I was just told that all hddvd and bluray disks have a an "Advanced Content" flag that prevents them from having the audio formats decoded on a reciever- meaning even if the reciever has hdmi 1.3 and is equipped to decode true-hd and dts master, that the player will do the decoding anyway. And this is a limitation on the disks themselves, so nothing can be done to overcome this- is this true?

Thank you

See the "Why you don't need HDMI V1.3" sticky thread and the "future proof" receivers sticky thread, both in the Amps/Receivers/Processors forum here for details.

Almost all HD-DVD discs today are authored for "advanced content". That is likely to continue into the future.

Blu-Ray is switching its standard to "player profile V1.1" over the next few months, and the expectation is that most Blu-Ray titles will be authored for "player profile V1.1" thereafter. Blu-Ray has been lagging behind HD-DVD in this due to delays in its authoring/playback tools.

Discs authored as "advanced" or for "player profile V1.1" are authored in the assumption that the PLAYER will do certain types of audio mixing before sending out the results. For that to happen, any of the packed audio formats (i.e., TrueHD or DTS-HD MA) have to be unpacked (decoded) into their component PCM digital audio streams *PRIOR* to that mixing. And that means the decoding has to be done inside the player.

Nobody knows for sure just how far the studios will go in exploiting in-player audio mixing. Common discussed uses are for sound effects in overlayed menus, picture in picture producer commentary sound tracks, and switching languages by just swapping out the center channel.

It is not clear that HDMI V1.3 players will offer the option to send sound tracks from such discs to HDMI V1.3 receivers for decoding DESPITE the disc trying to have the player do audio mixing. They might, but they might not. What's clear is that if they do that, then whatever portions of the disc depend upon in-player audio mixing won't play completely correctly. Whether that will be important to users or not is also not clear. It is also possible that such discs will simply not play correctly at all since the authoring tools are designed in the assumption that the players do the decoding and mixing.

Understand that CURRENT Blu-Ray titles, authored for player profile V1.0, don't do this, and will play just fine if the receiver does the decoding.

Also, all of this only applies to the new lossless packing formats. Traditional Dolby Digital and DTS (as when playing standard DVDs) will still be sent over to the receiver as undecoded bitstreams for decoding in the receiver.

The net result of decoding in the player is a set of digital audio streams (PCM), one for each speaker. These can be sent over HDMI V1.1 or higher to an appropriate receiver. Thus an HDMI V1.3 player and an HDMI V1.3 receiver will still work just fine with these audio tracks if the player does the decoding and the receiver takes it from there.

These audio tracks are like zip files on a computer. The individual PCM streams are packed up together into a single bitstream and then compressed. And like a zip file, these audio formats are "lossless". What comes out of them after decoding is the identical PCM streams -- bit for bit -- that went into the encoder in the studio. The important thing from a user perspective is to understand, then, that decoding in the player produces THE EXACT SAME PCM as decoding that might happen in the receiver.
--Bob

And... I feel better. So for a component like the Meridian 861, if they release a v5, then they cna manipulate the pcm streams on the digital side, and it does not matter if the decoding is done ont eh player or the reciever. OK- good. Personally, the quality of a dedicated reciever is always higher than that of a source component, at least generally. Anywya, thank you for that explanation.

You are welcome. Although normally you can bank on quality differences between sources and AVRs, the decoding of these new lossless packing formats is one where there really shouldn't be any difference. It's not as if the AVR would have some sort of better quality parts to do this for example. Dolby Labs and DTS both have certification programs to insure that licensees do the decoding of these lossless packing formats properly. And "properly" simply means that you really do get, bit for bit, the identical PCM out of the decoder no matter which side of the cable it's on.

There are two keys to buying here: First, you need to buy a receiver with HDMI V1.1 or higher that "does the right thing" with high bandwidth, multi-channel PCM coming in over that cable. That means the receiver accepts such signals and does all the processing you desire on such signals. For example, the player shouldn't have to do speaker configuration management for you on that PCM. The receiver should do it.

Second, you also need to buy a player which has all the decoders of interest for you, or which will be upgraded to add them down the road. No player and no receiver currently ships with DTS-HD MA decoding for example. Whether a player you buy today will be upgraded to add it, or whether you will need to buy a new player when decoders for DTS-HD MA finally start shipping, is something to consider. In the case of Blu-Ray, this is complicated by the upcoming switchover to "player profile V1.1" players and new disc titles. Current "profile V1.0" Blu-Ray discs don't have any of this in-player audio mixing to worry about. Also note that some Blu-Ray discs ship with raw PCM tracks, which can simply be thought of as "pre-decoded" high quality tracks.

All of this should settle out quite a bit by this time next year. Again, more details will be found in those threads I cited in the Amps/Receivers/Processors forum here.
--Bob

My understanding is that there is no limitation about sending the bitstream of HDMI to be decoded by the AVR. Rather, this content protection flag for the audio is to prevent an AVR receiver (or similar device) from decoding the audio bitstream and outputting over SPDIF.