I record things on my Tablo in surround sound as I like to be able to watch my shows in surround sound. However, sometimes I like to watch tv late at night and don’t want to wake up the kids. I use my Roku remote and plug-in my headphones to it.
As it stands, I can’t watch the Tablo recordings if my headphones are plugged in since Tablo reports that I cannot view the recordings since my device does not support surround sound.
It would be nice if Tablo can make it so you can record both surround sound and non surround sound audio track so that you can enjoy surround sound on your roku if you are not in a headphone setup and vice versa.
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Yeah, they know about the limitation, but here’s a workaround for you, in the meantime.
You can disable surround sound just before you start watching TV.
Just remember to enable it before you go to bed, so recordings, and Live TV audio will come out in surround sound the next day.
The surround sound setting change takes effect immediately on tuners not currently in use, but will wait for tuners currently in use to finish what they were doing before applying the change to them.
I’m not sure what will happen if you try to play a recording that included surround sound, but the current Tablo surround sound setting is disabled?
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The problem is this only works for live television. If your recording was recorded in surround sound then you can’t watch it with your roku headphones on. That’s why I would like to see if both audio tracks can be stored.
For those who search and find this thread, I re-posted my response below to you on the weekend in another thread. To follow up the below explanation, I don’t think the tuner itself can spit out 2 audio streams - one untouched and one transcoded. Maybe @TabloSupport can shed some light on that?
If that’s the case, the ability to have 2 audio streams will likely never happen.
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The Roku does not have a Dolby chip in it so it cannot decode the 5.1 AC3 / DD stream to play the audio back on your remote. That’s why you have no audio. The Roku can only decode AAC audio.
With your Tablo set to SS On, it is actually your HDTV that is decoding the 5.1 AC3 audio. The Roku just passes on / hands over the audio to the HDTV.
The other apps such as Netflix have 2 audio tracks for their streams, one 5.1 AC3 for the HDTV, and one 2.0 AAC for your Remote.
So the only way to get audio from the remote on the Roku is to disable the SS option on the Tablo. The Tablo will then record the audio as 2.0 AAC.
Or you can ask Roku to put a Dolby chip in their boxes. Many people have asked them for this on their forums. The response from Roku is that it is too expensive to get the licensing from Dolby.
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Sounds like a limitation also on the Roku remote with headphone. And Tablo.
Depends on how you look at it. Yes, if the Roku itself or the Roku remote could decode 5.1 DD audio, you would get sound from the Roku remote via headphones.
This really does suck. Is Apple TV better
Better at what? It doesn’t have a remote with headphone jack. But surround sound works great on the AppleTV.
Surround sound works great on the Roku as well.
Yeah, just not on the remote. And the whole concept of a remote with a headphone jack is just weird, to me. I guess there’s a market for it.
The Yamaha receiver I have in the living room has built in Bluetooth to headphones. One of the reasons I bought it was because my wife wanted to use headphones, she did so a total of one time. Still it’s not a bad receiver so no money wasted.
I’ve used headphones either directly from the TV or the received. Both wired and wireless. But I would have never thought of putting the jack in the remote.
If you have a Roku remote with a headphone jack can you then listen to SS recordings from a Tablo?
Can’t do it via the app and Bluetooth. Little confused here. Thanks
Not in my experience. Tablo SS recordings play fine on my kitchen TV via Roku but if I connect headphones to the Roku remote I get no audio. It would be nice if it worked, but it’s a minor inconvenience compared to the value I get from playing recordings with surround in my home theater with AVR
No. The Roku Remote cannot decode 5.1 AC3 audio (the native Surround Sound track in OTA TV).
Sounds like a few people had high expectations for that Roku remote. I would never have expected that headphone jack to magically image surround sound into headphones.