Official Panasonic DMP-BD60/80 Owners Thread - Page 171

There is no advantage to having ANY receiver decode the True HD and DTS master formats. Once decoded the bits are the same, that's what lossless is. It doesn't matter which device decodes it the player or the receiver. There can be advantages with lossy formats but not the lossless ones.

In fact it can be a disadvantage in some cases for secondary audio programs and BD-Live material where the audio is mixed into the sound track and sent via PCM stream. Players have no way of encoding that information into the lossless formats so you lose that functionality of your player when you set them to bitstream.

A little history: In the past Bitstream was preferred over PCM because PCM was only stereo and bitstream was the only choice for multi-channel playback. When encoding a lossy format such as Dolby Digital or DTS bits are thrown away. So some of the information is lost and it will never be returned. When a device decodes these formats it might try to guess at the information thrown away and add it back in. This is a simplification of course but the reality is some decoders did a better job than others.

In the past you would have to decide which device (player or receiver) had the better decoder, DACs, analog circuitry, etc. MOST of the time the receiver would do the better job and bitstream was the better choice over having the player decode it and send it out analog.

Set your player to PCM no matter which receiver you use. Bitstream is old world thinking and offers no advantages for newer formats.

Why would you want to limit your Blu-ray's features by using bitstream? It was designed for PCM and for the player to do the decoding so that it can mix audio streams. This can't be done using bitstream. I will say that not many discs use these features currently but that will increase as time goes on, especially with internet connectivity on these players. Bitstream is old world thinking.

It is possible that someone will try to make a dirt cheap player that doesn't do the decoding but with brand name players currently <$150 I doubt it would make a big cost difference. The big cost difference in the past wasn't the decoding but the DACs and analog circuitry.

Look at the cheap $25 DVD players many don't have component outputs. This is more analog circuitry and more connectors which cost money. If everything is all digital the cost is minimal especially as it will all be integrated into one chip (if it hasn't already) and they are not going to eliminate the HDMI port. They will more likely make a player with just an HDMI port and no other audio or video connections to save money.

I would want a receiver that can handle or at least pass a 1.3/1.4 signals along to the display for future capabilities coming in video. You will not see any players that don't have decoders, it is needed for Blu-ray's features and part of the specs.

BR is designed to have interactive capabilities and to achieve that it needs to be able to mix audio. To mix audio it needs to decode to PCM first then mix whatever audio it would like. It might be a sound effect for an interactive game, some type of secondary audio such as a director's comment that overlays the original soundtrack or possibly some other interactive feature from the internet. So not having decoders is not possible. Old world thinking again

Current BR discs only need HDMI version 1.0 to play 1080P with 8 channels of audio. I predict we will see a new BR version to handle media with the new capabilities of HDMI 1.3/1.4 (3D, higher resolutions, greater color bit depth, higher frame rates, etc). I also predict more HDMI problems with these greater bandwidths

So we will all be upgrading again in the future

It all eventually gets decoded to PCM, it doesn't matter which device does the decoding with LOSSLESS formats. The bits that exist before they are encoded are the same after they are decoded. Louder will always appear more clear and more dynamic. If you switch between bitstream and PCM you do need to level match before testing.

With Marantz there are differences as one can apply EQ and one can't. The differences will be how good or bad a job the EQ did for the sound in your room.

I agree there can be differences with Lossy formats but I'm not willing to sacrifice BR functionality for possibly slightly better sound when playing a DVD.