Hello,
I upgraded Kodi from 16.1 to 17 yesterday. Now, audio passthrough of Dolby Digital is not working anymore for Live-TV and TV Recordings (using TV Headend). When I start the same file of a TV recording over Videos, passthrough over HDMI to the receiver is working.
--Alex
This has been discussed at quite a lot of length in a number of threads here... It's a conscious decision to change the way Live TV works made by the Kodi devs due to the way the PVR subsystem is implemented AIUI.
You have a couple of options :
1. If you have HDMI PCM 5.1-friendly gear you'll get 5.1 PCM (should be near identical to passthrough in quality terms)
2. If you only have SPDIF - enable transcode to Dolby Digital (which will re-encode to DD for 5.1 stuff)
Ok, I will try to read more about that change.
But, I would suggest to explicitly mention in the settings GUI that passthrough is not supported anymore by Live-TV and TV-recordings. Otherwise, more people will wonder and search.
If passthrough does not work for recordings, the backend/addon of your choice has an issue.
I use TV-Headend as backend. Can it be confirmed by other TV-Headend users, that Passthrough is not used anymore with Kodi 17?
As I already said, playing the same recording file from Video uses Passthrough, while playing it from TV/Recordings don't uses Passthrough.
(2017-02-23, 22:25)alexirion Wrote: [ -> ]I use TV-Headend as backend. Can it be confirmed by other TV-Headend users, that Passthrough is not used anymore with Kodi 17?
As I already said, playing the same recording file from Video uses Passthrough, while playing it from TV/Recordings don't uses Passthrough.
Confirmed. My TV Headend install plays recordings of DSat-sourced AC3 5.1 in 5.1 PCM (not passthrough) when played via the TV Recordings option. If I play the same recordings by mapping the recording folder to be a source in Videos, and thus play outside the TV/PVR functionality, I get full AC3 passthrough as expected (but no recording metadata displayed) I record in .ts format not .mkv (as .mkv playback isn't good at handling 2.0 to 5.1 AAC switching within a file for my AAC terrestrial stuff)
I don't know if TV Headend plays back recordings via the same protocol as it uses for live streams - if so that might explain it?