Hi I am a long time Kodi user that is migrating his Blu-ray collection to UHD and realizing Kodi/Windows is not best at handling UHD content(DV/HDR10+). My setup is that all my physical media is ripped to a DAS which is connected to a Beelink MiniPC (which can act as a server or directly play media through Kodi).
I also have the latest 128gb ATV connected via ethernet. I am looking for a solution that supports latest video (UHD/HDR10+/DV/HDR10) and best audio quality. All media is ripped with top audio quality possible for the Bluray/UHD (DTS-Master / Dolby-TrueHD or Dolby Atmos depending on the movie)
Through internet search I learned that infuse might be the best option available for what I am trying to accomplish. Had two questions before I take the plunge into the 1yr subscription:
Will it indeed support HDR10+/DV (assuming the content supports it) and my equipment supports it (Which is does Onkyo NR7100 AVR + BenQ 4550i projector)
I have a simple 5.2 audio setup. I am most concerned about how ATV handles Audio. It turns all audio signal into PCM (Which really sucks btw). Wondering does infuse has a way to pass through audio to receiver on ATV like Kodi does on PC. If infuse can only send audio as PCM, I have read it is still lossless. Curious for those who have a similar setup, can you comment how does the audio quality differ from if it was directly passed to AVR at original DTS/TrueHD/D-Atmos signal?
Others can chime in with their personal experiences, but here are a few quick answers to your questions.
Infuse supports HDR10, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision (profile 5 and 8) content. Most Dolby Vision content coming from a UHD Blu-ray will be Profile 7, but there are workflows you can use to convert this to Profile 8 which can be used in Infuse. There is a Dolby Vision thread which is a pretty deep dive on all things Dolby Vision, and this post specifically has details on the conversion process.
With regard to audio, the Apple TV does not allow passthrough at this time but Infuse can pass lossless audio (albeit without Atmos metadata) via PCM. This is an area we are hopeful Apple allows for more flexibility on in the future, but for now this guide has an overview of the audio options currently available.
Hi thanks for the info. Turns our my projector (Benq 4550i) cannot do DV. so that’s that make the decision simpler. I heard HDR10+ is similar to DV … so good to hear infuse can do HDR10+ since I think most 4K UHD discs have HDR10 or HDR10+ as well.
I’m just mad at apple, they made the best media box on the market (hardware wise) and then handicapped it by restricting audio passthrough. Curious given you work on infuse…you likely have the most insight on this…
Do you see them ever allowing passthrough on ATV? Is that something the infuse team has lobbied for, given most ppl who use infuse are doing it to watch their physical media and value audio and video quality over streaming.
Does adding passthrough actually cost Apple anything cause you are offloading all audio decoding to a difference device, I figured it is cost neutral for them and just a company decision to not offer since in some ways their business is streaming and teams that develop apps like infuse are probably seen as a competitive force to their streaming business.
Just curious to hear a view point of someone who has probably dealt with apple on these issues. Thanks.
HDR10+ is on very few movies. Majority are just HDR10 or DV. I only have a couple out of 200 movies.
Apple probably won’t support it unless they have a business reason to, aka support lossless soundtracks for iTunes movies. But there is also a chance they develop a new codec so they don’t have to pay as many fees.
From what I can tell, there is a licensing fee even for bit streaming. That’s why most tv manufacturers only support Atmos and not DTS through bit streaming.
