BR LPCM tracks working in OSX w/ Plex and HDMI Mac Mini

This is a copy of my post over on the Plex forums. Thought some might be interested.



So I've been doing a bunch of other stuff on my Windows HTPC recently and hadn't really tested the new 2011 Mini that I got to replace an 'old' one in one of my rooms.

Today, as I was sitting around by myself checking on some file playback, I decided to test out playback of those BR's I have with LPCM soundtracks (Arlington Road, 3:10 to Yuma, etc), just to see what the Mini would do with them in OS X.

Lo and behold, though the Mini defaulted to the DD soundtracks, when I switched to the lossless soundtracks, they played!!

And, when I check the info pane, here is what I see:



And, on my Onkyo 905, it is displaying 'Multich' and is displaying the appropriate number of channels, which is what it should be displaying when playing back a multichannel cpm soundtrack.

Because of this, we should be able to get pcm playback of all of the other lossless formats by converting them with clown_BD to LPCM in Windows.

For reference, here is an example of what happens when I play back the native DTS-HD soundtrack of American Psycho on Plex:





As you can see on the top line, though you can see at the far right that the source is 2967 kb/s, Plex is just transmitting the DTS core at 1536 kb/s (as expected).

Given these observations, you should be able to play back ALL of your lossless format BR's (and HDDVD's) pn Plex in OS X by ripping your Blu-rays using:

1) a Windows computer
2) Clown_BD and AnyDVD HD
3) just rip it to an LPCM track m2ts file and you're ready to go.

And, for your BR's that were uncompressed LPCM soundtracks to start off with, all you need is MakeMKV to get lossless audio with an HDMI-containing Mac Mini!!


Again, if everybody already knew this, I apologize.

And, just to show that this can, in fact, be done -- the screen cap below is playing back an M2TS file I made of 'Batman Begins' (which has a TrueHD soundtrack) on HDDVD. I converted the TrueHD soundtrack to PCM using Clown_BD. I had originally made it because of the framerate bug that MakeMKV has with HD DVD rips.

But I guess there's now an added benefit to it on my new Mini!!

So I guess everybody already knew about this? No sour grapes or anything (srsly) -- it's just a great step for me. Now I can use Plex on OS X for all of my BR's in my main HT, and have full lossless sound w/o having to move my Windows machine there (granted, it would be nice to be able to use my Ceton tuner on the same machine as my media server, but Plex on Os X crashes about 1/20th as frequently as WMC crashes, and my wife, nanny, and toddler are all quite happy about that...).

Only downside is some extra work.

Oh, and just so that those who have their doubts about DTS-MA soundtracks decoded to LPCM w/ ClownBD can have their concerns put to rest, here is 'Sunshine,' a movie w/ a DTS-MA soundtrack, on my mini after using ClownBD to convert the track to LPCM:

ati

I'm gonna have trouble checking on this, as I retained a lossy soundtrack along with the lossless on all of my ripped files so that my older Mac Mini's (with toslink), my Boxee Boxes w/o attached rcvrs, and my iOS clients would have something to use as a default.

Frankly, I'd advise that you keep a lossy soundtrack with these files in case you add less robust players or rooms w/o receivers in the future. You never want to have to re-rip everything just to save a GB or so. But just remember -- when you have a DTS or DD soundtrack, Plex doesn't require a separate 2 channel soundtrack for your iOS or non-DD/DTS-capable clients. It can downmix them to stereo.

My $.02.

You're welcome.

To be honest, given the lack of responses (and you can probably tell from the tenor of the OP), I just figured that what I had posted had to already be known. It's not like it's complex or hard to discover.

Of course, then I googled it, and couldn't find anything.

Then again, I guess there aren't that many folks who bother to keep the lossless tracks in Mac households, and, given my number and variety of players and media (and Windows/ OS X machines), I guess it would take something of a cross-platform, multiple-playback-machines environment like mine to even discover it.

But it is a bit odd that there hasn't been a single response to the topic over on the Plex forums (well, none that weren't me responding to myself).

lol I posted it over on MacRumors in the 'AppleTV and Home Theater' thread like a week ago, and got no responses.

It probably would've gotten more responses in the Mac Mini hardware forum, but, after posting it on 3 different forums already and given the largely silent response, I figured maybe I was just crazy for being so excited about this serendipitous discovery.

At least I'm not the only weirdo.