So I recently bought myself a nice Dolby Atmos setup, with fronts, surrounds, sub and height channels. I also got the Sony DN-1080 receiver with support for the format. However, once I plugged my HDD into the LG C8 OLED TV and tried to play off a file with Dolby TrueHD (an Atmos-enabled format), the TV essentially told me there was no such support, and changed to a non-Atmos audio file. I was disheartened to say the least.
Now with Vero 4K+, I see that it supports Dolby TrueHD. What a relief. But… how do I actually go about using this device? It has 16GB internal memory, I presume mainly for the Linux based OS itself. My 4K HDR files with Atmos soundtracks, usually border close to 60-70GB in size. So I reckon I would need to connect an external HDD, right?
My question is thus. A) With the Vero4K+ having USB 2.0 (60 MBps limit) ports rather than USB 3.0 (640MBps limit), will all 4K HDR bandwidth be covered? I’ve seen some REMUX copies of BluRays where the bit rate is 67 MBps, which would theoretically be above the specification limits of USB 2.0. And B) Will you be able to play 4K HDR w/ Dolby Atmos through the external HDD, by using the HDMI 2.0 port of the Vero4K+, feeding it to a HDMI-ARC port of the Atmos-enabled receiver? Is it really that easy?
What alternative is there? Is streaming through Gigabit-ethernet the only way? If so, I’m stuck, because I don’t get fiber and my connection is fairly limited at where I reside. Thanks for any help guys!
Aha, that covers that issue then. So am I safe as long as my external HDD (which is actually a SSD capable of transfering above 500MB/s) is fast enough? Is it just straight forward connecting the HDMI cable between the receiver and the Vero4K+, and it will play Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD) perfectly on my LG C8 OLED? Many thanks in advance!
Drives use a lot of power and the Vero cannot supply all drives with enough power to run properly. A powered USB hub isn’t very expensive and will allow you to connect several drives.
Just as a FYI there is zero need to use a SSD for this purpose and any external spinning disk hard drive is more than fast enough for the largest files the Vero can play. Very large externally powered hard drives can be had for modest prices nowadays.
Ah, alright. Think I will try with the HDD, just to attempt it. Unless it says very specifically that it will ruin the build or something. A HDD doesn’t really pull that much power imo. So as long as there is some electricity going through the port, like USB ports should, then I figure it should, or at least might, work.
Respectfully the issue is not a matter of opinion and every HDD is different on how much power they draw. The Vero (and most SBC) are not designed for the full current draw as allowed by USB spec. To further complicate the matter just because a drive appears to be working just fine when plugged in does not mean it will stay that way as actual current draw will vary with activity and (SBC’s in general) if run near power limits the USB protection circuits can degrade to where they cause issues after a period of time.
Out of curiosity, are you using the TV’s speakers for the sound? If so, then I doubt you’ll get much real benefit from the Atmos side of things (or arguably the TrueHD side of things). For that, you’re going to want at minimum a decent soundbar but really you want some kind of 5.1 system and AV Receiver to really benefit from it. If you want atmos that also required additional speakers for height.
There are some soundbars that sort of do this and they’d be a great leap beyond your TV’s audio capability. For reference, I have the same TV
I am doing proper Atmos, thankfully. Bowers & Wilkins as fronts, surrounds and height channels, and XTZ 12.17 subwoofer. Connected to a Sony DN-1080 Dolby Atmos receiver.
You could get a Seagate Backup Plus Hub 8TB and kill two birds with one stone.
It’s a more than capable hard drive with tons of space and a built in hub.
I have one and it works great.
I also have two 2.5" external HDDs attached to it (another 5TB & 4TB).
If you live in the USA and have a Costco membership, they have them on sale right now for $120.
I also have a Atmos setup with my LG C8 so if you have any issues I can probably help you out since are setups would be somewhat similar.
Sigh. I just made an order of the powered USB-hub, as the Vero 4K+ did indeed seem to struggle with stability using a LaCie Porsche 2.5" 5TB External HDD. After that I tried with a custom Adata SX8200 PCIe SSD in an eSSD enclosure. Surely enough, this low powered drive worked, but somehow the dialogue got removed from every movie, while the other sounds are still present. I am completely baffled as to why this might happen.
I am also not too much a fan of either the interface, or the actual image quality when playing through the OSMC. I might be doing something wrong, but the image looks much more dull than when I play files directly through the LG C8’s internal media player. But then again, doing this, I can’t get Dolby Atmos, as LG for some annoying reason only allows passthrough of Dolby TrueHD Atmos through HDMI-devices like the Vero 4K+, and not through directly connecting the drive to one of the TV’s USB ports. I also am getting massive audio sync problems using the Vero 4K+, to the stage that movies looks dubbed. Have tried literally every sync adjustment available through the TV, receiver and Vero 4K+, but I never once have gotten close to a decent lip sync.
Right now I’ve made an order on a LG C9 65" display. It features eARC, so I have a hope that somehow the handshake between receiver, speakers and TV will be better, and there will be less lip sync issues. Otherwise I’m honestly tempted to put the Vero 4K+ up for sale, and just try get the new nVidia Shield TV Pro.
No idea why it should be this freakin hard just to get functioning Dolby Atmos off of external storage.
Maybe you’re somehow losing the centre audio channel but still able to hear the other channels? That might suggest a wiring problem, or a fault with the centre speaker or the AV amp.
Have you enabled “Deep Colour” on that TV input? If you have, does the video look any better when you connect the Vero directly to the TV rather than going via the AV amp?
Check the TV firmware is up to date too.
Given that the Vero can adjust audio sync by as much as +/- 10 seconds, in 25ms increments, that’s a bit surprising. The sync can’t be more than 10 seconds out, surely?
I will have to retry next time I’m at home, which will be before Christmas. I was thinking about the centre audio channel too. I might have messed something up in the settings. I don’t have a centre channel, but fairly sure the amp is indeed set as 4.1.2. When I pick a 5.1 audio file, I get dialogue, but not 7.1 TrueHD. It’s very strange.
Yes, I did enable Deep Colour. I’ve tried connecting the Vero4K+ directly to the TV’s HDMI, but might have to try through the receiver instead next time around. Maybe that is causing the audio sync issues too? Anyhow, is it possible that the Vero4k+ player is giving a different decoding than the internal media player? I think I’ve noticed this on a computer too, VLC being different to say K-Lite or Windows Media Player for that matter.
Regarding the audio sync. My issue is that the audio is delayed compared to the video. I know how to delay the audio, but not how to advance the audio, if that makes sense.
And just a note to anyone else reading this thread. These issues might very well be operator issues, not the product’s fault whatsoever. Just so happens that I’m having a VERY hard time just getting Dolby Atmos setup correctly. Wish it was as easy as plugging a hard drive in the TV, and playing the file directly off the media player. But no way…
While the video is playing, press OK on the Vero remote to bring up the On Screen Display. Select the speaker icon to get into Audio Settings. Scroll down to “Audio offset” and select that. Then use the left arrow key to delay the audio or the right arrow key to advance it.
If the AV amp is capable of passing through 4K HDR video, I would guess you’ll get better results sending to the amp first, then the TV. Modern AV amps are usually better at passing through video than TVs are at passing through HD audio (but not always, it depends on the amp).
There are quite a number of possibilities, there.
If the TV isn’t correctly advertising the fact that it is capable of deep colour then the Vero may be trying to down-convert to 8-bit (or even to SDR) on the fly. I seem to recall hearing about a firmware bug on the C8 that caused it to keep turning deep colour off, so if you’re not certain the TV has the latest firmware version, do check that.
It could also be because the Vero doesn’t yet pass all of the available HDR metadata to the TV which can mess up the tone-mapping on some videos. (That’s a feature/fix that’s coming in the future, though I’m not sure exactly when).
It could also be a TV calibration issue. If, for example, the internal player is using the HDR Bright Room preset while that TV input is using HDR Standard, then obviously they’ll look different, and even if they’re using the same preset, changes to the settings aren’t automatically propagated to the same preset on other inputs unless you copy them across.
An official OSMC person could probably help with that if you post debug logs (but you’ll need to have access to the Vero and TV to do that).
Many thanks in advance!