I get what your saying, but why not allow DTS to passthrough and only have DTS-HD get converted in the Vero? It seems like your saying allowing DTS to passthrough is affecting how it handles the HD formats and I wouldn’t think this would be the case. The point is pedantic as the resulting audio should be exactly the same for non-HD formats, but I am curious as what your saying seems to run a bit counter to how I understand it to work.
Ok, first, please ignore the question re: audio output device. Bit of brain fade happening there. It clearly is the choice between the Veros HDMI, SPDIF and analog output ports. Duh.
Second, yeah, I get from @angry.sardine that the Oppo could potentially do a better job of upscaling lower resolution video than Kodi but it’s currently a bit of hit and miss to get Kodi to output these correctly as unscaled. Further, the Oppo probably can do a better job with the 720 and 1080i than Kodi does - and Kodi does output these natively ok when whitelisted. So that’s where that came from.
I get the ARC and CEC thing and I’m over it. Lol.
I’m definitely confused Darwin but not about where the DAC is happening as HDMI can only carry digital signals. My confusion is more around decoding. If Kodi can do it all (Atmos and DTS:X excluded) and output the uncompressed digital bistream representing those formats, why would there be any difference between doing this and pass-through to a receiver that can do it also? Either way the receiver is going to end up passing these digital signals to its DAC whether the receiver did the decoding or Kodi did.
On a related note, if I have set Kodi to Pass-through with AC3 and DTS check marked but E-AC3, DTS-HD and TrueHD unchecked, what happens? I assume it passes through AC3 and DTS but decodes the other three and sends them out as PCM. So why am I missing by not having a receiver than can “do” E-AC3, DTS-HD and TrueHD?
I’m clearly thick, apologies and thanks for your patience…
Robert
That would be the logical way to do it, but there is no way to make the Vero actually do that. If you tell it that it can pass through DTS but not DTS-HD and then you play something with a DTS-HD audio track, it will pull out the core DTS track and output that using pass-through, and the DTS-HD track will be ignored. Disabling DTS pass-through is the only way to make it decode DTS-HD.
That was the case up until very recently, but if you re-read the conversation between me and Graham higher up, you’ll see that it is now possible, so long as you set your View Mode to “Stretch 16:9”.
The Vero cannot output 1080i at the moment.
There won’t be any difference. (Except that you might save a little CPU power at the Kodi end).
Although I should point out that you’re abusing the word “bitstream”, there. 
“Bitstream” is generally used to mean outputting the raw compressed audio data in a non-decoded form; so “bitstream” implies that you are not decoding to multichannel PCM.
There ‘should’ be no difference to the resulting audio. The only practical difference you ‘should’ see is that the downstream says it has PCM vs. DTS or whatever. The way I see it though is that if you let a device that has dedicated hardware for this task do its job then this should be preferable and less prone to any errors to a software stack scheduling the process among all the other stuff it is doing. For your particular setup the difference is likely more academic than anything.
It can, but it’s re-interlacing a stream which may have been de-interlaced earlier in the chain. Just for fun, I enabled interlacing for 576 the other day and the result was awful.
Not sure I’m comfortable outside of the stable release. In point of fact, this particular system is where we watch movies when we want to make an evening of it. The likelihood of watching older lower resolution material on this system is roughly zero. We watch TV shows etc on other systems in the house - and yes, I do have some 4k displays, but none as nice (large) as this old plasma. But point taken.
Really? Kodi doesn’t output 4k natively if it’s connected to a 4k TV? Or are you saying that because from Kodi’s perspective the Oppo is the recipient and it’s advertising “1080p please”?
Yeah, very good point. Purchasing a 4k display for this system in the future is going to mean a re-think, perhaps an HDMI splitter. Not considering this anytime soon anyway - at 1080p with a good source this system is shockingly good and sharp enough to require wearing safety glasses.
No insistance or reluctance at all, just trying to understand and you’re making that possible. Your explanation of why this is is now crystal clear to me. Thank you.
Crystal clear. And I’ll clean up my act with respect to the vernacular. So I meant output the uncompressed digital stream of bits… 
Thanks Darwin, agreed. If I was feeding into a receiver that would “do it all” then pass-through is the obvious choice. Given that a mixture of pass-through and non-passthrough does’t work as expected (or as desired) it would seem that letting Kodi do the work here is preferable. I couldn’t care less about a DTS or other logo lighting up on a piece of gear. I just want to know that I’m connected and configured the best way possible for the gear I have. And the Oppo is required for me because it’s how I drive my amplifiers, not having a traditional preamp. And I like how it sounds…
You’ve both been super helpful in my understanding, I thank you.
Cheers,
Robert
Not automatically and not recommended since there is no advantage in displaying a 1080 GUI upscaled to 4k.
We have a switch which makes Vero think it’s connected to an HDR display even if it isn’t. Not sure if the Oppo will pass through that HDR signalling. It does go through my Yamaha AVR so I can watch HDR in proper colours. If you type
echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/class/amhdmitx/amhdmitx0/force_hdr
and play an HDR stream and your colours go washed out on your SDR TV then no need to buy a splitter. 
OK, by natively I meant playing a 4k video file and outputting it in 4k. I wouldn’t set the GUI to 4k, that’s meaningless to me.
That’s some good information Graham, thanks. My thinking regarding splitting was to send one HDMI to the new 4k TV and another to the Oppo just for the audio, but a device like you’re suggesting might work fine too if the test is positive. I’m still not buying a 4k TV to replace this one any time soon, but that’s good information. Could you tell me what your device is?
Thanks,
Robert
I’m pretty sure the Oppo doesn’t have the bandwidth to pass a 10-bit 4K signal.
By switch I mean just a setting in software, as described.
My Yamaha does 4k30Hz (ie ‘HDMI 1.4’). If the Oppo advertizes 4k it must have at least the bandwidth for that at 422.
Okay, I did the necessary crawling around on the floor swapping cables, so I can now tell you on the basis of actual experiment that if a Vero 4K+ is connected directly to the input of an Oppo 105D, the Vero then refuses to whitelist any resolution above 1080p/60. Any and all 4K signals aren’t going to happen in that configuration.
@Phydeaux, if you do upgrade to a 4K TV and want to keep using the Oppo for audio, then either an HDFury AVRKey or an Egreat H10 may help matters. They’re devices designed to split the audio and video components of an HDMI signal and send the video to one output and the audio to another; so you can put the TV on the video out and the Oppo on the audio out.
@grahamh. Ah, I get you. I had a hardware item on the brain. Yes, clear. Thanks.
@angry.sardine. Well thanks so much for crawling around the cable plant to do an actual test! That’s good information and I can see why a splitter that divides the signal type would be necessary. I’ll surf down and mark those devices for future reference.
Thanks again for all your help fellas.
Cheers,
Robert
Just buy an AV Receiver!
1 Like
“Just spend £2000 to buy a device that does exactly the same thing as a device you already own!”
£2000 lol
You can pick up a decent one for £150 that supports 4k and everything you need. To be fair I would recommend spending minimum £250 but you can pick up good second hand one for next to nothing.
Plus you know it will support passthrough of HD codecs. Rather than trying to use a bluray player it is a no brainer.
1 Like
Anyone who owns an Oppo 105D would find the sound of a £150 AV receiver about as “decent” as the sound of fingernails scratching a blackboard. Even a £2000 receiver might not sound as good as the Oppo can sound under the right circumstances.
1 Like
OK just looked up the specs. It does support HD Codecs and 4k but only has HDMI 1.4a supports so no 60hz support.
Also only 2 HDMI out.
As for quality, well it is 192khz with a 24bit DAC. The same as entry level Yamaha AV Receiver.
Sure if he already has it then use it but I still recommend a AVR.
I turn off video processing on my AVR and use bitstream. On the AVR there is an option to process video or “pass through”, I always prefer pass through.
Numbers don’t tell the whole story, and those particular numbers are meaningless. It would marginally more useful to look at SNR, THD and Crosstalk numbers, but only marginally.
Remember, this is a device that sold for over £1300; and at least a £1000 of that went on the audio performance. And when comparing to an AVR, remember that with the Oppo you weren’t paying for any onboard amplification - it’s used with external power amps. So that’s £1000 worth of DACs.
I’m sorry, but it is a matter of objective fact that if you want an AVR to sound as good as that, you will have to pay a four-figure sum. (And I say that as someone who owns a 105D and uses it in the same way for the same reasons). If you haven’t actually heard one in action (paired with high-end speakers and power amps) you are not in a position to comment on its sound quality.
And incidentally, the DACs on the 105D have 32-bit resolution, not 24.