I made the decision to grab one of these Shields for playing 4K HEVC files mostly as my TV struggles but am now not sure if I should have rushed into it.
Yes it should play HEVC files but what about the likes of DTS HD?
Also what Dac is reccomend to go inbetween the shield and A Denon-Avrx2200w? I thought at first the Shield had optical and was able to switch between either HDMi or Optical for Audio but I dont believe it does
Yes it should play HEVC files but what about the likes of DTS HD?
It plays everything as long as the other device support it as well. I've connected my Shield to a LG OLED and it plays DTS, DTS-HD, DTS-HD MA, DTS:X, DTS:HRA, AC3, EAC3, TrueHD, Dolby Atmos with TrueHD Core and probably some other I've forgotten.
It direct play everything in the Plex App and I have never noticed audio or video transcoding.
I thought at first the Shield had optical and was able to switch between either HDMi or Optical for Audio but I dont believe it does
Optical is crap. It doesn't support the lossless audio formats which require more bandwith like DTS-HD MA or TrueHD. The best way is to connect the AVR between Shield and TV. If you don't like that then you might be able to get the audio signal with a HDMI extractor box but it might break the HDCP.
Shield does not have optical out, only does HDMI. But that is fine since HDMI can carry more audio formats anyway.
What are you using for media playback? PLEX has setting for audio passthrough so whatever format the source is in just gets passed on to the receiver. Kodi should have something similar. Not sure about Atmos support, but DTS-HD and the like is all fine.
Why on earth would you want to complicate matters and use limited bandwidth Optical when your AVR full supports HDCP 2.2, HDMI 2.0 and everything up to Dolby Atmos ?
Makes no sense to anyone reading your post.
Those Denon AVR Specs are all the Shield needs.
Shield > HDMI2.0a cable > AVR > HDMI2.0a cable > 4K TV
HDMI cables should be High Speed or Premium Certified if you want to do 4K HDR copy protected video playback.