Alright, I've read on the internet that the A20 is supposed to downconvert True HD to a 1.5mbps DTS signal when hooking up the player with S/PDIF. I have a fibre optic cable from my A20 hooked up to my H/K AVR 8000... the A20 is set to bitstream... but the receiver flags it as Dolby Digital. Now... I read on Toshiba's website in regards to the Firmware upgrade 1.6 that this was something that was supposed to be fixed.
Here is the link:

http://web1.toshiba.ca/toshibahddvd/support.php

I have already updated to firmware 2.2... but I still don't get the DTS stream sent to my H/K. It's only Dolby Digital. What am I doing wrong? I have seen people talk about this working for the A2...
Has anyone else had this problem? I really want the 1.5mbps DTS stream... it will hold me off until I pick up an Onkyo TX-SR705 to be used as a preprocessor.
Thanks so much guys!

The A20 doesnt output to DTS, only Dolby Digital. The A2 downconverts to DTS.

So the A2 will do the downconversion but the A20 won't? Then what is up with Toshiba saying the firmware upgrade will make the A20 do that? And why would the lower model A2 have this feature when the A20 doesn't... this is frustrating. Thanks for the input though, even though this makes no sense whatsoever. :(

The A2 does DTS but I have both players and can tell you it's not a big deal, it's not as if the DTS sound on the A2 is much different (if at all audible) than the DD track the A20 outputs. The XA2 does Dolby Digital as well I believe and that's Toshiba's flagship model, obviously, so I wouldn't be overly concerned.

Strange. Thanks for resolving this for me though, I've spent hours researching and talking to Toshiba support (who know less than I do apparently) and now I'm just going to settle for the Dolby Digital. *SIGH* Now I just have to wait for the Onkyo TX-SR705... and hopefully Toshiba will give the A20 the bitstream enabling firmware upgrade that the XA2 is rumoured to get. I don't feel like buying a new receiver AND new HD-DVD player just to get DTS HD MA and TrueHD. Ugh.
Thanks for helping me sleep at night though. This drove me insane.

I think/understand that the A20 is like the XA2 (which I have) in this area. Given that the SPDIF is set to BITSTREAM. Select a DD+ or TrueHD track on the disk and it re-encodes to legacy 640 kbps DD for S/PDIF output. Select a dts or LPCM track and it re-encodes to legacy 1509 kbps dts for S/PDIF output.

Strange. Thanks for resolving this for me though, I've spent hours researching and talking to Toshiba support (who know less than I do apparently) and now I'm just going to settle for the Dolby Digital. *SIGH* Now I just have to wait for the Onkyo TX-SR705... and hopefully Toshiba will give the A20 the bitstream enabling firmware upgrade that the XA2 is rumoured to get. I don't feel like buying a new receiver AND new HD-DVD player just to get DTS HD MA and TrueHD. Ugh.
Thanks for helping me sleep at night though. This drove me insane.

The A20 wont be able to send the advanced audio formats as a bitstream as it doesnt have HDMI 1.3. However you dont really need it as the A20 will convert any advanced audio tracks to LPCM which your Onkyo will accept and should give you the same sound quality when compared to a bitstreamed output. All you will be missing is the TrueHD indicators on your receiver not lighting up.