ebr 14913 Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 Yeah, I do understand people wanting to get every ounce out of the systems they've spent a bunch of time and money on but, if you can just look away from the display on your receiver and watch and listen to your movie, I think you'll be happy (in most cases) . It is also a tribute to good marketing by DTS and Dolby labs that most people think that those compressed formats are the only way to get high-quality sound. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foghat 65 Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 I can't even see my receiver from where I sit. I just want the best sound possible - whether it is passing through the HD audio so the receiver can decode it or if the software does it and passes along pcm. But it sounds like right now, the best we can get is hd audio decoded to DD/DTS at the app and passed as pcm? If I rip the hd audio to flac, do you know if that will get passed along unchanged? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14913 Posted October 13, 2015 Share Posted October 13, 2015 If I rip the hd audio to flac, do you know if that will get passed along unchanged? I think so. It is at least worth a shot... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foghat 65 Posted October 13, 2015 Share Posted October 13, 2015 I think so. It is at least worth a shot... Do you know if there is any way to tell if it is being re-encoded to something 'lesser' vs being passed along unchanged? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14913 Posted October 13, 2015 Share Posted October 13, 2015 Do you know if there is any way to tell if it is being re-encoded to something 'lesser' vs being passed along unchanged? Not that I know of. I'd say just listen and compare but I already know that such tests are way too subjective and influenced by other factors that it probably wouldn't be very valuable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foghat 65 Posted October 13, 2015 Share Posted October 13, 2015 Not that I know of. I'd say just listen and compare but I already know that such tests are way too subjective and influenced by other factors that it probably wouldn't be very valuable. That is the truth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ronski 7 Posted December 16, 2015 Share Posted December 16, 2015 I stumbled upon this thread whilst trying to work out if Emby and my Amazon Fire TV box (v1) can pass Atmos to my amp. IIRC Atmos is encoded into the 7.1 True HD soundtrack, and will only get decoded if bit streamed to my AV Receiver, which I'm sure doesn't happen with the FTV, but what about the Sheild and the Zidoo mentioned earlier in the thread? The same goes for DTS-X which my AV Receiver will be able to handle once I get the firmware upgrade. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wraslor 70 Posted December 17, 2015 Share Posted December 17, 2015 (edited) I stumbled upon this thread whilst trying to work out if Emby and my Amazon Fire TV box (v1) can pass Atmos to my amp. IIRC Atmos is encoded into the 7.1 True HD soundtrack, and will only get decoded if bit streamed to my AV Receiver, which I'm sure doesn't happen with the FTV, but what about the Sheild and the Zidoo mentioned earlier in the thread? The same goes for DTS-X which my AV Receiver will be able to handle once I get the firmware upgrade. The only thing that can do true hd is the shield running kodi. It decodes and sends multi ch pcm. DTS-X I'm not sure. Also one big thing to consider is do you have the equipment for HD audio to make a difference. I had a friend that was all crazy about getting dts-hd on his samsung home theater in a box system that had speakers the size of my cell phone..... lol I've got some pretty decent PSB speakers, external amps, etc and I really can't tell the difference... but i like the the DTS-HD light on my receiver! Edited December 17, 2015 by wraslor 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14913 Posted December 17, 2015 Share Posted December 17, 2015 Also one big thing to consider is do you have the equipment for HD audio to make a difference. I had a friend that was all crazy about getting dts-hd on his samsung home theater in a box system that had speakers the size of my cell phone..... lol I've got some pretty decent PSB speakers, external amps, etc and I really can't tell the difference... but i like the the DTS-HD light on my receiver! This is why you are seeing very little to no support for these HD audio formats on these new devices. It simply doesn't matter to the general public and the equipment they are using. They can sell new TVs with claims of higher and higher resolution but most people and setups cannot see any value in TrueHD/DTS-HD over DD/DTS so they are no longer big selling points. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ronski 7 Posted December 17, 2015 Share Posted December 17, 2015 (edited) The only thing that can do true hd is the shield running kodi. It decodes and sends multi ch pcm. DTS-X I'm not sure. Also one big thing to consider is do you have the equipment for HD audio to make a difference. I had a friend that was all crazy about getting dts-hd on his samsung home theater in a box system that had speakers the size of my cell phone..... lol I've got some pretty decent PSB speakers, external amps, etc and I really can't tell the difference... but i like the the DTS-HD light on my receiver! If Kodi decodes the HD Audio then it's highly likely it will lose the Atmos encoding, and yes I do have the equipment for Atmos, whether I'd notice the difference I'm not sure as my equipment can up-scale to Dolby Atmos. But I've paid a lot of money for this equipment and spent a year of weekends building my cinema so I'd like to enjoy it to it's full potential as obviously the original Atmos track will be better than an up-scaled one. Just Google "Ronskis Cinema avforums" Edited December 17, 2015 by Ronski Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14913 Posted December 17, 2015 Share Posted December 17, 2015 I don't know the internals of Kodi so I could be way off but I wouldn't be surprised if it were decoding the "core" track and not the actual TrueHD one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gdog1977 2 Posted December 18, 2015 Share Posted December 18, 2015 This is why you are seeing very little to no support for these HD audio formats on these new devices. It simply doesn't matter to the general public and the equipment they are using. They can sell new TVs with claims of higher and higher resolution but most people and setups cannot see any value in TrueHD/DTS-HD over DD/DTS so they are no longer big selling points. And from this statement, seems it doesn't matter to the Emby team as well. This is why Plex is, and will be superior compared to Emby as they are actively working with Google to support these audio codecs. Most who have the Shield are not the general public and will not be using Emby for their viewing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zebo51 15 Posted December 23, 2015 Share Posted December 23, 2015 Ok, so lately I have been debating on what to do with my HTPC. I built it back in 2010. I have a low end MSI HD4550 video card using the HDMI connected to my AVR. I built it in a media PC ATX case. The MB is Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R with an i7 Proc, 16GB Ram and running Win 8.1. At first I had several drives in it as a raid. Then I moved to just a few bigger drives for more storage at the cost of no redundancy. About a year ago I purchased a NAS and now have all my media on it and just a 250GB SSD drive in my HTPC. So my HTPC basically just runs Emby. In the last few days I stumbled on this Shield. But after reading different forums/threads it is hard for me to understand exactly how it is working. I guess I don't understand what part the shield plays, what part Emby plays and other that use Kodi? I have seen a few mention using Shield -- Kodi with the Emby for Kodi app. I just want to stream my shows/movies I store on my NAS to my TVs. I got a new Denon S910W AVR to replace an old Yamaha RX-V2700. Living room TV is a 65" H7150 which is a year old and non 4K. Bedroom I have a Samsung 40" which is 4K, but not needed. Just using bedroom TV speakers, I don't need a soundbar or care about great audio in there. What I do like now that I couldn't do before is using the Emby app on my phone I can send/play a movie/show over wifi to my bedroom TV. Can anyone help explain to me what I might need or not? The shield sounds nice, but as stated about I just don't know how it all flows or fits together. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dranderson402 30 Posted December 23, 2015 Share Posted December 23, 2015 The Nvidia Shield TV is basically just the player. If you used Kodi you can map the NAS to Kodi and play the files on your TV. You can also use the emby-kodi plugin and connect to your emby server to play the files on your tv as well. This is what I do. Using kodi with emby means you manage your collection on emby and all watched and bookmarks are synced across all players. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14913 Posted December 23, 2015 Share Posted December 23, 2015 Based on your requirements, I think our Android TV app will provide you everything you need. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zebo51 15 Posted December 23, 2015 Share Posted December 23, 2015 Does Kodi have to be installed somewhere, or if I got the shield is it just a simple plugin/addon app that then looks at my emby server? Kodi is just basically a play like MPC or VLC from what I understand now. I would need to keep Emby which basically then just becomes a metadata manager? I see that Kodi pulls in metadata info, but yet it looks at tvdb.org and moviedb.org to get info. So still a little confused. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wraslor 70 Posted December 23, 2015 Share Posted December 23, 2015 Does Kodi have to be installed somewhere, or if I got the shield is it just a simple plugin/addon app that then looks at my emby server? Kodi is just basically a play like MPC or VLC from what I understand now. I would need to keep Emby which basically then just becomes a metadata manager? I see that Kodi pulls in metadata info, but yet it looks at tvdb.org and moviedb.org to get info. So still a little confused. Thanks Kodi is it's own app. You can run it stand alone or once installed you can install the emby for kodi plugin which would sync it up with your emby server for media playback. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dranderson402 30 Posted December 23, 2015 Share Posted December 23, 2015 Does Kodi have to be installed somewhere, or if I got the shield is it just a simple plugin/addon app that then looks at my emby server? Kodi is just basically a play like MPC or VLC from what I understand now. I would need to keep Emby which basically then just becomes a metadata manager? I see that Kodi pulls in metadata info, but yet it looks at tvdb.org and moviedb.org to get info. So still a little confused. Thanks Kodi is an app you install on the Nvidia Shield. Once that is installed you also need to install the emby plugin for kodi. Then you manage all your media in emby and use kodi to watch it. Or to keep it simple, as ebr said, just install the emby android tv app on the shield and connect to your emby media server. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zebo51 15 Posted December 24, 2015 Share Posted December 24, 2015 Based on your requirements, I think our Android TV app will provide you everything you need. Ops, I missed read this. I missed the "our" and skimmed it as just install the android TV app. Kodi is an app you install on the Nvidia Shield. Once that is installed you also need to install the emby plugin for kodi. Then you manage all your media in emby and use kodi to watch it. Or to keep it simple, as ebr said, just install the emby android tv app on the shield and connect to your emby media server. So that does sound a lot simpler. Then why would some people install Kodi and then the emby plugin for kodi. Are there some feature difference or a place comparing them I could look? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vidman 589 Posted December 24, 2015 Share Posted December 24, 2015 Kodi supports directly playing of most content so no need for transcoding and also alot more options and skins and audio passthrough support Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zebo51 15 Posted December 24, 2015 Share Posted December 24, 2015 Kodi supports directly playing of most content so no need for transcoding and also alot more options and skins and audio passthrough support ah ok, well I think the shield might be the way to go for me instead of putting more money into my HTPC. I could probably even put that on a smaller computer at this point. I could mess around with both Kodi w/ emby route and straight emby for android to see which I like best. Thanks for everyone's input. Either way emby is still in my future . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14913 Posted December 24, 2015 Share Posted December 24, 2015 Kodi supports directly playing of most content so no need for transcoding and also alot more options and skins and audio passthrough support As long as your media is in common file formats (not straight folder rips or ISOs) then our app will direct stream pretty much everything too and, since you said you didn't need even 5.1 audio (which our app can do as well but there are some caveats on some versions of Android) I still think using our app will provide you everything you want and be a much simpler setup. The Kodi guys have done a great job of integrating them as a front-end but it still is a setup with more moving parts and you don't need any of the advantages of those extra parts. The Nexus Player could also be a great option for you as you can get one for less than 1/2 the cost of the Shield and I think it will perform just fine for what you want. Plus, it will run the latest version of Android which will get around those audio caveats I mentioned above (should you ever want 5.1). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zebo51 15 Posted December 24, 2015 Share Posted December 24, 2015 As long as your media is in common file formats (not straight folder rips or ISOs) then our app will direct stream pretty much everything too and, since you said you didn't need even 5.1 audio (which our app can do as well but there are some caveats on some versions of Android) I still think using our app will provide you everything you want and be a much simpler setup. The Kodi guys have done a great job of integrating them as a front-end but it still is a setup with more moving parts and you don't need any of the advantages of those extra parts. The Nexus Player could also be a great option for you as you can get one for less than 1/2 the cost of the Shield and I think it will perform just fine for what you want. Plus, it will run the latest version of Android which will get around those audio caveats I mentioned above (should you ever want 5.1). Wait ok now I think I'm getting confused again. I do wan't at least 5.1 in my living room which is my main setup. As my setup is right now I use Chrome on my HTPC to access Emby which is actually local. I play my content via a web browser. My AVR shows Multi channel in. I can't control or change the way my video card sends audio to my AVR. My sound options look like the default windows and I have that set to 5.1. Then when in my bedroom I can use either my phone or tablet (both android devices) and cast my content over wifi to the TV in there using emby via chrome browser. This all started because I thought my video card was too old or low end and couldn't pass audio correctly to my AVR. I don't don't like keeping a keyboard/mouse on the table next to my couch and using it to control everything. I use a harmony one remote to turn everything on/off and switch between my 2 activities of watching TV and the HTPC for movies. So I was just looking to simplify things a little and make viewing movies or streaming netflix, amazon prime etc easier. I just have a feeling there is a lot better way to make my setup more user friendly/automated etc. That is why I started looking at the shield but now I'm not so sure anymore. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14913 Posted December 24, 2015 Share Posted December 24, 2015 I definitely recommend a Nexus Player then. You will get very simple hardware and setup and you will get 5.1 audio as well. The only caveat to that (and this applies to the Shield as well) is that you can't do Amazon Prime from the Google devices. If that is a priority for you, then get a Fire TV instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vidman 589 Posted December 24, 2015 Share Posted December 24, 2015 Also the shield does 4k but the Nexus and fire tv do not Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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