PGS Subtitles and TrueHD Audio Direct Play on Apple TV

[alex77777 16]

I see Emby's page for Apple TV supported formats doesn't show PGS subtitles as being able to direct play.

I found that you can get the Apple TV (at least the 4k 3rd gen, which is all I have) to direct play PGS Subtitles without the server transcoding by disabling video transcoding for the user.

Also the same goes for playing the TrueHD audio format, if you disable audio transcoding it will direct play it to the device. (The Apple TV converts it to LPCM which is another lossless format, but you lose height channels from what I've heard.

I would keep allow changing of container formats as it seems necessary to display Closed Captioning on Live TV

I'm not sure how this works just wanted to point it out as I didn't see any information on this and just stumbled upon it. 

 

[Luke 42077]

Hi, thanks for sharing.

[alex77777 16]

On 1/22/2026 at 9:37 AM, alex77777 said:

I see Emby's page for Apple TV supported formats doesn't show PGS subtitles as being able to direct play.

I found that you can get the Apple TV (at least the 4k 3rd gen, which is all I have) to direct play PGS Subtitles without the server transcoding by disabling video transcoding for the user.

Also the same goes for playing the TrueHD audio format, if you disable audio transcoding it will direct play it to the device. (The Apple TV converts it to LPCM which is another lossless format, but you lose height channels from what I've heard.

I would keep allow changing of container formats as it seems necessary to display Closed Captioning on Live TV

I'm not sure how this works just wanted to point it out as I didn't see any information on this and just stumbled upon it. 

 

Its worth noting that turning off "Allow Changing of container formats" seems to display Dolby Vision content better. With it on you may have a green tint put on your Dolby Vision content. So I would recommend turning it off unless you run into issues. 

[Luke 42077]

Just make sure to read the help text underneath those options before turning any of them off.