A receiver does not need to support 7.1 to play 7.1 tracks. A 5.1 receiver can play 7.1 tracks just fine, the extra 2 channels just wont be used.
Are you sure the file is DTS-HD 7.1 and not DTS-HD MA 7.1? These are different.
Well not exactly. MA is just the second version of DTS-HD. There is DTS-HD HRA but basically nothing uses that anymore. I can’t think of any of my stuff that has it at least. Regardless, it would be DTS-HD HRA vs DTS-HD MA. In general though, if someone says DTS-HD, its commonly assumed they mean DTS-HD MA.
At any rate, as you said, Roku does not support DTS-HD MA, or for that matter, any lossless audio (DTS-HD, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-X, Dolby Atmos that is based on TrueHD).
The audio you have in that file is DTS-HD MA 7.1 with a DTS-HD 5.1 core.
No, it would be a DTS-HD MA 7.1 track with a DTS 5.1 core track. Or in other words, a lossless audio track (DTS-HD) with a lossy track (DTS) as the core. He could in theory remux the file container to only have the DTS 5.1 track and his audio would then be able to direct play.
Actually, by the look of it, he has the DTS 5.1 track as a second stream. He should be able to just change the audio stream and he will get full direct play.
@MovieFan.Plex said:
Ok, just confirmed, the Roku (all of them actually) can only direct play DTS 5.1. Any other variant will have to be transcoded. The audio you have in that file is DTS-HD MA 7.1 with a DTS-HD 5.1 core. The Roku cannot support this, so you get what you have. Video - direct, audio - transcode.
Thank you for all your help! I have ordered a shield like the others have recommended.
Do you play Anyting with TrueHD? I believe the SHIELD couldn’t play that a while back. I’m not sure if that is still the case but you should check that out before you unpack the thing.
@MovieFan.Plex said:
Ok, just confirmed, the Roku (all of them actually) can only direct play DTS 5.1. Any other variant will have to be transcoded. The audio you have in that file is DTS-HD MA 7.1 with a DTS-HD 5.1 core. The Roku cannot support this, so you get what you have. Video - direct, audio - transcode.
Thank you for all your help! I have ordered a shield like the others have recommended.
Do you play Anyting with TrueHD? I believe the SHIELD couldn’t play that a while back. I’m not sure if that is still the case but you should check that out before you unpack the thing.
ShieldTV plays TrueHD - no problems. It was enabled in an update a few months ago.
@MovieFan.Plex said:
Ok, just confirmed, the Roku (all of them actually) can only direct play DTS 5.1. Any other variant will have to be transcoded. The audio you have in that file is DTS-HD MA 7.1 with a DTS-HD 5.1 core. The Roku cannot support this, so you get what you have. Video - direct, audio - transcode.
So I have setup my new shield and I have to say, i’m having way more playback issues than my roku 3 with transcoded video. I’ve tried to direct play with the shield and it constantly says my connection isn’t fast enough and it buffers at 75M fiber connection to a 1G fiber wear the server is being hosted. It will play direct play the videos correctly now but buffers. So I’m currently trying to just get those blu-ray rips to stream with transcoding at this point with the shield. I have direct play set to auto, and I’ve set the video to 20M which all my TV shows that I pull from my tivo with bitrates as high at 17.7M work just fine but the blu-ray always buffer. It says my server isn’t powerful enough to transcode my videos. The server has 16vCPUs total (2 sockets with 8 cores each) running at 3GHz. The server says the CPU is only peaking about 30% when transcoding. Never had an issue with my roku and transcoding. I’ve tried it with 12M video and it goes a little longer without buffering but still buffers. Ideally I would love to direct play everything, specs say it should work but I will settle for transcoding for the time being until I have build my plex server at home. Thanks!
Not saying it the cause, but make sure the shield is actually on the latest version of Plex. Sometimes the shield doesn’t seem to download updates. At least twice I’ve had to manually go into the Play store and update apps.
