I have a brand new 2020 Roku Ultra, and I am using Plex to stream videos from my PC's HDD to my HDTV. This is working fine with all files except if the video has the HEVC/x265 video codec AND the EAC3/DD+ audio codec (which Roku claims to support - both). In this case the image has unwatchably severe distortion in the color (maximum saturation) and unwatchably severe distortion in the contast (extremely dark). 1080p vs 720p doesn't seem to make a difference.
I used a utility on my PC to convert the audio on an HEVC video file from EAC3 to AC3, and that converted file plays fine, without the color/contrast distortion. The same file w/ the original EAC3 experiences the distortion. And EAC3 files with h264 video play fine. So it appears that the problem is the combination of both HEVC and EAC3.
Exact same problem using Emby for the streaming, so it doesn't seem to be a Plex problem.
Is there something I can do to fix whatever this problem is? I'm new to Roku, Plex, etc.
The Roku, my PC, and Plex have all been manually restarted, updated, etc. Problem remains.
I bought the Roku to play these files, specifically, since my old media-player-box can't.
Thanks for any help.
Assuming you have the latest firmware (9.4.1-4212) you'll want to report this directly to Roku:
Chat or email: https://support.roku.com/contactus/contact-options (choose setup/ultra/other/need more help?)
and/or message @RokuDanny-R
Hello, wondering if you were ever able to get this resolved. I'm experiencing something similar, with HEVC+EAC3 videos having high contrast. If I set the Plex app to transcode to 720p then the colors are correct, but then the video has to buffer frequently and is unwatchable. Any help is greatly appreciated.
No. They never fixed it, so I gave up and returned it for a refund. They claimed to have made a patch for me but when I installed the firmware update it made zero difference. Very disappointed, and I think it's totally unethical for them to put a product on the market that can't do what it claims to do. Those are mainstream codecs. I had a $29 Android TV box from China that could handle EAC3 and HEVC just fine. Also, there were about a dozen other minor bugs/flaws that a professional product should never go to market with. It's like they just don't care. I continued to ask the Roku customer service for help and all I got was the generic 'we are investigating' w/ no followup. I don't think I'll ever buy anything from Roku again.