Solving lack of DD+ support in soundbar

  • 15 February 2019
  • 3 replies
  • 3067 views

Badge +2
Hello,

I am trying to solve a problem that has been triggered by my recent acquisition of a NVIDIA Shield TV
Earlier my setup was:
Amazon FireTV->HDMI->Samsung JU7005->TOSLINK->Sonos Playbar+Sonos Sub + 2xPlay1
With the above setup, playing anything from netflix on either Amazon Fire TV app or Samsung App, resulted in a fine 5.1 dolby digital sound output on Sonos

No I have attached the NVIDIA Shield TV in the same way
NVIDIA Shield->HDMI->Samsung JU7005->TOSLINK->Sonos Playbar+Sonos Sub + 2xPlay1
Anything I play on Netflix App on NVIDIA causes the Sonos to play stereo only.

I have spent some time with NVIDIA Support and it turns out that the core reasons are:
1) Netflix always outputs with dolby digital plus or PCM, no dolby digital (at least with my subscription)
2) NVIDIA Shield TV is not capable of downsampling from dolby digital plus to dolby digital (Samsung TV and Amazon fire tv can)
3) Samsung TV advertises it's sound capabilities to NVIDIA TV and only lists Dolby Digital and PCM
The result is that NVIDIA shield, after reading the sound capabilities (3) tells netflix to that dd+ is not supported and therefore only PCM is used.

How to solve?
There is no way to change the behaviour of Netflix or NVIDIA Shield TV, but I was wondering on the following:

a) Why I cannot use Samsung TV to perform the downsample and advertise HDMI as DD+? It does it already internally for it's own app
any suggestion how to configure the Samsung TV for this purpose?


b) Alternatively, could I connect a device to the samsung HDMI-ARC port and let believe samsung tv that the device is dd+ capable. The device should then downsample to dd and output to sound bar over toslink
NVIDIA Shield->HDMI->Samsung JU7005->HDMI-ARC--TOSLINK->Sonos Playbar+Sonos Sub + 2xPlay1

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3 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +17
The emulator is compatible with 4 K @ 30hz; 1080p @ 60Hz; 3d; LPCM 2.0, LPCM 5.1, LPCM7.1, dobly AC3, DTS 5.1, DTS-HD, Dolby TrueHD, DSD. If this solution works totally depends on your TV. No guarantees here....
Badge +2
To fool your TV as too what the Shield is sending it yoy could try this device: https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B01M3SH3CL/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 as mentioned in this thread: https://en.community.sonos.com/setting-up-sonos-228990/questions-over-getting-5-1-pcm-lpcm-dts-etc-6765325/index1.html#post16303914 It helped my TV to emit DD 5.1 from my Mede8er to my Beam.

Thanks for the suggestion!
For what I see the product cannot emulate Dolby Digital Plus, only Dolby Digital, DTS or PCM. Is that correct?
Userlevel 7
Badge +17
To fool your TV as too what the Shield is sending it yoy could try this device: https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B01M3SH3CL/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 as mentioned in this thread: https://en.community.sonos.com/setting-up-sonos-228990/questions-over-getting-5-1-pcm-lpcm-dts-etc-6765325/index1.html#post16303914 It helped my TV to emit DD 5.1 from my Mede8er to my Beam.