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aclark20
Contributor I
April 20, 2021

Playbar + Dolby Digital

Setup:

TV: Samsung UN60H7150 -- Doesn’t support DD passthrough, and app support is old enough that I don’t use.

Sonos: Playbar, Sub, (2) :1 rears

Input: FireTV through an HDMI switch w/ an integral optical splitter. Also a PS4 connected to switch.

 

The FireTV actually has a version of Netflix that outputs Dolby Digital, not +. I’d like to upgrade to something less clunky than Fire TV, I frankly don’t like the Amazon interface, and lately the device seems to be restarting on its own multiple times a day. But it seems everything out there only supports Netflix in DD+. Is there anything else out there that can output DolbyDigital Netflix, without requiring either a new TV or an Arc??

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aclark20Author
Contributor I
April 23, 2021

On other devices I’ve tried with similar settings (eg. Newer Roku’s, New Google Chromecast), telling it you can only support DD, not DD+ will cause Netflix to downgrade to Stereo. Can you confirm that when only DD is enabled, does Netflix output DD or Stereo?

Corry P
Corry P
Sonos Staff
April 23, 2021

I just tested it - I set output format to manual and Dolby Digital output only and played a movie from Netflix and got surround sound. I can't confirm independently what codec is being outputted, however. Also, I don’t have Sonos involved and I am using a HDMI connection. If the Shield is doing what it says it’s doing, then that shouldn’t make any difference, but I can’t promise. I used to watch movies on a PC connected to a TV, and on-the-fly audio transcoding was never an issue, so I assume the same here. I think nVidia really have gone out of their way to make the Shield better than anything similar.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
aclark20Author
Contributor I
April 23, 2021

That’s awesome, thanks for taking the time to check for me! I’m going to pick one up and give it a shot, this sounds like it’ll do exactly what I want…. Fingers crossed!

    Corry P
    Corry P
    Sonos Staff
    April 26, 2021

    @aclark20 

    That’s awesome, thanks for taking the time to check for me! I’m going to pick one up and give it a shot, this sounds like it’ll do exactly what I want…. Fingers crossed!

     

    You’re very welcome! By the way, my Samsung surround amplifier only supports Dolby Digital and DTS, so it’s very likely that the Shield was transcoding audio.

    "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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