t like the stream from the particular file, maybe something else.
From what I can see in the logs everything is working as expected but the TV is saying it can’t play the media.
One last, thing. In some cases on failure, we’ll fall back to transcoding after trying direct play, which is why you might get a transcoded playback instead.
I’ll see if can get someone at Vizio can shed some light on this.
