[mythtv-users] eac3/truehd/dts-HD audio streaming now working

[Jean-Yves Avenard]

Hi

Some news ...

MythTV trunk now fully supports E-AC3, DTS-HD Hi-Res, TrueHD and
DTS-HD MA passthrough ; there are some caveats however.

In the official mythtv git repo , the code is currently disabled
waiting for the complete ffmpeg sync to occur, hopefully not too long
before this occurs/.

As such, I have forked the mythtv git tree into a different repo:
git://github.com/jyavenard/mythtv.git

This git repo includes the required ffmpeg changes, (as well as some
extra patches waiting to be committed into ffmpeg upstrean that will
add DTS-HD bitstreaming)

master is the branch following mythtv/master : but with newer audio
code that will be merged once ffmpeg sync has been completed
fixes/0.24: is the 0.24 branch, with all the new audio code backported
so you don't have to upgrade your backend etc.. should you want to
continue running 0.24

In order to get HD bitstreaming working, there are a few things that
needs to be done first: read this page:
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/User_Manual:HDAudioPassthrough.
You need either a very recent kernel (2.6.37) or ALSA from the git tree.
And unfortunately, it won't work with all audio cards.

You will also need to go into the Audio settings and check DD+ and/or
TrueHD as required. Note that the audio settings now have their own
entry, and aren't found in "General" any longer.

You can find some samples on the ffmpeg site:
DTS-HD:
http://samples.ffmpeg.org/A-codecs/DTS/dts/

E-AC3:
http://samples.ffmpeg.org/A-codecs/AC3/eac3/

TrueHD:
http://samples.ffmpeg.org/A-codecs/TrueHD/

You can also use my ubuntu repo:
http://www.avenard.org/media/Ubuntu_Repository/Ubuntu_Repository.html

Only 0.24 packages, with the audio trunk backport.

You can also use the ffmpeg samples that only contains an audio track
; start mythfrontend or mythavtest with the option -O
AudioOnlyPlayback=1 like so:
mythavtest -v audio -O AudioOnlyPlayback=1 7_pt_1.eac3

Having -O AudioOnlyPlayback=1 lets mythtv internal player plays
audio-only file (include wav, mp3, ogg, flac and anything ffmpeg
supports etc..)

A massive thank you to Anssi Hannula for his work and cooperation. We
exchanged over a hundred messages over the past few days to get this
going. Without him, none of the above would exist.

Jean-Yves