What is the best HD-DVD Player that'll decode Dolby True HD/DTS HD on my AV Receiver?

I don't think any of them decode DTS-HD. A few models will bitstream it however. As far as Dolby TrueHD goes, I think they all can decode it internally.

Only HD-XA2 and HD-A35 can bitstream all the audio codecs to the amp.

Just an additional note.

When a player decodes, the indicator light will not light up.
The player is sending Multi-ch PCM at that point.

Only the XA2 and A35 can bitstream Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master to your receiver. On other players, if you select "Bitstream", it will only send a core, lower bitrate track.

If you set your A30 to "PCM", the player will decode the full Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master track internally and then send it to your receiver as LPCM. The resulting sound is the same, only your receiver doesn't light up because a different device has already done the decoding.

BDU-P5000 can bitstream it

the earlier post is correct.they all decode dolby truehd.however none of them internally decode dts-hd master audio.a35 and xa2 can bitstream everything to your avr to decode if it has the capability.if so avr will read something like dts-hd master or an abbreviation of the audio codec in use.i have a denon avr-3808ci and if i use the a20 or a30 the front of the receiver reads multi ch.or something like that if audio decoding is being done in the hd-dvd player.the denon i have will indicate how many channelss are being input and how many are being outputted from the avr.to check on the codec i hit display on hd-dvd remote a couple times and a small window opens and indicates audio decode and pcm output.overall glad to hear there are still folks out there that still love there hd-dvd players.

I've got a A-35 and Denon 989 receiver and if you let the A35 bitstream the audio, the Denon will decode it and the nice little blue HD Audio light will come on. I just put in the Bourne Ultimatum and the main Denon display says DOLBY TrueHD. It will say DTS-HD MASTER if you happen to have any DTS-MA HD-DVDs. I have some DTS-MA blu ray disc but few if any DTS-MA HD-DVD's.

The XA2 will do the same thing along with the Onkyo HD805 which I believe is a rebadged XA2.

it seems that many of the euro discs have dts-hd master or hi-res audio tracks on them which i really like.i wish the u.s.releases had used those instead of dolby digital plus on so many movies.i would rather have had that then a bunch of special features taking up disc space.

You know whats really funny? I was looking at my collection of HD DVDs the other day and something dawned on me.

Back during the format wars, the number 1 complaint that people leveled against HD DVD was that it was less likely to have a loss less audio track than it's Blu Ray counter part. Other than that the pictures was just as good and HD DVD had better special features. But when I was looking at my movies I realized that every Warner HD DVD i owned had a lossless track but almost all my Universal's didn't. Now I always naturally assumed that it was spaced limitations that prevented a lossless audio track, but after throwing the discs in my computer and looking at the disc size, almost every single movie that I checked had more than enough space for a lossless audio track. The VAST majority of Universal's HD DVD lineup had more than 5 gigs free on each disc, sometimes upwards of 10 gigs. 5 gigs is more than enough for a linear PCM track let alone a DolbyTHD track.

Just something I thought was funny. Universal, HD DVDs biggest backer, was also the most responsible for making it look like a second-rate format. After figuring that out I think I have come to the conclusion that the only reason Universal supported HD DVD as much as they did, is because they wanted to be cheap and put as little effort into the HD releases as possible .

My HD-A3 can't even decode DTS 7.1 into PCM, only 5.1. (I have Pan's Labyrinth and the 2008 DTS "Demostration" disc as it's called, the only HD-DVDs I know of that have DTS 7.1 audio.) Do I need one of the aforementioned players to get 7.1? My receiver does get a 7.1 channel PCM signal from my Blu-Ray player when playing Dolby formats, but for DTS I have to change the player to bitstream or else those go to 5.1 as well (I prefer to have it on PCM so I can hear any 'extra' audio, but if it's a DTS track I switch it to Bitstream so I can hear it in 7.1 with full resolution. The HD-DVD player doesn't even give you that option, it only outputs PCM.)

From what I have seen on the A3, it only support dts HD (core only). IOW, it really only supports the legacy lossy dts codec. The lossy core track is the initial framework for Master Audio track. Since legacy dts is by definition only 5.1, the player will only be able to get what is contained in the core track even if the Master Audio track is 7.1.

dts-HD decoding is more processor intensive since it requires rebuilding the lossless track with lossy data and combining it with the additional lossless extenstion data. TrueHD was much more simple since the legacy lossy codec was supported by just piggybacking a lossy track in the datastream with the true lossless data. It is a big reason that many early HD DVD players and BD players could be firmware upgrading to support TrueHD, but insufficient processing power on the players did not allow a simple upgrade for dts-HD.

Even the ultra powerful PS3, did not get a dts-HD update until roughly 18 months after launch.

DTS was used on some U.S. HD-DVDs, such as U-571, CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK, etc...and the discs had plenty of extras as well. When HD-DVD debuted, not all studios had signed up for DTS in any format as of yet. (This was true going back to laserdisc. Studios that did not support DTS on LDs often did not apply them to HD-DVD either. Those who did hAVE A dts HISTORY WOULD APPLY THEM TO hd-dvd (uNIVERSAL, FOR EXAMPLE) Now, it's years later, and studios have seemed to have made DTS the de facto choice over DD. If HD-DVD were still around with their 51gb disc, you can be sure that DTS would be just as prominent.

The only reason dts is more prominent is because of the lucrative deals dts gave the studios.

dts fans like to think it is because of codec superiority. At the same sampling rate and bitdepth LPCM = DDTrueHD = dts-HD Master Audio.