Hey injunwarlord,
My amp is a fairly recent Pioneer VSX-1020, which supports HDMI inputs (my normal config is HDMi direct to amp).
For testing, I still have my Optical cable in place and switch between inputs on the amp to test whether it’s working or not.
You’re not the first person I’ve seen complain that DTS isn’t working right in recent firmwares, so it could be a bug. But I’m unable to replicate it on my setup…
The licensing issue WD has with DTS revolves around DTS-HD; WD claims that DTS will not provide a license for DTS-HD bitstreaming, stating no such license exists for non-BD equipped media players like the Live range. It’s a ridiculous situation. At least any files with DTS-HD will output the DTS core, so you (should) still get surround sound.
As for AC3 / DD 5.1 surround, that seems to work fine from MKV containers. One of the safest choices but DTS sounds a bit better. If you do re-convert using Popcorn MKV Audio Converter, remember to keep the DTS track, then you have the best of both worlds: working AC3 now and the choice of DTS when WD iron the bugs out. ;)
-edit-
Because I constantly doubt myself, I decided to test DTS again. :D
- I used my Live running 1.04.10_V.
- Live is plugged into my Pioneer amp via HDMI and Optical.
- Amp feeds video signal to TV via HDMI.
- Live audio output is set to Digital without HDMI.
- Amp is set to play from Optical source only.
- Connected to network via WD Livewire
- Playing files stored on a WD MyBookLive NAS via media server connection
Test file is a Transformers 2 rip with DTS audio, as well as AC3 (my previous amp was ancient and didn’t support DTS, so all my DTS files also have AC3 tracks thanks to Popcorn MKV Audio converter).
I can switch between audio tracks in the file and the amp updates its display to show whether it’s decoding AC3 or DTS. So it definitely works (for me).