Direct Play supported containers on ATV in 2022?

[raevengel 0]

Hello,

We’ve been using AppleTV 4K (latest version box) for the last 18 months with Emby. We’ve had varying issues with forced transcoding.

I’m trying to figure out what’s compatible for direct play with Plex/AppleTV in 2022. I saw that previously, ATV could not direct play any MKV containers and therefore transcoded. Has this changed? The reason I asked is because I specifically went to check tonight and it appears to be direct playing now (MKV!) but I can’t find any info supporting that. In fact, the Emby Wiki and the AppleTV specs both indicate that MKV containers aren’t supported. To be clear, I’m not using Infuse or any other third party player. FWIW, Plex, which was previously transcoding MKV, also appears to now be direct playing MKV.

I’m trying to confirm whether support has been added on AppleTV or Emby allowing direct play of MKV containers. In the server settings of Emby web it appears to indicate direct play of both video and audio. Granted, it doesn’t show the container as direct play (doesn’t seem to show container play info at all) but I assume if it had to transcode the container, it would give that info? I’m certain the files I was testing were MKV and not MOV, MP4, etc.

What, if any, containers is Emby/AppleTV not able to Direct Play in 2022? I saw that Luke was teasing some coming Emby/AppleTV improvements. I’m just baffled to see direct play of a supposedly unsupported container format that was certainly transcoding a couple of months ago so I feel kinda like I’m going crazy. Thanks in advance!

FWIW, the Emby app design choices for AppleTV are one of the best I’ve seen for keeping the look of Apple’s UI. Honestly, it looks identical to the AppleTV+ interface - which is quite an incredible achievement! Amazing job, Dev Team! 

[Luke 37060]

Hi, if you enable the mpv player option in the app then it will support a broad range of video containers.