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  1. Hello,

    I'm sort of a quality purist with my home theater and I've been trying to figure out if objectively, there is a difference in quality between a few playback methods. I have a UHD Blu-Ray player, a 4K Sony projector, a high-end AVR, and top of the line HDMI cables and hardware in between everything. The home theater was professionally installed.

    I really like Plex due to the convenience and portability. With Plex, I rip a Blu-Ray (as well as UHD Blu-Rays) using MakeMKV, and move the MKV onto an NAS, and the Plex server is run off a high-end PC on the network with original playback quality and no rendering. It works great. In the theater, Plex (client) is run off of an NVIDIA Shield TV Pro.

    I've also wondered about things like HDR and Dolby Vision and advanced audio formats. Projectors don't have Dolby Vision, except for very few (mine does not) so it's really HDR and Dolby Atmos and perhaps a few other parameters, the successful playback of which can depend upon the equipment.

    My question is, is there any difference in audiovisual playback quality between Plex playing an MKV of the UHD disc in this setup, playing the UHD disc itself, or playing an ISO of the disc using Kodi on the NVIDIA Shield TV? Conventional wisdom says no, but it's hard to say. I've tried comparing each, and subjectively I don't notice a major difference, except for perhaps the playback volume being a little different for each device.

    I just wanted to know if philosophically/technologically there is any difference at all. One such thing I learned is that with Plex, only on the NVIDIA Shield TV Pro will you get lossless audio. For instance an Apple TV if you try a 4K MKV with Dolby Atmos it will send PCM - the Shield does not. But is there anything else like this where the different methods will give different quality?
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    Originally Posted by Guphanti View Post
    Hello,

    I'm sort of a quality purist with my home theater and I've been trying to figure out if objectively, there is a difference in quality between a few playback methods. I have a UHD Blu-Ray player, a 4K Sony projector, a high-end AVR, and top of the line HDMI cables and hardware in between everything. The home theater was professionally installed.

    I really like Plex due to the convenience and portability. With Plex, I rip a Blu-Ray (as well as UHD Blu-Rays) using MakeMKV, and move the MKV onto an NAS, and the Plex server is run off a high-end PC on the network with original playback quality and no rendering. It works great. In the theater, Plex (client) is run off of an NVIDIA Shield TV Pro.

    I've also wondered about things like HDR and Dolby Vision and advanced audio formats. Projectors don't have Dolby Vision, except for very few (mine does not) so it's really HDR and Dolby Atmos and perhaps a few other parameters, the successful playback of which can depend upon the equipment.

    My question is, is there any difference in audiovisual playback quality between Plex playing an MKV of the UHD disc in this setup, playing the UHD disc itself, or playing an ISO of the disc using Kodi on the NVIDIA Shield TV? Conventional wisdom says no, but it's hard to say. I've tried comparing each, and subjectively I don't notice a major difference, except for perhaps the playback volume being a little different for each device.

    I just wanted to know if philosophically/technologically there is any difference at all. One such thing I learned is that with Plex, only on the NVIDIA Shield TV Pro will you get lossless audio. For instance an Apple TV if you try a 4K MKV with Dolby Atmos it will send PCM - the Shield does not. But is there anything else like this where the different methods will give different quality?
    see this here - https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23404
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  3. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    That is not quite right. Makemkv, for the most part, just extracts and remuxes the material on disc. With the less advanced formats, this is pretty much a no brainer and the quality stored in the mkv should be identical to that on disc.

    However, it doesn't copy/transfer ALL material (forget Menus! - mkv still hasn't finalized that part of the spec yet), and doesn't accommodate more esoteric material. Depending on the version, this may or may not include DolbyVision or other forms of HDR, or Dolby Atmos or other forms of object-based audio. And it very likely doesn't accommodate BD3D's stereo 3D material (either video or subs), and it probably won't cover other alternative composited formats including multi-angle and 2nd video stream overlay. It is very much a consumer based "main movie video + main audios & sub streams"-only, in simple file containers.

    Also, and more importantly for your case, even if the material is transferred properly and sufficiently onto the mkv format, doesn't mean that the player supports all those features. It has the make the full trip, and the playback chain is only as good as its weakest link. Plex is good, and from what I read the shield pro is good too, but they don't have all the features that are supported by every licensed DVD/BD/3DBD/UHDBD player. If you are an afficionado this may be a deal breaker for you. Me, I don't treat all my material the same, so some stuff is perfectly acceptable as mkv rips. But my precious faves and critical demo material, I would never leave in that format.


    Scott
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  4. Member Ennio's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by Guphanti View Post
    My question is, is there any difference in audiovisual playback quality between Plex playing an MKV of the UHD disc in this setup, playing the UHD disc itself, or playing an ISO of the disc using Kodi on the NVIDIA Shield TV?
    I'd expect no difference for playback of non Dolby Vision material. However, I can imagine difference in handling DV video and therefor different outputs. Let your eyes decide.

    nVidia Shield suffers from a slight red push when outputting Dolby Vision. When output set to HDR, chances are that DV's metadata (RPU) will be ignored in the process (note that possible extra videodata in the enhancement layer is always ignored by the Shield).

    I can imagine however your UHDBD player behaving differently. Where almost every mediaplayer (including the Shield) just has one HEVC decoder, Dolby Vision compatible UHDBD players have a second HEVC decoder onboard to be able to decode the extra videodata, present in a Full Enhancement Layer (FEL). This is different from a Minimum Enhancement Layer (MEL); this only carries DV metadata RPU.

    Therefor it is a possible scenario that the UHDBD player's built-in Dolby Vision composer will process both base- and enhancement layers and RPU before a downconversion to HDR takes place. This would by definition create another output than you will have from the Shield. Which may/may not be noticable I might add. I'm not sure of this behaviour of course. It wouldn't surprise me if the player would just do a simple fallback and will not process any further than only decoding the HDR baselayer.

    As for quality, MakeMKV has proven to show some quirks on some seamless branched discs. In which case you may want to consider a different approach to creating a mkv.
    It usually does create a perfect mkv from (UHD)BD where object based audio formats Atmos and DTS:X are entirely supported. With Dolby Vision discs, BL and EL+RPU will be interleaved into one videotrack, preserving all DV video- and metadata.
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  5. I'm a newbie and not sure if I'm posting this in the right location.
    I just started ripping my 4K disc, and noticed they all have a duplicate mpegH HEVC Main10@L5.1 (dvhe.07.06 BL+FEL+RPU) file.
    The only difference I see between them, one has chapters and one doesn't. I don't know why the they would use the disc space for this, so can some tell me what the differences are, and which one I should rip?

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  6. Member Ennio's Avatar
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    There is no duplicate on the disc. The software just shows the same video twice. Where at the first occasion it reads the playlist, which contains chapter information. At the second one it reads the m2ts container, to which the playlist points.
    You should rip the one with chapters.
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