Oh, here's a new topic that we'd like to discuss. The new EM8634 players
will be brilliant in supporting the latest video formats and containers, including
H.264, mkv, backups of all types of discs but what about sound? Are we
happy enough sticking with AC3 and Dolby Digital or do we want the latest
and greatest DD+, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD? What about the extra cost
this would bring? Is it worth it? Expensive? I can see the licensing cost is
expensive and some or many brands might have issues enabling this to keep
their price down to acceptable levels so before the players hit the streets,
let's have that discussion and sent the outcome into the world rather we
want these added, no matter what, or not!

I can imagine with the amount of people requesting EVO support (HD DVD
rips), that they would love being able playing those files with TrueHD or run
their Blu-Ray backups having E-AC3 (DD+). Would we be satisfied that
despite the enhancements in Video hardly any advancements are made in
sound options by adding these latest version all together and would we
actually let licensing cost prevent us from having it? Would we be willing
to invest some more in our home entertainment system to reach this?

I would say yes, as we already invest hundreds if not thousands of € into
our systems with big TV's, advanced receivers, big storage, PC and a media
player, so what would a couple more licenses really mean? We do want the
true experience as much as possible with no limits and no boundaries right?
And what about some brands will add it and other's won't giving both camps
an option to save on the licenses...

Well, there's loads of ideas.
I do want to check though, in your purchase decision, will the TrueHD, DD+
and DTS-HD be a deciding factor?

Enjoy

I haven't seen any Blu-rays with DD+ audio on them. (edit: Oh, now I understand what you're getting at here...)

Anyways... Yes, I'd like to be able to play my HD DVD back-ups from my NAS boxes, and since most HD DVDs have DD+ audio on them, the player would definitely need to support that.

I would also like the box to stream TrueHD over HDMI to the A/V receiver for decoding. Surely that would be cheaper, licensing-wise, than decoding in-player? If the costs are the same, then decoding in-player and sending multichannel PCM would be fine, sure.

DTS-HD? Screw that. It's been nothing but trouble from day one. We have players that can play the dts core only, players that can decode and stream DTS-HR, but can't touch DTS-MA at all, and players that can stream DTS-MA, but can't decode it. What a cluster****!

I'm sure people would probably like to get something better than dts core from their Blu-ray/HD DVD rips, but I would like to hear first how much HR/MA support would cost me.

Here's another way I'd put it:
For EVO support with DD+ audio, I'd pay €50 more.
For EVO/M2TS with TrueHD (streming or in-player decode), €40.
For EVO/M2TS with DTS-HR/MA (streaming only), €20.
For EVO/M2TS with DTS-HR/MA (in-player decode), €30.
For remuxed M2TS with HD DVD DD+ audio... I can live without it.

If the manufacturer starts fooling around with DTS-HD support, they'd better support both HR and MA.

There are 3 audio connection types which can transport the new HD audio formats:

(1) bitstream over HDMI 1.3 or newer
(2) PCM over HDMI 1.1 or newer
(3) analog

In the long run all the new receivers will have bitstream support. So I think the most important feature any new media player should have is bitstream support over HDMI 1.3. This should be available for any audio format (DD, DD+, TrueHD, DTS, DTS-HD HR, DTS-HD MA).

However, most of us don't own HDMI 1.3 receivers yet, so there's definitely demand for decoding support in the media player. Some audio formats are more important than others, though. It's possible today to reencode both TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio tracks to FLAC without any loss in audio quality and without consuming more space. Because of that I don't consider TrueHD and DTS-HD MA decoding as too important. In contrast E-AC3 and DTS-HD High Resolution cannot be reencoded without either losing audio quality or having much higher file sizes. Because of that I'm considering E-AC3 and DTS-HD HR decoding to be more important. E-AC3 decoding is the single most important format IMHO because it's so wide spread on HD DVD discs.

I'd be willing to pay more, especially for E-AC3 decoding support, but also for the other formats.

I'd also like to add that FLAC decoding support is a must have for me. And for easy inclusion of additional/reencoded audio files I'd also like to have support for external audio tracks.