Ok, I’m considering the 980 as transport for DVD (480/576i to VP50 video processor) and SACD (over HDMI to Denon 3808). I understand that the 980 needs to upscale video to at least 720p to be able to output high resolution, multi channel audio (24/88.2 PCM in case of SACD 5.1). But, what happens with 5.1 SACD audio if video is 480/576i?

Will there just be silence? Or, will the 5.1 track be downmixed to stereo before sent over HDMI? Or, will I actually get 5.1 playback but at lower bit depth and/or sampling frequency?

I’ve read the 980 thread but there seems to be contradicting opinions about this. From the 980 thread:

This applies only to DSD over HDMI, multi-channel PCM over HDMI outputs correctly at 480i/p.



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Turns out it was defaulting to 480i resolution which limits the bandwidth for SACD to stereo.
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Ensure that you are using an upscaled resolution. At 480i/p you will not be able to receive audio higher than 48Khz.


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You can pass 24-bit/192KHz 2.0 Stereo at 480i/p. You can't pass multi-channel audio at this resolution, however.


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There are no audio settings that can hinder video upconversion as far as I recall, but the HDMI spec has a quirk about tying audio bandwidth to the video bandwidth, and that makes multichannel PCM output impossible when the video resolution is 480i or 480p.
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Would appreciate if someone with a 980 and a 5.1 SACD disc could do a quick test to see what happens when video output is set to 480/576i.

Thanks,
Mikael

You will get Stereo only when you have set the output resolution to 480i/p when doing a DSD to PCM conversion.

If you want to use the player as a video transport, then use the multi-channel analog outputs.