I checked amazon’s developer site which listed fire tv only can passthrough Dolby digital. But for my fire tv which connected to a dated android 4.4 tv can direct play DTSHD audio. I mean even if fire tv can passthrough the audio to my tv. My old tv definitely can’t play it.
Amazon chooses what codecs/technology to support, since they primarily want you to stream from them, the don’t have to support much else.
I miss something on the topic. I just mean the way or the situation that plex works with fire tv together
Ok well sorry I’m not quite understanding what your questions/problems are, or what kind of answer/solution to provide.
Is your question -
“I have media with DTS HD audio. It is playing correctly on my Fire TV. Why is it working? I thought the Fire TV didn’t support DTS HD audio.”
My assumption is that it isn’t actually Direct Playing or Direct Streaming, and that Plex is transcoding the audio.
During playback, what does the Plex Server Status/Dashboard show?
In fact, it does direct play without transcoding even with pgs subtitles. I think it is wierd so I came here to ask this question.
The FireTV converts the dts audio.
The target audio format depends on the audio configuration of the FireTV device and what is supported by the attached TV/receiver/etc.
The conversion does not occur on the Plex Media Server, so it reports everything as direct play.
What is shown in the Plex Dashboard (direct play/direct stream/transcode) tells you what is happening on the Plex Media Server. There is no feedback from the client to the server. The client can change the audio or video and the Plex Server will not be aware it is happening.
If the conversion is performed by the device, not the Plex client, then the Plex client may not be aware of what is happening.
Regarding subtitles: Plex for Android v8.0.0 & higher direct plays subtitles, even if audio or video is transcoding. Announcement
That’s pretty interesting that the fire tv can handle dts, it’s probably due more to the soc that the tv has inside, and is a tv that is expected to be compatible with more formats, versus the one that is inside the external fire devices, which only have to support the authorized streaming services.
Here’s an example:
Playing a video with dts 5.1 audio on my FireTV stick 4K. FireStick audio = Best Available. Plex app Passthrough = HDMI.
Plex media server reports direct play.
Denon on-screen display shows it is receiving Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 (Signal).
Edit: dts-HD MA 5.1 and dts-HD MA 7.1 act the same as dts 5.1. Guessing that only the core dts 5.1 is processed and the “-HD MA” part is discarded.
FireTV Stick 4K <-HDMI-> Denon AVR-X4300H <-HDMI-> LG B7 OLED
Neat!
That’s a little bit surprising. Usually devices that avoid DTS do so completely, even for passthrough, to avoid the licensing.
I wonder if this is another case of “works by accident”.
I can’t understand why your receiver receives the DD+ audio? In your explanation, it should be the DTS core.
By the way, is there any chance to show DTS-HD MA direct play in the plex sever dashboard?
It shows DD+ because the FireTV transcodes the audio to DD+ before sending it to my receiver.
It does. I was playing a dts, not dts-HD MA, audio stream when I took the screenshot.
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Interesting. I’ve been using a Fire TV Stick 4K simply plugged into a TV for over a year now so I was surprised to learn recently that the Fire Stick 4K did not in fact natively support DTS as Plex always reported Direct Play.
Which client component is doing the conversion to DD/DD+? Is it Plex, Android/Exoplayer, or the Fire TV software itself? Also, I’m not that knowledgeable when it comes to audio licensing/decoding — If a device doesn’t list support for DTS, it’s still possible to decode it through software then?
Finally, I got the answer.
There is nothing to do with Fire TV. Only because the plex client on almost every android tv device can decode DTS-HD now. Many thanks for the updates for the app. Only the TrueHD audio will be transcoded to EAC3, then the client decodes EAC3 by itself. I assume nowadays each TV can direct play all the audios except TrueHD. Passthrough or not is no longer the problem if people don’t care about EAC3
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