Xbox One X 4k/HDR support? Is Plex EVER getting an Xbox update?

Plex Players Gaming Consoles
41

@mbarylski said:
I’m just getting started with 4k,and trying to understand what exactly we get with the current Xbox one app. If I understand correctly a direct play 4k file will actually output 4k video, but if it needs to transcode, it won’t output 4k content. Did I get that right? I’m having trouble understanding why a transcode would push it down to 1080p if that’s the case. Why wouldn’t the PMS just strip out HDR and transcode to 4k only without HDR/Atmos?

I beleive that is what is happening now. No HDR but a direct stream otherwise but audio will be transcoded if it’s ATMOS or DTS MA

42

@mbarylski said:
I’m just getting started with 4k,and trying to understand what exactly we get with the current Xbox one app. If I understand correctly a direct play 4k file will actually output 4k video, but if it needs to transcode, it won’t output 4k content. Did I get that right?
Partially correct, your missing the 3rd option (the middle one):

  1. File direct plays - everything is great.
  2. Audio is unsupported - Video can now be direct streamed without transcoding the video and almost everything is great.
  3. Everything needs to transcode (IE unsupported sidecar subtitles such as video based subtitles) - Almost always not great.

I’m having trouble understanding why a transcode would push it down to 1080p if that’s the case.
The h264 decoder has/had a problem with certain formats of 4K material. To get around this decoder issue the only option is to force the transcode down to 1080p to allow the video to actually play.

Why wouldn’t the PMS just strip out HDR and transcode to 4k only without HDR/Atmos?
Stripping out HDR requires transcoding the full video to reduce the HDR down to a format a TV can support. And because transcoding the video repackages in mpegts the server can’t use HEVC which means the transcoded video needs to go down to 1080p. Stripping out the audio and converting just the audio is what happens now and uses a different protocol specifically for direct streamed HEVC/

The developers are still working on adding support for HDR and pass through audio (They can’t add additional decoders, but passthrough will allow them to be decoded by a users receiver instead). Once those two features hit the only major drawback will be video based subitlte’s that require being burned into the video stream.

43

@jmckee said:

@mbarylski said:
I’m just getting started with 4k,and trying to understand what exactly we get with the current Xbox one app. If I understand correctly a direct play 4k file will actually output 4k video, but if it needs to transcode, it won’t output 4k content. Did I get that right?
Partially correct, your missing the 3rd option (the middle one):

  1. File direct plays - everything is great.
  2. Audio is unsupported - Video can now be direct streamed without transcoding the video and almost everything is great.
  3. Everything needs to transcode (IE unsupported sidecar subtitles such as video based subtitles) - Almost always not great.

I’m having trouble understanding why a transcode would push it down to 1080p if that’s the case.
The h264 decoder has/had a problem with certain formats of 4K material. To get around this decoder issue the only option is to force the transcode down to 1080p to allow the video to actually play.

Why wouldn’t the PMS just strip out HDR and transcode to 4k only without HDR/Atmos?
Stripping out HDR requires transcoding the full video to reduce the HDR down to a format a TV can support. And because transcoding the video repackages in mpegts the server can’t use HEVC which means the transcoded video needs to go down to 1080p. Stripping out the audio and converting just the audio is what happens now and uses a different protocol specifically for direct streamed HEVC/

The developers are still working on adding support for HDR and pass through audio (They can’t add additional decoders, but passthrough will allow them to be decoded by a users receiver instead). Once those two features hit the only major drawback will be video based subitlte’s that require being burned into the video stream.

Ah, got it. Appreciate the explanation. I definitely look forward to HDR and pass through audio in the Xbox One app. Once that happens, will there still be an issue if a video needs to be transcoded because of something like video based subtitle’s? You mentioned that the h264 decoder has a problem with some 4k material. So it seems like the video would still need to be transcoded down to 1080p if video based subtitle’s are getting burned in. If I understood that right, is the h264 issue going to be fixed at some point? My PMS is on Windows, so MS would have to fix the h264 decoder right?

44

@jmckee said:

@mbarylski said:
I’m just getting started with 4k,and trying to understand what exactly we get with the current Xbox one app. If I understand correctly a direct play 4k file will actually output 4k video, but if it needs to transcode, it won’t output 4k content. Did I get that right?
Partially correct, your missing the 3rd option (the middle one):

  1. File direct plays - everything is great.
  2. Audio is unsupported - Video can now be direct streamed without transcoding the video and almost everything is great.
  3. Everything needs to transcode (IE unsupported sidecar subtitles such as video based subtitles) - Almost always not great.

I’m having trouble understanding why a transcode would push it down to 1080p if that’s the case.
The h264 decoder has/had a problem with certain formats of 4K material. To get around this decoder issue the only option is to force the transcode down to 1080p to allow the video to actually play.

Why wouldn’t the PMS just strip out HDR and transcode to 4k only without HDR/Atmos?
Stripping out HDR requires transcoding the full video to reduce the HDR down to a format a TV can support. And because transcoding the video repackages in mpegts the server can’t use HEVC which means the transcoded video needs to go down to 1080p. Stripping out the audio and converting just the audio is what happens now and uses a different protocol specifically for direct streamed HEVC/

The developers are still working on adding support for HDR and pass through audio (They can’t add additional decoders, but passthrough will allow them to be decoded by a users receiver instead). Once those two features hit the only major drawback will be video based subitlte’s that require being burned into the video stream.

Ah, got it. Appreciate the explanation. I definitely look forward to HDR and pass through audio in the Xbox One app. Once that happens, will there still be an issue if a video needs to be transcoded because of something like video based subtitle’s? You mentioned that the h264 decoder has a problem with some 4k material. So it seems like the video would still need to be transcoded down to 1080p if video based subtitle’s are getting burned in. If I understood that right, is the h264 issue going to be fixed at some point? My PMS is on Windows, so MS would have to fix the h264 decoder right?

45

@mbarylski said:
You mentioned that the h264 decoder has a problem with some 4k material. So it seems like the video would still need to be transcoded down to 1080p if video based subtitle’s are getting burned in.
You got it.

If I understood that right, is the h264 issue going to be fixed at some point? My PMS is on Windows, so MS would have to fix the h264 decoder right?
Partially correct. The decoder resides on the client device. So in this case it is the decoder on the Xbox One (S/X), but that still resides in Microsoft’s domain. The server codec’s do reside on your local PMS, but they are packaged through the server (And if that had a broken codec would require a fix from the PMS side of things)

The hope is definitely that this issue will be resolved, but unfortunately there is no word on the status of this.

To be honest, this case is waiting for a response, from a response, both of which don’t like to give out any ETA’s about future fixes/releases.

46

@jmckee said:

@mbarylski said:
You mentioned that the h264 decoder has a problem with some 4k material. So it seems like the video would still need to be transcoded down to 1080p if video based subtitle’s are getting burned in.
You got it.

If I understood that right, is the h264 issue going to be fixed at some point? My PMS is on Windows, so MS would have to fix the h264 decoder right?
Partially correct. The decoder resides on the client device. So in this case it is the decoder on the Xbox One (S/X), but that still resides in Microsoft’s domain. The server codec’s do reside on your local PMS, but they are packaged through the server (And if that had a broken codec would require a fix from the PMS side of things)

Ok, so if I turn off direct play and let the server do the transcoding will I get 4k with burned in titles after HDR and Atmos are added to the app? I’m guessing no, because the client codec still plays a role even if forcing transcoding on the server. Not really clear though on why I couldn’t just let the server do all the work.

The hope is definitely that this issue will be resolved, but unfortunately there is no word on the status of this.

To be honest, this case is waiting for a response, from a response, both of which don’t like to give out any ETA’s about future fixes/releases.

I hear ya. Well, I still don’t have a 4k TV so I can wait a little bit on this issue. Just planning ahead a bit. :smile:

47

@mbarylski said:
Ok, so if I turn off direct play and let the server do the transcoding will I get 4k with burned in titles after HDR and Atmos are added to the app? I’m guessing no, because the client codec still plays a role even if forcing transcoding on the server.

Until the h264 problem gets fixed, then burned subtitles will cause a transcode down to 1080p. If you have your subtitles in srt’s (or another text based subtitle) then no transcoding is necessary and the subtitles can be sent side by side with the video file.

Not really clear though on why I couldn’t just let the server do all the work.
The basic model is going to be a server, client, and TV setup:

Server -------> Client-------->TV

The server sends the file to the client. If the file is directly playable the file is sent as is. It works similarly as a download from a webpage. Where you ask the server for the file and then it sends you the file, no messing around with it.

Now let’s say that your using google drive/onedrive/etc and instead of just asking for the file you ask for the files to be in a .zip file. The server compresses the file and then sends it your way. This is similar to what happens when a client tells the server to transcode the audio or video. In effect the client is telling the server “I can’t play X, so convert it to Y”.

So now in the zip example you have your zip file, if you don’t have any program to unzip the file you can’t do anything with it, but if you have a program to unzip the file then you are able to decompress the file and access all the content. This is what happens when the audio/video/subtitle stream hit the client. The client act’s like the decompressor and makes that video/audio stream available for the TV to display. So if the client has no way to decompress the file into a usable format then the TV has no way to display it.

Now there are some exceptions to this. The biggest one is audio pass-through. This basically tells the client don’t worry about the audio something else further on will take care of it. Either the TV itself, or another device further in the chain.

In actual practice this process is a bit more in depth, but hopefully that gets the basic process down for you. If not let me know and I can see if I can get a better explanation for you.

Short answer: The server tries to carry the heavy loading of converting before getting to the client, but the client still needs to be able to play that new format or it can’t output it to the TV. It’s very similar to transcoding where if the server can’t decode the original file it can’t convert it to the new format, just that if the client can’t decode the audio/video you will normally get a cannot play this file type message.

48

@jmckee Awesome, I get it now. Really appreciate the 101 explanation. Hope the issue gets fixed before I get a new 4k TV. :smile:

49

Got the Apple 4K tv. Some files I have to Bluetooth to sound bar for audio, but dayum. HDR works direct stream and awesome. Hopefully Xbox one x will get a fix

50

frustrating this is still not working. sigh.

51

@Dannyboyayyo said:
frustrating this is still not working. sigh.

I agree, I’m a software developer so i understand they have priorities, but right now this is a major missing feature. Since it’s something that can easily be added to UWP as a handful of other apps already support it, there must be a technical limitation with the way they built the video player. I have tinkered with the windows 10/xbox api’s in a while, but i’m getting close to attempting to make my own simple player.

52

@elitemike

@elitemike said:

@Dannyboyayyo said:
frustrating this is still not working. sigh.

I agree, I’m a software developer so i understand they have priorities, but right now this is a major missing feature. Since it’s something that can easily be added to UWP as a handful of other apps already support it, there must be a technical limitation with the way they built the video player. I have tinkered with the windows 10/xbox api’s in a while, but i’m getting close to attempting to make my own simple player.

If you already have some experience with uwp and xbox api, what do you think how easy/hard is to port something like this to xbox one?

Thanks,
I

53

I have a XBox One S (not X) but would still like all the same features, 4K, HDR, and Atmos support. I have 4K HDR+Atmos support on all my other apps on XBONE S, everything but Plex it seems.

54

Been testing everything trying to get 4k& HDR to work on xbox one x. It seems like 4k (not HDR) works for 5-10 sec then it buffers then goes to some washed out low res quality.
I had my girlfriend mention to just try the TV’s built in PLEX app and see what that does…my question now is why does a TV’s plex app run in 4k and HDR perfectly and also the UI looks way better then the Xbox one version? This really needs to be resolved as now for temporary use ill have to pass a optical cable in the wall to my receiver in the basement just to be able to get sound.
I love PLEX so please update the xbox one version as I love using my xbox for gaming, TV and movies.

thanks and keep it up PLEX team

55

@Muzinator said:
my question now is why does a TV’s plex app run in 4k and HDR perfectly and also the UI looks way better then the Xbox one version?
Plex still is making a big push to a unified UI which means once they roll out a UI the plan is to make all Plex apps have a similar look and feel. Depending on what type of TV you are using you could also be using the old PHT UI that runs on Samsung Model TV’s pre-2017 (or possibly 2016).

Moussa is actively looking into enabling HDR and passthrough for the platform. The problem lies between the difference in the two systems. Directly on the TV it can just ask the API can you play this? On the Xbox it has to check if the xbox can play it, then it has to check if the xbox can output it, then it has to check if the xbox is set to actually allow playback of that, then it has to check if the TV can play it. The difficulty lies in that once it goes beyond the Xbox, Plex has 0 control over it because that is all between the settings on the TV and the system settings on the Xbox, both of which Plex cannot change, and can only see the Xbox side.

This really needs to be resolved as now for temporary use ill have to pass a optical cable in the wall to my receiver in the basement just to be able to get sound.
I would be careful with that. If your playing 4K HDR videos and using an audio receiver for the best quality, an optical cable can’t transport the full uncompressed HD audio stream so you will be given the core audio tracks.

Now if you’re using standard AC3/AAC then you wont have any issues. (DTS is not natively supported by the Xbox One media player for decoding and would need to be transcoded until pass through is enabled but now that won’t affect your video playback) .

56

“Moussa is actively looking into enabling HDR and passthrough for the platform. The problem lies between the difference in the two systems. Directly on the TV it can just ask the API can you play this? On the Xbox it has to check if the xbox can play it, then it has to check if the xbox can output it, then it has to check if the xbox is set to actually allow playback of that, then it has to check if the TV can play it. The difficulty lies in that once it goes beyond the Xbox, Plex has 0 control over it because that is all between the settings on the TV and the system settings on the Xbox, both of which Plex cannot change, and can only see the Xbox side.”

I would hope they can hide some passthrough options in an advanced menu in the short term. I understand many people aren’t technical, but to limit this feature is frustrating for those of us building 4k HDR libraries with advanced audio. I don’t have the funds to go out and by an nvidia shield or roku 4k. My tv has a 4k roku built in but doesn’t support the new ARC for atmos.

57

The Plex app on Xbox One X really struggles to playback 4K content (hardwire, no wireless connections). Would appreciate an update to address this. My 4K Roku (wireless) has no issues playing the same 4K files from the same NAS drive…