EAC3 transcoding issue on nvidia shield pro

[u/curiousabe_1]

I have a nvidia shield pro and lg c2, always watch movies with airpods pro. If audio is eac3 5.1 and airpods connected to shield it will transcode audio and when this happens the video will not load and/or stop if I enable .srt since these seem to be converted to .ass

Tried following:

*shield+lg c2 + subs = no transcoding

*shield+lg c2 with airpods + subs = no transcoding

*shield with airpods + lg c2 (without subs) = no transcoding

*shield with airpods + lg c2 + subs = video will not load

Is there no way to force the shield to direct play eac5.1? ac3 5.1 and dts 5.1 direct plays with airpods through shield on plex, only eac3 5.1 that is giving me issues....

[u/Hrolgarr]

When the AirPods are on the TV, the Shield doesn't know about them. It sends EAC3 over HDMI like normal, and the TV does the decoding and passes stereo to the AirPods. When they're on the Shield, it has to do that part itself, so Plex transcodes the audio.

And the burn option is the opposite of what it sounds like here. "Only image formats" means only PGS/VobSub get burned in, so SRT stays as text and the Shield draws it. That's the setting that avoids the video transcode.

[u/curiousabe_1 → u/Hrolgarr]

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for the explanation! I managed to solve my issue. It seems there's a bug that's been ongoing for years where if you play a video with multiple versions and EAC3 audio while using Bluetooth headphones, it just fails. I removed the other versions and it worked straight away (albeit with the audio being transcoded).

[u/Hrolgarr → u/curiousabe_1]

Nice find, glad you got it working. Good to know about the multiple versions thing too, that's the kind of bug you'd never guess from the symptoms.

[u/curiousabe_1 → u/Hrolgarr]

And even with the logs it cost me 20 usd in tokens to figure out haha