smysore,
You should not have any problems sending dolby 5.1 from the Roku 4 to the Sony. Audio encoded in Dolby Digital Plus however will not play. Those channels that use DD+ almost always have a separate stereo stream that can be played instead. The Roku 4 will automatically pick the audio stream that can be played.

Well, color me disappointed. But thank you, RokuDale for clarifying.

I'm wondering what Amazon does with its Fire TV that's so different, as they clearly support standard DD 5.1 over optical. I haven't seen any identifiable Dolby-based chips in any of the FTV tear down videos online.

Edit: Amazon says both the FTV and FTV-Stick contain decoders for both DD+ and DD. https://developer.amazon.com/public/sol ... -questions

Here's a pic (from avsforum) on how they do it in settings:

RokuDale wrote:

To clarify. Also, not all audio receivers are capable of decoding DD+ coming over optical connector even though they can decode it coming in over hdmi.

Not sure I understand what the point of this feature actually is if legacy AVR's can not decode DD+ over the optical connector. If only your newer AVR's can do it then why not just connect to the R4 via HDMI. My point is one would still have to buy a newer AVR to be capable of decoding DD+ through the optical connector and at that point a connection via HDMI would seem to be the more sensible thing. Help me out here.

david0406 wrote:

RokuDale wrote:

To clarify. Also, not all audio receivers are capable of decoding DD+ coming over optical connector even though they can decode it coming in over hdmi.

Not sure I understand what the point of this feature actually is if legacy AVR's can not decode DD+ over the optical connector. If only your newer AVR's can do it then why not just connect to the R4 via HDMI. My point is one would still have to buy a newer AVR to be capable of decoding DD+ through the optical connector and at that point a connection via HDMI would seem to be the more sensible thing. Help me out here.

Well, it certainly does seem to be a feature of limited use right now. If the idea was to provide some audio capability (stereo only) for legacy systems, I would have thought that most customers in the Roku universe would have already sorted that out by now.

The Roku 4 is being highlighted for its advanced features such as 4K video streaming. Customers interested in that would almost certainly have newer home theater audio systems that wouldn't require optical for audio delivery.

It's a very curious addition to the R4 box if it is, indeed, limited as RokuDale says, to passthrough. One of the R4 designers would have to explain why it's there.

That said, I'd still like to see some reports of people who have - for sh*ts and giggles - connected up an R4 to a legacy DD 5.1-only AVR via optical and see what they get.

My older Roku 2XS would give me a Dolby 5.1 indicator on my older non-HDMI Denon AVR over optical when playing Netflix DD+ streams on it. And it also did play discrete 5 channel audio on test tracks. Ironically, my Roku 3 2015 does not. I only get 2 channel stereo on it via the same configuration.

not all audio receivers can pass the HDMI 2.0 4k signal requirements. in this case r4 needs to be direct connected to TV. TV to receiver arc doesn't work on many of these. optical spdif from r4 to receiver is only thing left to try.

Honestly I was very excited at the possibility of the R4 converting DD+ to DD over optical, and would have upgraded day one. Now, with hearing that is not the reason for adding the optical port I guess I save myself $129+ tax. Oh well.

Heyitsrick wrote:

BoloMKXXVIII wrote:

This makes me happy. I don't want to change out my great receiver just because it is older and does not have HDMI inputs. Who wants to leave their TV on to listen to music? Good move Roku. Now, about those RCA outputs for audio..

Well, I'm not sure this is THE fix, but it does make sense. I guess we'll have to wait for someone to get a box with an older home theater unit and try the optical out for Netflix, for example.

That will be me. I'm glad Roku listened. I have an awesome Onkyo receiver I'm not upgrading and almost went to Fire TV because of this issue. BTW it works fine with ATV3.

RokuDale wrote:

To clarify. The website is technically correct. The Roku 4 is able to send DD+ out the optical connector without transcoding to DD. But since the bitrate on the optical connector is not much more than 1.5Mbps, DD+ streams that exceed that bitrate will not work. Also, not all audio receivers are capable of decoding DD+ coming over optical connector even though they can decode it coming in over hdmi. The main channels on the Roku that use DD+ have DD+ bitrates that are much lower than 1.5Mbps. To answer the question about converting DD+ to DD, the Roku 4 does not convert DD+ to DD before transmitting out the optical connector. In order to enable transmitting DD+ out the optical connector you need to make sure the Audio Modes and the Digital Audio Out setting show that DD+ is allowed whether through the Auto setting, or the manual setting.

That answers that, well back to Fire or ATV 4 for me.

rokudale

Thank you for your reply.
I am happy playing Dolby5.1.
More audio channels will not improve my hearing.

rokudale

please confirm that the Roku 4 has VP9 support

Thanks.

roku 4 supports vp9 in mkv files.

What about via HDMI? Can the HDMI port take DD+ and send it to my soundbar as DD? I have tried all the setting that are on my Roku 3 and I can't get it to output DD only.

Squatting Hen wrote:

What about via HDMI? Can the HDMI port take DD+ and send it to my soundbar as DD? I have tried all the setting that are on my Roku 3 and I can't get it to output DD only.

In a word, no. It will pass through Dolby Digital Plus via HDMI to your external device. It won't transcode/down-convert. Notwithstanding what's been said upthread about optical, I'm still curious to see what will happen when people connect the R4 via optical to a legacy Dolby Digital (not plus) receiver and play DD+ content.

Since full bandwidth DD+ cannot be sent via optical because the bandwidth requirements for DD+ are much higher, I'm interested to see if a standard 5.1 output will be received, instead. I still hark back to this snippet from Dolby, itself:

Is Dolby Digital Plus content backward-compatible?
Because Dolby Digital Plus is built on core Dolby Digital technologies, content
that is encoded with Dolby Digital Plus is fully compatible with the millions
of existing home theaters and playback systems worldwide equipped for
Dolby Digital playback. Dolby Digital Plus soundtracks are easily converted
to a 640 kbps Dolby Digital signal without decoding and reencoding, for
output via S/PDIF. The 640 kbps bit rate, which is higher than the standard
448 kbps used on DVDs, is fully compatible with all existing Dolby Digital
decoding products such as A/V receivers, and can provide higher-than-DVD
quality from Dolby Digital Plus soundtracks when played back through
existing systems

http://www.dolby.com/uploadedFiles/Asse ... us-faq.pdf

The key words in that passage are "converted", and "without decoding and reencoding" highlighted above. Roku is saying they are just passing it through HDMI and Optical (S/PDIF). But given the bandwidth requirements of DD+, what, exactly, would be output over Optical-S/PDIF since the full 7.1 mix would never go over that medium? DD+ is based on extending the core 5.1 Dolby mix, so that means the core 5.1 mix is there. I'm wondering if connecting the R4 via S/PDIF will automatically default to the core 5.1 mix, since there's no way the full DD+ stream can go down that line. You can't even get the full DD+ mix over first-generation HDMI.

Wishful thinking? Optical pie in the sky dreams? Probably. But there's always hope, lol.

Well, I just hooked up my new Roku 4 to my old Marantz receiver and its only partially passing DD through the optical cable. If I stream my own rips through Plex then I get full surround sound but only stereo from Netflix and Vudu. I feel like I was duped by the ”streams 7.1 over HDMI or Optical” claim.

I suppose technically it does but why did they bother if it wasn't going to impact their main channels?

Mutus72 wrote:

Well, I just hooked up my new Roku 4 to my old Marantz receiver and its only partially passing DD through the optical cable. If I stream my own rips through Plex then I get full surround sound but only stereo from Netflix and Vudu. I feel like I was duped by the ”streams 7.1 over HDMI or Optical” claim.

I suppose technically it does but why did they bother if it wasn't going to impact their main channels?

Thanks - that is disappointing, to be sure.