why no longer able to control subtitles and audio track

When I first got Serviio some years ago I could always control selection of subtitles when available or audio track when there were multiple languages. When there were choices of these the subtitle or audio option was highlighted and I could choose what I wanted. At some point in the last couple years, these stopped working. With subtitles they would sometimes work on their own or not, but I had no control over them. I do have the subtitles enabled as an option. Those 2 choices are never highlighted any more. I have both an LG and Samsung tv and the problem is the same on both. I wonder if anyone else has this problem and is there an explanation or solution. Could it be connected to an update?

[atc98092]

As long as Serviio is not transcoding the video, audio and subtitle selection is up to the player, your TVs in this case. Perhaps there were updates to the TV software that changed something. Also, check in the Serviio console and see if the assigned profile for your TVs has changed. As I said, if the files are being transcoded, then those options are usually not available.

I will say that Samsung has a terrible media player, so I wouldn't be surprised if they released an update that broke it. Wouldn't be the first time. I stopped using the built-in player on my Samsung TVs a long time ago, and now use either a Roku or Nvidia Shield.

I was a little confused by the answer. You said "as long as Serviio is not transcoding the video, selection is up to the player" and said "if the files are being transcoded, those options are usually not available". This seems contradictory. I did find the enable transcoding selection. So would it be better to have that on or off. Also in the profile choices they were all on generic. I did see one choice for LG TVplayer, but not sure if this would be appropriate for all LG, including the OLED which I have. Is there a difference between choosing generic and the more device specific alternative?

[atc98092]

If your TV plays all your media with transcoding off, there's no benefit to turning it on. When a video file is transcoded, generally Serviio selects a single audio track, and captions may or may not be sent in the stream. It depends on the type of caption track. There is a setting in the Serviio console to Include all available audio tracks in the transcode, but that's off by default. And depending on the method used to transcode, you still might not get more than one audio track.

If Serviio is not transcoding anything (neither the audio or video), then whatever audio and caption tracks are contained in the media are all streamed, and your player determines if it can choose between different options. But the player has to support the audio and captions that are in the stream. In general, TVs only support text based caption tracks, so ripped DVDs and Blu Ray discs have captions that TVs cannot display.

If everything you have plays, there's no real need for a dedicated profile. My Nvidia Shield works just fine with the generic profile. But if you have any unplayable media, then you'll need a profile to transcode the media into a supported format. The existing LG profile is based on older sets, and no one has worked on anything newer. I'd have to look that profile over to see if it includes 4K/H.265 support, or if a new profile would be needed for sets that support 4K.