Shield device HDMI into old Bravia TV > TV HDMI into Denon x4200 receiver with only 5.1 speakers via ARC
I am trying to play a movie Star Trek VI (which I noticed is TrueHD audio)- I get no voice coming from the speakers. Works fine when playing on my laptop only via VLC on laptop speakers (clearly it’s downmuxing right?).
Back to my home theatre: Can someone please explain if the Shield plugged into the TV is the problem or something else? What’s happening here?
Is Shield Plex app just straight up unable to support TruHD?
Is Shield able to support TruHD but the TV can’t, so the TV can’t send to the receiver? I thought ARC doesn’t care what the TV can or cannot do?
Is Shield and TV have no problem but the receiver doesn’t support TruHD?
Is TruHD even the problem? If it is the problem and nothing I have can support TruHD, could I just “optimize original quality” with Plex conversions and that would keep all original quality but change the audio codec? That easy?
If someone could give me a short explanation as to wtf is the going on here, I would really appreciate that and go on my marry way to fix it and some other movies as well. I’m looking for knowledge here friends!
If your TV is old, then it may not even support ARC, but even if it did, it would not be able to pass TrueHD to your receiver as you would need the more modern version of ARC for that > eARC.
Thank you. Wires are so tight, this is going to suck.
So Once I do that, if I send 7.1, 9.1 or Atmos or whatever through the receiver, will the receiver downmux it to 5.1 or will plex be doing transcoding?
If you’ve only got 5.1 speakers, then you won’t get any Atmos because your AVR is aware that you have no height speakers, and so won’t even attempt to output it.
Instead, you will just get the 5.1 channels that exist in the audio track. A 7.1 audio track will probably just drop the information in channels 6 and 7.
This year I will be upgrading plex server hardware so I can run x265, it obviously runs like crap now but when downloading movies I don’t want to simply download x264 only to have to download x265 when I upgrade on black Friday. What
do people normally do?
Download the x265, Store in a new library called x265, then use conversion/optimization “original quality” for your main library? Would that accomplish having a working version while storing the x265 for a later date? I believe it would. Or is there a faster way to convert easily?
The Shield can support absolutely everything, and so as long as you plug the shield into your AVR you should be fine, because the shield will direct play and so you won’t have to transcode x265, and therefore you won’t need a new Plex server.
The problem will only be if you’re sharing your content with other users externally, where you have no control over what clients they have.
That’s interesting because I tried to watch x265 WonderWoman (again plugged into my TV) it was laggy, unwatchable really. The CPU is an AMD Phenom II x2 from 2008 I believe, but you’re saying that shouldn’t matter
As long as your client is Direct playing EVERYTHING, so that’s video track, audio track and subtitle track, then your server won’t need to transcode.
But because the Shield supports basically everything, you should find that you’ll be fine, so long as you are not sharing content with other users.
Give it a try and see for yourself.
With the Shield plugged into the AVR, you should be in a position where you can direct play everything.
Oh… One caveat… Do make sure your Shield and your server are both ethernet cabled, and not wireless. Bad bandwidth issues between client and server will also trigger a transcode.
