signcarver wrote: ↑Fri Nov 24, 2023 6:32 am
It doesn't state that... early it mentions only Dolby Digital Plus and atmos. When ac4 is mentioned it is for the Channels App which wouldn't support built in ac4 regardless (nor pass through such as mentioned) as channels "always" supports ac4 as they have built in the modified ffmpeg to handle ac4... in other words in that case it is the app decoding ac4, not the device.
Yes the Channels App does AC4 decoding and outputs AC3 to my receiver (see HUD data below), but my understanding of the HDHomeRun products which I've been using since the beginning is the design of the device is not to perform any decoding, but just take in the RF signal and output the native streams through ethernet. It's up to the client devices to do what they want with the video and audio streams. This is the use case that brought me to the HDHomeRun products in the first place. It does one thing - stream the TV video and audio on my network and I can use any software I want to view and record. Unfortunately DRM has thrown a wrench into things that limits the applications to ones that are certified to handle DRM. Heck it even took some time to get AC3 decoding working on HTPCs back in the day, so we are revisiting history with AC4. Anyone remember fighting AC3FILTER on Windows? AC3 on Linux was also fun at the beginning.
We even had a DRM scare when ATSC 1.0 first came out. I still have an early PCI ATSC 1.0 tuner card released before the first HDHomeRun that claimed not to implement the ATSC 1.0 DRM stuff. Perhaps, I fell for the hype and bought one but the ATSC 1.0 DRM really wasn't implemented by the broadcasters like they are with ATSC 3.0.
FYI here is the Channels HUD Audio data on a ATSC 3.0 Channel:
Audio: ac4 (AC-4)
Channels: 6. Format: floatp
Sample Rate: 46034 Hz
Bitrate: 186 kbps
Audio Driver: Default