With the new firmware that was recently released for the Google TV Streamer, some audio issues were finally resolved, however, I noticed that there are still some little issues with the audio output options.
Due to the Dolby MS12 software stack present on the device, there are 4 audio options: Auto, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Digital and PCM stereo.
These 4 options only control PCM and Dolby codecs while the DTS codecs are excluded.
The problem lies with some Dolby codecs where they are not transcoded or downmixed correctly when using each audio codec and they are explained in detail in the below table:
As you can see in the above table, the output of some audio codecs (in red) are not being handled correctly by the Streamer:
- PCM 6.1 doesn't seem to be supported by Android on TV, therefore the codec should be decoded and downmixed to PCM 2.0, however, any video with that audio codec doesn't play regardless of the app where they attempt to play.
- PCM 7.1 is not transcoded to any of the Dolby codecs or downmixed to PCM 2.0, instead, it just passes through directly.
- Dolby Digital Plus with 7 channels of audio is not passing through all 7 audio channels when using the Dolby Digital Plus option but it's being downmixed to 5.1 channels instead.
- And finally, although Dolby TrueHD passthrough is not supported by the device, the codec should be transcoded to Dolby Digital Plus and to Dolby Digital, but it's just being decoded as multichannel PCM and it's not even downmixed to stereo when using the PCM stereo option.
I really hope that this small issues are addressed so we can enjoy this expensive device as it should.
I already reported the situation through the form, but I wanted to make the post anyway to have visibility for other users as well.
Thank you for your attention.
