Thanks. I honestly didn't have much hope Roku would implement my suggestion, but figured it wouldn't hurt to put it out there in plain language. I fiddled with my PS4 and found its Media Player did the same thing as Roku on Auto, but was less capable (in fairness tho it's much older).
Could you give more detail on the "NS19"? I searched online but mostly found references to a Blue Origin flight.
I'll look into transcoding my videos to AC3. The trick there is to get the video stream to just copy (so lossless), while only the audio is re-encoded from AAC 5.1 to AC3. Any tips for a noob?
NS19 = Nvidia Shield 2019 (two versions, regular and Pro) - AndroidTV OS-based streaming device with excellent design/support for local streaming (USB & UPnP/DLNA, etc etc) using Kodi, etc.
As for re-encoding or transcoding:
1) You can convert (re-encode) your files from AAC to EAC3/AC3 using all sorts of tools (e.g. ffmpeg)
2) You didn't mention your file types or playback method (USB or UPnP/DLNA, etc), but you could use the built-in transcoding function of a UPnP/DLNA server (e.g. Serviio) to automatically transcode @ playback time.
3) Plex (server & client) can also transcode the AAC to AC3 @ playback time, etc.
Ah, I had not seen the Shield called NS19. Thanks, I'll take a closer look at it.
I play my video two ways:
1) From a simple DLNA server on my router, reading data from an SSD plugged into it. The router of course, doesn't do any transcoding.
2) Using a USB flash drive plugged into the Roku Ultra (the reason I got the Ultra instead of a cheaper version).
I tried Plex but don't want to keep a computer on all the time to run a server that does transcoding. At least not yet...
My video runs the gamut: mp4, mkv, even old avi files. Video encoded using AVC and HEVC. Audio in AAC stereo and 5.1, AC3, and E-AC-3.
