So I have a fancy OLED TV (2020 LG CX) and a good soundbar (Vizio m512a-h6) I did a lot of research on before I bought it, because I wanted good audio and also I had already done enough reading to know currently HD audio is a fucking nightmare of proprietary codecs. So I found a reasonably priced mid tier soundbar with good audio with all the codecs currently being used. And to my credit, I haven't run into too many issues with it since I bought it!
But today I was like 'I have downloaded this 4k HDR rip of this movie with lossless audio, I think I will watch it'
Only the codec it uses is fucking "DTS HD-7.1"
And APPARENTLY the generation of TV I have (the 2020/2021 LG cx/c1 oleds) specifically DO NOT have DTS codec support if you use the tv's native apps to play it, even if you're passing the audio through to a soundbar or receiver directly and the soundbar or receiver you use DOES support DTS, which mine does.
So I spent 30 fucking minutes going through the settings menu on the TV like 'is my soundbar fucking broken, why is there no audio, I know it has this codec support,' when it turns out it was the fucking TV telling me I'm not allowed because LG refused to license it those 2 years.
So, of course, there's 2 workarounds for this issue.
You can buy an external streaming box which will have its own supported codecs (the top tier of which is a 200 dollar android based Nvidia Shield Pro that supports more or less everything)
Or, if like me you are using Plex, you can hit a toggle in your LG TV Plex client that disables playback of DTS audio (why is this even there to be turned on if it doesn't work?), which then forces your server to convert the DTS format audio in real time to a different format the TV can play. Simple, right!
But then you're reliant on your server being capable of transcoding that audio in real time. Which is doable, for most modern PCs. Mine can do it, but transcoding audio is done on the CPU and is sped up significantly if your CPU has integrated graphics, and AMD CPUs didn't have IGPUs until this year.
Plex relies on the IGPU of your CPU for quick conversions, basically meaning if you have an AMD CPU it has to brute force the conversion, which AMD CPUs are bad at.
I COULD KEEP GOING DOWN THIS RABBIT HOLE, BUT THIS IS ALL A LONG WAY OF SAYING HIFI A/V AINT WORTH IT, IT'S AN ENDLESS RABBIT HOLE OF PETTY LICENSING DISPUTES, TINKERING AND SPENDING TOO MUCH MONEY
All of this just to watch fucking Puss In Boots
