I searched around multiple forums and have not found information regarding this issue. Is it possible for the WD TV to do “no decoding” and just pass all the audio for the AV receiver to decode?
Issue: there are some videos (mkv) with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio tracks. There are a few that produce no sound or down sample the sound to 2.0 stereo. The rest of the videos appear to work fine. Thought it was just an issue with the audio track for those particular videos. But, the same video worked on a Roku with sound. The Roku performed a full passthrough and the AV receiver decoded the audio track fine.
Can the WD TV do the same full passthrough? Don’t like the option of hacking the WD TV, but is there an option to do that and force it do to full Passthrough and let the AV receiver handle the audio decoding?
Tried the same video on WD TV Hub, WD TV SMP and the recently released WD TV. None of these can play the audio correctly for those particular videos while the Roku can. I would prefer to get this working on the WD TV.
I also have two different Pioneer receivers (none of them Elite, though) – I’ve never seen the WD do ANY type of transcoding for Dolby of any form for Dolby.
All of them are passed though natively via HDMI in my setup.
I’ve tested videos with
AC3 2.0
AC3 2.1
AC3 5.1
Dolby Digital Plus
Dolby True HD
Dolby Digital Surround EX
PureUncut wrote:
Issue: there are some videos (mkv) with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio tracks. There are a few that produce no sound or down sample the sound to 2.0 stereo.
Please post the full TEXT output of MEDIAINFO for such a file.
I tried “Pure Direct” setting; which basically is the AV Receiver accepting the source nearly untouched and the results are the same. Also, I don’t have this on Zone 2.
It just seems that the WD TV is trying to decode it before passing to receiver. It will be great if the WD TV can just pass all of it untouched.
I did experience this issue before but I am nsure whether it would be the same as what you are facing.
Initially, I use to download torrents without checking for the audio format as the player plays most of the formats. Even when some of the torrents states that it’s 6 channels or DTS or AC3 but eventually I found out that when I did the actual analysis using a software, it’s was under AAC or 2 channel stereo format. That was the reason why the movie only supplied me with stereo audio and not dolby digital or DTS.
After that, I have had no problem with the audio part and I hope this helps. If I couldn’t find those with DTS or dolby, I’ll just download those with 6 channels and then convert them to AC-3 format and it works everytime
The WD TV Live does digital audio pass through hdmi and optical. Go to Settings, then Audio/Video Output and Audio Output choose digital passthrough HDMI. I hope that helps
Yes, I have the audio set as passthrough via HDMI. But it appears that the WDTV passes different formats and converts some before passing. It appears to decode the Dolby Digital codec before passing. I would like to pass it untouched.
There must be something going on. Mine can passthrough Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 and even stereo soundtrack to Panasonic home theatre. Have you tried to reset it to factory defaults? About your other question, audio conversion I use XMedia Recode, a free application. I mainy use it to convert MKV to m4v for use in iTunes. The good thing is you can have video passthrough if the codec is AVC and just convert the DTS to both aac stereo and Dolby Digital 5.1. It also supports soft subtitles if they are srt or advanced sub station alpha. You can even maintain the container whilst converting only the audio. It is fast if you don’t transcode the video. The website is in German, but it is easy to use and there are tutorial videos on the web should you have problems.
I am using this software called XviD4PSP 5 to convert all those video which has AAC audio format as my amplifier doesn’t seem to read it as 6 channels. This software also shows you the movie info as you posted earlier and that is how I check whether the torrent that I downloaded is actually what they described.
One thing I just thought of; try to manually set your audio passthrough and make sure Dolby Digital is ticked in audio settings. Maybe the WDTV Live thinks that your receiver cannot decode the AC3 signal and is therefore transcoding it. Hope that helps.
I tried the manual process as well with no success.
How would you convert the audio using the software you all mentioned? The media info is saying the audio is already at 5.1 dolby digital. Can it convert (correct) audio from 5.1 dd to 5.1 dd (basically redo the track at 5.1 dd just in case something is bad in it)? Or will it have to be something like 5.1 dd to 5.1 dts?
Yes you can convert DD 5.1 to DD 5.1 using XMedia Recode. You can change the bitrate as well, or keep it the same. You also have the option to convert 5.1 to stereo but not stereo to 5.1! You can convert DTS to either DD or aac and convert between aac and DD. Just make sure you copy the video, not convert it as it takes longer with the latter and degrades quality. Try it and see if it helps.
Sorry for the late catchup here I have a pioneer elite and sometimes I get no sound so I have to turn off the reciever and turn it back on while the file is playing then I have sound. Sometime when I view a trailer it is staticky and low volume and doing the same cures it. All of my files are ISO however
The feedback has been awesome everyone! The method by JoeySmyth appears to work; which is great news!
There is just one thing about this process that hopefully you have some suggestions. Is there software that can output the Audio Bitrate at 640 instead of the max 448? It’s probably not that biggy in terms of quality difference. I should be happy and just move on, but this is just something in the back of my mind when I think quality loss.