MBSki 1020 Posted July 17, 2020 Share Posted July 17, 2020 I see passthrough only for DTS. Can you just add HDMI passthrough for everything on Android TV? And all the other platforms too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted July 18, 2020 Share Posted July 18, 2020 This is more a function of hardware than software. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MBSki 1020 Posted July 18, 2020 Author Share Posted July 18, 2020 @cayars It's both, but are you saying that Android TV is already passing Dolby through? There's no setting to allow it, so it seems Dobly isn't getting passed through, only DTS if allowed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted July 18, 2020 Share Posted July 18, 2020 Depends on the box. The Shield TV for example can passthrough both DTS and Dolby Atmos. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MBSki 1020 Posted July 18, 2020 Author Share Posted July 18, 2020 I'm on Sony TV and there's only an option to passthrough DTS. If I was on the shield would I see an option for Dolby passthrough? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted July 18, 2020 Share Posted July 18, 2020 Yes https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/shield/shield-tv-pro/ 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MBSki 1020 Posted July 18, 2020 Author Share Posted July 18, 2020 Well, that's interesting. I thought the app was the same no matter what hardware you were on. Alrighty then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37116 Posted July 18, 2020 Share Posted July 18, 2020 It depends on what the hardware supports. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted July 18, 2020 Share Posted July 18, 2020 What you have to remember is that the hardware and the licensing the hardware manufacturer uses plays a big part of this. So the same software like Emby running on an Android TV, vs a MiBox S vs a Shield TV are going to get back different configurations of what is available to use. Then just because it COULD be supported doesn't mean it currently is depending on connection type. It can get a little confusing. I just happened to trip across and since had just posted here thought it might shed a bit of light on things even though it's not directly answering any questions. It's from https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/discover/297989/-guide-audio-pass-through-hdmi-arc-physical-setup-settings/ Theory crash course OPTICAL Optical cables (also known as S/PDIF or TOSLINK) carries a digital audio stream to an AV receiver that can decode two channels of uncompressed lossless PCM audio or compressed 5.1/7.1 surround sound. Unlike HDMI, TOSLINK is limited to “vanilla” Dolby Digital and DTS, as it does not have the bandwidth to carry lossless audio codecs such as Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio, compressed codecs like Dolby Digital Plus/EAC3, or more than two channels of PCM audio. HDMI ARC HDMI ARC (Audio Return Channel) allows for "upstream" and "downstream" signals over a single HDMI connection between two ARC-capable A/V devices. Compared to legacy optical cables, the flexibility of the HDMI standard allows additional audio formats to be transmitted over ARC but bandwidth is still very limited. At base level, its bandwidth of 1Mb/s allows HDMI ARC to deliver stereo audio and compressed 5.1 surround. It can be pushed to transmit Dolby Digital Plus and Atmos streams but that requires an extension introduced in 2016 called Common Mode that is not part of the base specification and must be actively supported by both the TV and AV receiver. However, bandwidth of standard HDMI ARC is still too limited for compressed 7.1 surround and even more so for lossless audio codecs such as Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA. Additionally, ARC has a few more features that are only optional such lip sync correction, which has led to no small amount of confusion about its actual capabilities. For example, ARC implementations on some TVs can be limited to stereo sound, while others that do support surround can be highly inconsistent. You totally can see TVs that will pass 5.1 audio from the internal apps or TV tuner via ARC but will refuse to handle anything but stereo from the HDMI inputs. CODECS Codec stands for COder-DECoder. It's basically a bit of program used to reduce file sizes then play them back on the fly. Some of the most common audio codecs used in movies files these days are: DTS, Dolby Digital (AC3): heavily compressed and ancient Dolby Digital Plus (eAC3): compressed, much more recent revision. Very common on streaming platforms. Can carry Atmos metadata. DTS-HD MA: Lossless, very high quality codec. Dolby TrueHD: Lossless, very high quality. Can carry Atmos metadata as well. Audio pass-through vs local decoding Shield can pass-through of all the mainstream codecs, but is not licensed to locally decode nor transcode of them. If the Shield detects that the device it is plugged into has the ability to handle the codec being used, the unaltered audio feed will be passed forward to be decoded out there. If it does not, Shield will simply fall back to basic decoding, and output a PCM 16bit stereo signal. In order to check the decoding formats ready to be passed forward by the Shield, go to Settings/About/Status/HDMI/Audio mode. Note that Netflix and Amazon Video exclusively output Dolby Digital Plus / EAC3. If you find out that your TV cannot pass-through this format via ARC, you might want to favor those services 5.1 audio over top of the line video and connect the Shield directly to the receiver instead of plugging it to the TV. If your AVR cannot decode DD+/eAC3 at all and is limited to vanilla Dolby Digital, there is a workaround available, but be aware that it requires root, which in turn will require you to unlock the bootloader, wipe everything on your Shield in the process. 4K HDR video pass-through The exact same thing goes for 4K and HDR video. If the Shield detects whatever it is plugged into cannot handle HDR and/or 4K (AVRs and soundbars can have the ability to pass 4K but not HDR), it will automatically fall back to the next best thing supported by every element of the HDMI chain. In practice Physical setup and cable connections Let's take a look at the different possible setups. As you can see; Optical is completely outdated at this point and should be avoided at all costs Using ARC, you might have to choose between 4K HDR video or 5.1 audio from streaming services depending on the pass-through capabilities of your TV and AVR AVR with full 4K HDR pass-through capabilities is required to get the best (excellent) results eARC will improve on that by eliminating the need to have separate cables in both ways. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14930 Posted July 18, 2020 Share Posted July 18, 2020 This is one of those situations that proves one of the reasons we hate options :). The fact you don't see any options surrounding any other pass thru is because it is automatic. If your system supports it, it will "just work". The DTS options only exist due to some edge cases where we must either force or disable the passing of DTS. Ideally, those options will go away one day when all the hardware reports capabilities properly. 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony B. 38 Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 (edited) Sorry to dredge up an old thread but it should be time to revisit this. Rooted/Downgraded Fire Sticks (v6.2.6.8) can do passthrough Fire Cube 3rd generation can also do it. Hopefully! The Emby team has started working on it. Edited March 6, 2023 by Tony B. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laola 12 Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 well - for the Cube V3 there is a Kodi 20 version with Dolby Vision and passthrough. Both, Dolby-HD (incl. Atmos) and DTX-HD (incl. DTS:X) are supported as well as Dolby Atmos via DD+. The only issue is that "normal" DD and DD+ formats are reported as PCM 5.1 48kHz. As long as Emby is not able to support the same I will stick with Kodi. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony B. 38 Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 19 minutes ago, laola said: well - for the Cube V3 there is a Kodi 20 version with Dolby Vision and passthrough. Both, Dolby-HD (incl. Atmos) and DTX-HD (incl. DTS:X) are supported as well as Dolby Atmos via DD+. The only issue is that "normal" DD and DD+ formats are reported as PCM 5.1 48kHz. As long as Emby is not able to support the same I will stick with Kodi. What about the other 4 letter media server? It has passthrough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laola 12 Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 No idea about Plex and Cube V3... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MBSki 1020 Posted March 6, 2023 Author Share Posted March 6, 2023 38 minutes ago, Tony B. said: What about the other 4 letter media server? It has passthrough. Plex does, yes, and for the most part it works well. Definitely works better than passthrough on Emby. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14930 Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 2 hours ago, MBSki said: Plex does, yes, and for the most part it works well. Definitely works better than passthrough on Emby. You have specific examples? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MBSki 1020 Posted March 6, 2023 Author Share Posted March 6, 2023 3 minutes ago, ebr said: You have specific examples? I've posted my examples many times, but I can try again and send new logs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony B. 38 Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 Where is passthrough in Emby? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebr 14930 Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 1 hour ago, Tony B. said: Where is passthrough in Emby? In most cases it is automatic. If the system supports it, it will bitstream. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 7 hours ago, laola said: well - for the Cube V3 there is a Kodi 20 version with Dolby Vision and passthrough. Both, Dolby-HD (incl. Atmos) and DTX-HD (incl. DTS:X) are supported as well as Dolby Atmos via DD+. The only issue is that "normal" DD and DD+ formats are reported as PCM 5.1 48kHz. As long as Emby is not able to support the same I will stick with Kodi. Have you checked the device setup/config for audio? I'm not familiar with the Cube but I know the Shield TV allows you to overide the audio settings so you can specifically setup what it can handle or not. That information is used by Emby to determine if it trranscodes the audio or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony B. 38 Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 1 minute ago, cayars said: Have you checked the device setup/config for audio? I'm not familiar with the Cube but I know the Shield TV allows you to overide the audio settings so you can specifically setup what it can handle or not. That information is used by Emby to determine if it trranscodes the audio or not. You can also use FireOS version. 6.2.7.1 and backwards were passthrough 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 @Tony B. So for you any version after 6.2.7.1 doesn't do passthrough correctly? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony B. 38 Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 They had problems with it from .76 and higher. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laola 12 Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 1 hour ago, cayars said: Have you checked the device setup/config for audio? I'm not familiar with the Cube but I know the Shield TV allows you to overide the audio settings so you can specifically setup what it can handle or not. That information is used by Emby to determine if it trranscodes the audio or not. actually there are just 2 options - "auto (best available)" or "dolby digital+". With the first option Emby will play actually all kind of Dolby formats including TrueHD with Atmos or DD+ with Atmos - but has serious issues with DTS HD formats or even with DTS lossly formats (video stutters). The second option will give you basically all the time DD+ sound (without Atmos and without HD). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlo 4330 Posted March 7, 2023 Share Posted March 7, 2023 Thanks, I didn't know what options it provides. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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