If you use an XBox 360 with HDMI, does the TrueHD audio come completely through the HDMI connection? Right now I have a receiver with optical audio but when I switch to a new one with HDMI I'd like to have the full audio capability of the connection.

Unfortunately, no, it only passes 2-channel PCM through the HDMI interface. But, the DTS encoding for HD-DVD audio tracks like TruesHD and DTS-HD is pretty decent through the optical connection.

Unfortunately, no, it only passes 2-channel PCM through the HDMI interface. But, the DTS encoding for HD-DVD audio tracks like TruesHD and DTS-HD is pretty decent through the optical connection.

Thanx.

*grumble*

Thats beyond gay btw. LOL

When even have an HDMI port? Oh, why bother... I guess I'll just have to get a stand alone once I upgrade my receiver.

Would have it been THAT hard to allow the full TrueHD signal to pass through? Geezus Micro$oft.

Thats beyond gay btw. LOL

When even have an HDMI port? Oh, why bother... I guess I'll just have to get a stand alone once I upgrade my receiver.

Would have it been THAT hard to allow the full TrueHD signal to pass through? Geezus Micro$oft.

they consistently update features, so i wouldn't count it out of the realm of possibility

they consistently update features, so i wouldn't count it out of the realm of possibility

I thought the reason it can't is because its HDMI 1.2? I could be wrong though....

I'm pretty sure it is because it is HDMI 1.2 instead of HDMI 1.3. Also, the HD-DVD add-on re-encodes everything to either DD or DTS (user selectable) before it's passed on.

If you use an XBox 360 with HDMI, does the TrueHD audio come completely through the HDMI connection? Right now I have a receiver with optical audio but when I switch to a new one with HDMI I'd like to have the full audio capability of the connection.

Not all receivers with hdmi pass the audio signal, So, be sure you pick the right receiver or wait for more receiver options with hdmi 1.3.

To be honest, many people won't be able to tell much of a difference between truehd and 1.5mbps DTS. You need a pretty good amp/speaker combo to notice.

I'm pretty sure even HDMI 1.1 can pass TrueHD. It's a limitation of the way that the Xbox processes the audio that prevents the pass-through.

I'm pretty sure even HDMI 1.1 can pass TrueHD. It's a limitation of the way that the Xbox processes the audio that prevents the pass-through.

It might have had the bandwidth, but the feature wasn't in the spec until 1.3. They more than doubled the bandwidth of a single link connection with 1.3, but I suspect that was primarily related to the new video support in 1.3. I don't believe there are any 1.1 compliant devices that pass or accept TrueHD bitstreams over HDMI.

this has been beaten to death.

most people who buy the hddvd addon are obviously going for hddvd on the cheap. on the cheap hddvd does not = having an hdmi receiver that will decode truehd/dts/whatever.

they could very well update it. however, i still think most people are a little confused about the whole audio thing. you won't get truehd out of your logitech 5.1 system, or your tv speakers.

i know the OP knows this, but for crying out loud, i've seen 360s in my area hooked up to 50" plasmas with the composite (yellow/red/white) cable, and the guys being like, wow, i love hd and surround sound out of my plasma! oi.

Well, we can't say that those people are unhappy with what they have, unlike us jaded guys who have everything hooked up to the T, and still want more. Hard to say who's better off.

From what I read over in the hddvd player forum section, only HDMI 1.3 will pass the UNDECODED trueHD over to a receiver that must also be 1.3 to receive and then decode that bitstream.

However, devices with HDMI 1.1 (such as the Toshiba HD-A1) can pass on such a lossless codec only AFTER it has decoded it in the player. From that point, it can be passed on to a receiver that only needs to be v1.1 or higher.

The xbox360 has HDMI v1.2, but is unable to decode trueHD, thus it is unable to pass on the trueHD codec.

The only upside is that the 360 can output a downmix of such lossless codecs in DTS 1.5mbps, which for the majority of hometheater set-ups, will sound just as good as the lossless audio. Unless you have some bionic ears, you'll need a very good speaker set to notice the difference.

Hey guys, can someone tell me why the add on will only output up to 1080i. Shouldn't it do 1080p? Will an Hd-dvd stand alone player do 1080p?

I've been watching hd-dvd movies with the add-on at 1500kbs/sec DTS. Then recently I got a PS3 and I'm trying out 5.1 lpcm. First couple of discs I tried were meh, hard to tell any difference (NIN). But then I tried POTC-DMC, wow very impressive! So I guess it varies by disc.

Everything is hdmi to a Sony STR-DG910 by the way.

rtweezy, 1080P hdmi or vga. component is 1080i (copy protection). but if you think about it hd-dvd is 1080-24p, and 1080i can (sort of) do 1080-30p so i wouldn't worry about it too much.

Hey guys, can someone tell me why the add on will only output up to 1080i. Shouldn't it do 1080p? Will an Hd-dvd stand alone player do 1080p?

The 360 does HDDVD's at 1080p just fine, through HDMI (on Elite and new premiums) and VGA on 'old' 360's.

As for the lack of TrueHD or uncompressed MPCM from the 360 -- until the 360 has a new design w/ new hardware, it will not decode and pass TrueHD (or DTS MA, though no HDDVD or BR players do that at the moment). New fw will not fix this. It is the unfortunate disappointment of the add-on.

And, BTW, for many folks on this site (with many movies, though not all), TrueHD and uncompressed multichannel PCM are most definitely audibly different from DTS or DD. I don't see why it should be too much to ask that a console w/ an HDMI port and a specially designed add-on would not have this capability. The 2 components together certainly cost more than the ps3 -- why, then, does MS get a pass on this?

to compete with the ps3, they have a long way to go. As someone who has had both the HD-DVD add on and the PS3...movie settings and options on the PS3 blow away the limited settings we get on the 360.

And, BTW, for many folks on this site (with many movies, though not all), TrueHD and uncompressed multichannel PCM are most definitely audibly different from DTS or DD.

They are definitely going to sound different given encoding and mixing etc...but different is not necessarily sounding "better". The assumption most people make is that option A is lossless and sounds different from option B which is 5.1/DTS so it must absolutely be the limitations in non-lossless sound that is the driver for all the differentiation.

As Johnsmith808 said above - holding everything equal, it's going to take a serious setup and good ears to differentiate a lossless signal from a max bitrate DTS or DD (I mean, really, if 5.1 blew ass that bad to where a marginally better signal made a major audible difference on a junk system it would never have seen the light of day). Most of the guys who have setups of this caliber are not using a 360 with an add-on. Actually I'd venture most of these guys are using dedicated units with audio out as they haven't wanted to shell out serious ching for a new pre/pro or even integrated receiver until this stuff matures and gets vetted out. No one wants to replace these units and finding one that you really like and want to stick with is not a painless or inexpensive experience.

They are definitely going to sound different given encoding and mixing etc...but different is not necessarily sounding "better". The assumption most people make is that option A is lossless and sounds different from option B which is 5.1/DTS so it must absolutely be the limitations in non-lossless sound that is the driver for all the differentiation.

As Johnsmith808 said above - holding everything equal, it's going to take a serious setup and good ears to differentiate a lossless signal from a max bitrate DTS or DD (I mean, really, if 5.1 blew ass that bad to where a marginally better signal made a major audible difference on a junk system it would never have seen the light of day). Most of the guys who have setups of this caliber are not using a 360 with an add-on. Actually I'd venture most of these guys are using dedicated units with audio out as they haven't wanted to shell out serious ching for a new pre/pro or even integrated receiver until this stuff matures and gets vetted out. No one wants to replace these units and finding one that you really like and want to stick with is not a painless or inexpensive experience.


I certainly understand what you're saying. A lot of 360 fans in general wouldn't necessarily spend the kind of money that it takes to be able to take full advantage of these formats. But, if there is any site where there is going to be a much larger contingent of folks that can take advantage of it, it's AVS. Hell, I have separates and all of the hardware that can take advantage of these capabilities, and I'm not even in the ballpark of many of the audio- and videophiles that we have in this community, but I have a 360 and HDDVD add-on in my main HT.

Frankly, I own it in large part to conserve space. I have 2 400-DVD changers, a Sunfire amp, an Onkyo 875 as a pre-pro, a ps3, a Wii, a series 3 Tivo w/ a 1TB eSATA external, a wireless bridge, a mac mini, a couple of Panamax Power supplies, and 2 NAS's all sitting in my AV racks, and space is truly at a premium. But I need a 360 in my home theater, and the space occupied by the add-on is absolutely miniscule. Adding one more full-scale component would be a real PITA at this point. If the HDMI 360's were able to do lossless sound, I'd relegate my current one to one of my secondary media rooms and snarf up another in a second. It's just frustrating to have these advanced systems be poorly implemented.

But yes. I do agree that DTS and DD aren't horrible. It's just annoying to know that I've shelled out all this money and still can't get to utilize the medium's full capabilities. Hopefully this will be fixed in future iterations at some point, and MS won't simply say 'meh, nobody will care about this stuff.' They obviously realize that HDMI is a selling point. I just hope that they will go the few steps farther in order to make it a fully functional home theater component.

I see where you are coming from. One thought. If you have NAS storage, why not relocate it? The whole idea of a network is accessing remote storage. I actually have my servers on the 3rd floor and they house every bit of audio/video. Eventually you could also get those DVD's ripped to hard drives and stream from ISO images (either just the movie or movie and extras). This would get both changers out too. You might look at Unraid from Lime Technologies - I think they can handle 14 drives now so that's 14 TB per server max in addition to however you want to do the NAS. I'll tell you firsthand that the WAF factor is much better getting any/all of that stuff out of the way.

I see where you are coming from. One thought. If you have NAS storage, why not relocate it? The whole idea of a network is accessing remote storage. I actually have my servers on the 3rd floor and they house every bit of audio/video. Eventually you could also get those DVD's ripped to hard drives and stream from ISO images (either just the movie or movie and extras). This would get both changers out too. You might look at Unraid from Lime Technologies - I think they can handle 14 drives now so that's 14 TB per server max in addition to however you want to do the NAS. I'll tell you firsthand that the WAF factor is much better getting any/all of that stuff out of the way.

Believe me, I've tried to move my NAS's elsewhere, but streaming HD (even over an N network in the 5 GHz band, which is what I use) has far too many stutters over wireless.

Talk about WAF -- if I had ethernet cables running all over the house, I'd quickly feel the wrath. :D

Edit: Oops -- forgot to add. While there was a time that I thought about ripping everything to .iso's, I encountered the following problems when I did it small-scale (ie, on a couple of external 1TB drives w/ my macmini):

1) My wife didn't like going through all the steps to get to the files (as opposed to just using my Harmony 880 to navigate through the disc changer's titles).

2) The upscaling from my mini isn't the best (more like, not good at all). Now that I have the Reon in my Onkyo, I'm glad I decided against it.

Someday, maybe I'll be able to get a Kaleidescape system set up to make everything easier, but, until then, I think my system is as efficient as it can be.

Makes sense. There should be a forum dedicated to WAF topics, I'd bet it would be very humorous including a "bitch" sticky thread where people can vent about their latest shut downs or mull over new angles on the comeback trail. For me, my wife pretends like she's totally disinterested and a tv is a tv and any noise is good enough for sound - but I'll tell you, she almost never uses anything but the good setup any more and doesn't seem to want to watch anything at friends' houses.

You might also look at some of the new Powerline solutions. Computer Power User Magazine had them streaming 1080p without an issue in testing. I think 85mbs is the rating but plug/play and dependable vs. the ups and downs of wireless (which just isn't a great solution). I want to say DLink's new ones. They were reviewed within the past couple of issues. Right now I'm on ethernet but we'll likely buy a new house next year and I have this earmarked as a possible solution if wiring proves ugly.

BTW - I'm just offering possibilities that you may or may not have tried/heard of or tried, not necessarily trying to sway you in any direction or endorsing product.

I was also curious if anyone knew...i just got my hd add on for the 360 and for the audio output you can choose DD DTS or WMA Pro, i know that DTS is superior to DD, but is it better or worse than WMA pro? cause i have a reciever capable of using the WMA pro audio

Thanks,
Soup