Buying new: what's the best supported TV or streaming box

I've been using serviio on a PS3, Onkyo, and testing on a Roku LT. I'm about to buy a new smart TV. What TV (brand) or streaming box would be best out of the box to work with serviio? I assume one with the best codec support? Or the one owned by zip?

[atc98092]

My older Panasonic TV works quite well for Serviio streaming. The problem with using a smart TV is that you will never get any better audio than Dolby Digital from it. If you are connecting your audio to a surround system, You'll never get the total benefit using the TV as your source. However, it's certainly nice controlling it all on the TV. I have also read in Home Theater magazine that most TVs nowdays don't even send Dolby Digital out over the optical out port. It's a down-mixed stream. My Panasonic doesn't seem to do that, but that what is claimed. With the latest TVs capable of sending audio out through the HDMI cable (ARC, or audio return channel), perhaps they will send higher quality sound back. Of course, your AV receiver must support that as well.

I've had the most success streaming with a Sony Blu-ray player. I am currently using BDP-S3100, but I believe it's been replaced with a new unit. The big advantage is it will stream MKV files without transcoding, so you have the ability to toggle captions on or off and select multiple audio tracks. That is assuming your video file has those available. The other thing is that it will support HD audio. I have seen my receiver show both Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio bitstreams, so I am getting the highest quality sound from my Blu-ray rips.

Of course, if all you are watching is online sources or DVD rips, Dolby Digital is the highest sound quality available anyway.

Thanks. Sound is too not important for me. More the video codecs so that it mostly just works.

[Iveky]

samsung tv also send 5.1 sound from serviio to optical out.

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