Hardware Support Query

[michaelsft]

Hi all, I've recently backed up a couple of my blu-rays to MKV and wanted to play them through the USB on my UHD player. I get picture but no audio so I presume the support for certain audio files isn't there in the hardware. My query is, apart from using Plex (which is excellent) is there any hardware I could buy that I could plug a usb HDD into and play all these files correctly?

I remember having a sumvision cyclone micro device which did this but I doubt it would now, perhaps things have moved on a little?

Any help appreciated and thanks!

[yorgo]

Sounds like it could be a Cinavia copy protection issue.

As for standalone players, I've successfully used TViX, Dune HD and Mede8er devices in the past, Popcorn Hour is another well-regarded brand, and there's a million Android-based knockoffs. However this category of devices seems to be going away (as example, Mede8er is no longer developing new equipment, TViX and AC Ryan have shuttered their businesses, etc).

Haven't tried it but there's NVidia Shield, it may work standalone? You could also use a small computer (Intel NUC, Odroid, or even the NVidia) loaded with Kodi, LibreElec, etc.

Good luck.

[Woodstock]

A lot of "high end" audio codecs are handed off by TVs to "external decoders" (home theater audio system, in other words). Some hardware players have analog outputs to serve this function during playback.

Plex is reencoding the audio (and often the video) for compatibility; You can also do this with tools like handbrake (handbrake.fr), ffmpeg, and other transcoders. Handbrake defaults to converting everything to the "everyone has this decoder" AAC codec, with options to also include higher capability codecs.

As for Cinavia, probably not - Cinavia kicks in after 10-20 minutes, because it takes that long for the "message" embedded in the audio to be decoded.

[michaelsft]

I believe the problem with my current set up is rather that the UHD player is purposefully disabled from passing certain audio tracks through to the TV from media files on a USB stick. Obviously both the UHD player and the TV have no trouble playing this audio from the disc directly but I am sure I read that as a piracy prevention measure the audio wouldn't pass through in certain formats like DTS etc. I imagine some media players are happy to pass this audio through to the TV but I don't know what they are.

I'm stuck with Plex in the mean time just to watch from the MKV's I make which is OK but not ideal.