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Anonymous User
Not applicable

5.1 Audio output ??

Hi there ....

Having had a lengthy 'web chat' with one of The NOW help persons, they assured me that the Black Now box should output a 5.1 Dolby signal .... Which I was failing to get, so .... After several hours of fiddling with settings on both my AV amp & resetting the Now box a couple of times, I'm still not convinced a 5.1 output is happening.

Within the settings/audio menu I've tried both the 'auto detect' ..... Which did as it said & recognised the HDMI could carry DD and DTS .... And also manually set the audio at DD (along with all the other settings) but alas all that is being fed from the Now box appears to be stereo.

 

Has anyone out there managed to configure a 5.1 output & inform if I'm missing something really simple & stupid !

Thanks in advance for any info

Cheers

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
Anonymous User
Not applicable

@Anonymous User

 

NOW TV only supply stereo audio.  Hopefully 5.1 is something on their list for the future, especially moviesSmiley Happy

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173 REPLIES 173
SeeMoreDigital
Legend 5
Legend 5

In order to provide 'discrete' multi-channel audio NOW TV would have to switch from AAC to Dolby Digital (encoded typically 448Kbps) or Dolby Digital Plus (if the Roku products support it), which can be encoded at less than 448Kbps due to its greater efficiency...

 

Either way... it could be done. And would be a most welcome addition to the 'on-demand' movie/cinema service 😉

commanda6
Legend 5
Legend 5

@SeeMoreDigital wrote:

In order to provide 'discrete' multi-channel audio NOW TV would have to switch from AAC to Dolby Digital (encoded typically 448Kbps) or Dolby Digital Plus (if the Roku products support it), which can be encoded at less than 448Kbps due to its greater efficiency...

 

Either way... it could be done. And would be a most welcome addition to the 'on-demand' movie/cinema service 😉


 it would be even more efficient if they could use AAC 5.1, but not a lot of equipment supports that chromecast is one of the few pieces of equipment that I can think of  that can if the chromecast is connected to an AV receiver. AAC 5.1 is used by Google play when using chromecast Smiley Wink you also have to have a fairly new AV receiver to be able to do that as well. 

 

While the source audio on Freeview HD channels is sometimes AAC 5.1. It has to be transcodeed it Dolby Digital in most cases, so that it can be handled correctly.


I do not work for Now . I am simply a Now customer trying to help I am a Community Contributor This means that I know a lot about the service. But just like you I am still a customer. This means I cannot help you with issues that would involve looking into your account directly. A member of the now TV forum team or live chat will need to assist you with these issues.
SeeMoreDigital
Legend 5
Legend 5

@commanda6 wrote:

...it would be even more efficient if they could use AAC 5.1, but not a lot of equipment supports that chromecast is one of the few pieces of equipment that I can think of  that can if the chromecast is connected to an AV receiver.


Sadly most, if not all surround sound receivers (even ones that support DAB+) are unable to decode multi-channel AAC audio when passed as a 'bit-stream' via HDMI (inc ARC) or via SPDIF Smiley Sad 

 

Anonymous User
Not applicable

Dear friends,

 

I have drafted a letter to Alun Webber, the Chief Product Officer at Sky.

 

Please feel free to send it to him (alun.webber@sky.uk), amending and adjusting it to your needs. Let's really campaign and do it well. We can do this, guys.

 

Dear Mr. Webber,

I am currently a Now TV customer and receive Sky Cinema via an app on my television.

I’d like to draw your attention to a forum on your website (http://community.nowtv.com/t5/Cinema/5-1-Sound-and-1080p/m-p/402553/highlight/false#M9030) where several of Now TV’s users are bemoaning the lack of 1080p HD picture and 5:1 Dolby Digital sound available on the movies on offer. The comments from users is both passionate and informed, almost all vociferously appalled at the manner in which Now TV seems to have intentionally withheld technical features that it affords its Sky Cinema satellite subscribers. This is both unfair and illogical.

We are most chagrined by the concept of Sky Cinema being the hub of film content, yet mortified by it compromised picture and sound capabilities, especially when there is no tangible reasons for this. Now TV Sky Cinema subscribers are as important as your satellite clients, which ultimately makes us question why we are being short changed.

Sky Cinema is a portal to the best of film from past and present, a valuable source of content for us aficionados. We want access to films in exactly the way esteemed filmmakers want their movies to be delivered, which is seriously undermined by Now TV’s insistence on withholding improved picture and sound facilities.

I am sure that on some corporate level, the strategy of neutering Sky Cinema’s technical profile via Now TV makes sense, but for me it seems petty. There really is not any justifiable reason for 1080p HD picture and 5:1 digital sound not being extended to us on applicable movies.

As Chief Product Officer, I implore you to make Sky Cinema just as technically worthwhile for Now TV subscribers as it is for your other customers.

Best wishes,

SeeMoreDigital
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Legend 5

Maybe anybody responding could also confirm their surround sound audio gear. Mine is all Audiolab 😉

Andy
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Legend 5

It wouldn't impact on service quality if they did offer 5.1, adaptive streaming automatically adjusts bit rates to suit. People who don't sustain a fast enough throughput for 1080p will get the best they can get. That's the way NOW TV already deliver the content, as do Netflix and Amazon etc. But Netflix and Amazon throw in 5.1 on a lot  of their content, NOW TV don't. The hidden bitrate menu has no effect on NOW TV streams, that menu is a legacy menu for when services used to provide different streams in different bit rates. It has no effect on adaptive streaming.

 

I'm not expecting 5.1 or 1080p anytime soon, but I do support users keeping the 'campaign' alive by posting about it now and then - that's what forums are for, if you don't ask you don't get etc.

 

 

Anonymous User
Not applicable

Neil Hunt, chief product officer at Netflix, said in an interview to What Hi-Fi last year that:

 

“Relatively few people bother with the home theatre set up, [however,] what is compelling is what I call the ‘director’s intent’. I want to be able to capture the story that the director wanted to tell, and deliver it faithfully through to the audience. For me, on sound, that means the dynamic range. Often, and particularly for features, the dynamic range of sound is huge. What you see when it’s delivered to broadcast is that the range is materially compressed to make it digestible by a three-inch speaker at the back of a cheap television. That is a shame.”

 

Hunt went on to say:

 

“We’re actually going through a clean-up process at the moment of making sure we’ve got great audio masters for all of our content. We’re making sure that they’re level-normalised – today they’re not, they tend to be up and down by 3-6dB from normal.

 

We want to make sure that when you play any piece of content you don’t need to juggle the volume to get it comfortable. When you deliver the 5.1 to a capable receiver we want to deliver the full dynamic range that the director intended, along with the right metadata that you could choose to compress for your environment. When we deliver stereo to your tablet with tiny little drivers, we want to make sure we are not overloading it by delivering a massive dynamic range.

 

You could receive the appropriate audio that matches the device you’ve got. That’s still at the experimental level at this point, but I think that could deliver a meaningful improvement in quality to people with small speakers, where we’re currently overloading them, and the full sound system, where we’re currently not delivering the full dynamic range that the director intended. Sound needs to be scalable and adaptable for what the consumer’s got.

 

That’s what we intend to do in the next six months. It’s a gradual thing. We know what we need to do. We just need to pass through our library and fix it gradually. New stuff coming in already, we’re getting them level properly and building the metadata. It’s not a huge material effort but it will make a difference in quality.”

 

That is how on top of things Netflix is when compared to Now TV. Does Now TV even have a product officer? Who is he or she? We ought to campaign to them directly because this forum is a waste of our efforts. No-one in charge is answering our questions.

Jason-C
Community Administrator

Hi @Anonymous User

 

The details of our executives can be found here.

 

It's interesting you removed a piece of what was said in the interview, which expands on what I was asking before about actual usage. I'd still love to see some research though!

 

"Relatively few people bother with the home theatre set up. Some large percentage of people use the speakers in the television and that’s it. Delivering even 5.1 is an overkill. For those who don’t, it’s likely a bundled speaker bar that sits underneath the television pretending to be 5.1."

 

Sky Cinema have been making improvements across the board this year, which will be especially evident on the high-end Sky Q boxes. You can find details of this after the rebrand, also reported by What HiFi.

For NOW TV, this has obviously meant a smaller impact. I did note in that interview above, they were introducing some audio level normalisation. This is also interesting, as we removed ours to better match the cinema experience/director's intent.

 

You're likely correct that our CPO won't respond on these forums! (You never know 🙂 but I suspect the same can be said for Netflix's CPO on their forums too.) What I have done is passed your feedback along to our product and technology teams, who help make the decisions on what features will be supported in the future. We've got a lot in store, but - I'm sure you'll be disappointed to learn - for now there's no change on the 5.1 surround sound front.

I'll post back here if I learn of any change to this.

 

Thanks,

Jason

 

Anonymous User
Not applicable

I appreciate your replying to my post, Jason-C.

 

I have taken a gander at your link, though, there is quite a few executives that seem to overlap on the CPO front.

 

Reading the posts of my fellow commentators on this thread, one very much deduces many are massively clued up on what they're espousing, ergo, the passion they have vis-à-vis the 1080p and 5:1 Dolby Digital sound need. We are serious about cinema.

 

I accept, most Now TV consumers won't care about these things as they just want movie content, but Sky Cinema appeals to a coalition of movie buffs; those that are passé to us lot that are fanatics. We are just as important as the former, though, we are rightfully slightly more demanding.

 

Look, Now TV is answerable to its shareholders more than it is to me. But I'm just a fellow customer wanting Now TV to warrant its standing as a formidable movie streaming service. It is important to me and many of your clients.

 

 

4268
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Legend 5
Well I think it should have 20:1 and 4090 surround sound not something as basic as 5.1;-)
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