DTS: X and ATMOS passthrough not functioning correctly

[Probydoby]

My setup is as follows: 

Jellyfin client on Nvidia shield 2019, connected to the HDMI in on my Denon x3800h, which is connected via eARC to my TV (irrelevant as far as I am concerned). 

The issue is that when I stream DTS X or TRUEHD atmos content my AVR reports 'DTS' and 'multi ch in' respectively. This only happens when I set the media player as 'exoplayer', when I used libVLC the AVR correctly reports DTS X and Atmos, however, dolby vision doesn't work and my tv falls back on HDR (Dolby vision works correctly using Exoplayer). 

Settings Nvidia shield:

• Manually selected all audio codecs
  
• match content resolution is checked
  
• dolby processing is unchecked. 
  

Settings in Jellyfin: 

• Bitstream is turned on for both options. 
  

I believe the settings on my TV are irrelevant. Now I am not exactly sure whether I am losing quality as a result of this decoding, but I still would like to fix it. The fact that switching the media player fixes the issue (but creates another issue with dolby vision) tells me that jellyfin is the issue and all other devices and its settings are correct. 

I've googled extensively, however, apart from trying Kodi, I've not come across any solutions. I have yet to try Kodi, but that would add another layer with another set of settings and increase complexity. So I would rather not. 

Anyone has any ideas on a fix for this? Anything I can do to fix the correct passthrough of Dolby Atmos and DTS X?

EDIT: https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-and...ssues/3166 , the issue I describe has been reported already. But again I see no solution as of yet.

[xtreamer]

Hi all,

I have the same issue as described above. DTS-HD MA is only passed through when using libvlc player, which comes with the missing Dolby Vision compatibility.
In the past my solution to this problem was just to pick the player that suits best for the specific movie/show.

With the latest update of the ATV client, the option to choose between exoplayer and libvlc was removed. The reasons for that are fully understandable and have been discussed in some other thread: https://forum.jellyfin.org/t-android-tv-version-0-17

Is there any hope, that this problem will be tackled? Maybe the focus on only one player (exoplayer) will now help allocating resources on this. I read at some places that Plex uses also exoplayer and does not have these kind of playback issues, but I am not sure whether this is true.

It's sad when you have a high quality remux but can't playback it without audio downgrades.

I hope this thread gets some attention. Will be ready to provide some logs if this can help to solve the issue.

[dinosm]

Same here, I understand why libvlc was removed, but that unfortunately has left the Android TV client without any ability to pass through DTS:X and DTS HS (basically any DTS enhancement other than plain old DTS).

Yes there is the ability to use an external player, but that also doesn't help as external players don't report timestamps so Jellyfin doesn't know if the movie was paused to be resumed later.

[theguymadmax]

Using Kodi with the Jellyfin plugin is the best option for DTS-HD / DTS:X support. It can play these formats directly, provided your system supports them, rather than simply falling back to DTS Core.

[dinosm]

Using Kodi with the Jellyfin plugin is the best option for DTS-HD / DTS:X support.

Thanks for the suggestion, it made me try Kodi finally.
I'm not a fan of the UI, but at least it plays DTS-HD and DTS:X... most of the time. Sometimes it will randomly play a DD+ stream that does not exist (I am guessing it's software-transcoding it? as it's not being transcoded on the server and the movie doesn't have any other audio streams than the DTS:X one), but stopping and resuming makes it play it in DTS:X.

However, Jellyfin definitely needs a player that can play all DTS formats; it is unfortunate they effectively removed the ability to play these codecs when they removed libVLC without an alternative.

[xtreamer]

After your suggestion I installed the kodi add-on as well and I have to say: DTS-HD works.

Nevertheless, in my opinion the "all in one" solution within the jellyfin app would be a lot more convenient and should be the way to go. So that you don't have to switch to Kodi for your DTS-HD contents. Using only Kodi is no solution for me because I don't like it's UI, looks a little outdated.

I really hope this will be on the roadmap because I love jellyfin!