Audio problems with MKV files solved. IPBox 9xxx series and DM800/8000

I've acquired a library of HD movies recently which I use my AB IPbox 9000 HD media player to view (Usually with Enigma2). Most of them use the MKV container.

The problem is that with a lot of MKV files, the audio is encoded in DTS format, which the receiver cant play back.

I'm not sure, but I think this is also a problem with DM800/8000 receivers, so the info below should be relevant to users of these boxes too.

It turns out this is also a problem for Popcorn Hour owners, so some software has been developed which will replace the DTS audio track with AC3 audio.

The software is called 'PopCorn MKV AudioConverter' and is available here ......
_http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showthread.php?tid=20887

When you first run the software, its best to let it automatically download all the additional modules/apps that it needs to do its work. It takes a while to do this, but its much less time and hassle than doing it manually.

The software is easy to use and, because it doesn't touch the video content in the file, it doesn't take too long to convert the audio track.

When its all set up, just load the source and destination files then click run.

Its worth checking what kind of audio track a file contains before sending it to your receiver so that you can convert it if needs be. MediaInfo is a handy application for checking this, see the attachment.



Some AV software reports the Audio Converter as a trojan, but this is a false alert.
DM8000 can play back DTS audio, the DM800 can't.

Easiest is to convert the MKV file to VOB with a utility and transcode the DTS audio as DGS own software can't play MKV files at all.

Yes i know it seems stupid to convert to VOB, but DGS doesn't understand MKV format so well