Experiencing audio dropouts on Star Wars? - Page 2

You're right. The receiver wouldn't cause that. That's either the player or the stream itself to blame. I asked my Panasonic contact to take a look at AOTC at 1:19:30 on the BD35 to see if he can reproduce it.


Yeah, that's the tricky part - finding a reproducible test case.


I would agree but I'd bet the numbers of Denon and Onkyo receiver owners on the forums would be pretty close. They both appear to have issues but the symptom that affects the Denon is easier to reproduce so more people can verify it.


Or a valid DTS-HD stream with something new in it that older codecs have never seen before and cannot properly handle. As the previous poster alluded, this is the first title to include the THX Media Director meta data. Coincidence?

A similar situation arose with early Dolby Digital receivers. These were only tested with Dolby Digital sources up to 448 KBPS (the limit of Dolby Digital on DVD). It wasn't until Blu-ray and HD DVD came out with Dolby Digital tracks that were 640 KBPS that owners started to figure out that their receivers didn't handle 640KBPS Dolby Digital tracks. 640K was always in the DD spec, but it never occurred "in the wild" until Blu-ray and HD DVD came out.

All speculation at this point. But we shall see how it turns out.

-CB

Don't blame our players or the AVRs for the flaky nature of HDMI handshake issues. I'd bet the farm if handshake wasn't shutting down the feed, whatever blips the player or receiver are having would not be an issue. Everytime new data is piggybacked on that format we are all going to feel the pains of pixelated, blinking screens with audio dropouts and lip sync issues......

HDMI sucks!

One cable to rule them all, One cable to find them,
One cable to bring them all and in the darkness bind them!

The video glitch in AOTC occured for me while the Panny BD player was connected via component straight to display. Still have the BestBuy receipt for the set. May see if swapping for a new copy does the trick - but considering others saw the same glitch @ the same point in the film on the same BD35 player (via HDMI across the board, I assume), I'm not asuming its a defective disc.

Or is it a defective batch of discs? Either way, I did report the glitch to Panasonic as others here have.

Audio has been via TOSLINK to receiver - no issues to report there on my end. Granted it is just regular DTS that way...

I hear ya!

Maybe I'm biased, I never had any dropout issues before HDMI and all the anti-piracy logic which must be satisfied before they all communicate nice and send/receive.

Just because your not using hdmi doesnt mean your player/display doesn't go through the predetermined handshake logic before it sends or receives any data and any subsequent event which causes it to renegotiate.

THX MEDIA-DRIECTOR IS THE CAUSE OF ALL OF THIS
Every glitch is merely a symptom of this problem.

@ jwebb1970: You don't have a bad disc. While I'm almost sure the dropouts are related to the AVR, the pixelation is related to the Panasonic. I have pixelation with the BD35 but not with the PS3. I have audio dropouts with both when bitstreaming and no dropout with both when PCM.

All that's needed is firmware patches for players to read and disregard the new metadata. THX is no longer relevant beyond it's DSP modes.

Thanks for the confirmation - good to hear yet another BD35 owner saw the same glitch @ the same point. The PS3 info helps even more. Saves me a trip back to BestBuy.

Since Panasonic recently issued a new BD35/55 update, there is some hope that these bugs may get ironed out for those of us with slightly older players.

Just to add my info to this specific thread:

Audio dropouts, repeatable in most instances, on IV: A New Hope (the only title I've watched, so far).

Player: Panny BD35 (with latest firmware)
Receiver: Denon 3808ci (with latest firmware)

Problems go away in PCM mode.

I did have an incident, in PCM, where both the audio (dropouts) and then the video (stuttering) were acting up simultaneously (during chapters 15 & 16 of A New Hope), but have not experienced this again. I think it was just a glitch, as my player seemed to be, based on the noise emitting from its drive, having problems with the disc itself. As I said, though, I have not experienced this again after several repeat viewings of these sections, nor after a viewing of the entire film in PCM mode.

Thanks to all who are participating in this and other threads concerning these issues.

If this is the cause I don't see the player manufacturers getting on board with the concept of filtering a bitstream they are supposed to pass unaltered. Either THX will go back to the drawing board or some receiver manufacturers will need to fix their decoders.

Player: Sony PS3
Player: Sony BDP-S570
Player: Samsung 3600
Receiver: Denon AVR-2310CI
Episode(s) affected: II & IV
Players set to Bitstream

Audio dropouts at the same timecodes in both episodes no matter which player used when set to bitstream. Tried all players with my Denon AVR-2310CI. No problem when players set to LPCM.

great just got my saga and i have a panny bd35. do you set the bd player to output pcm instead of bitstream?

I thought it was mentioned somewhere that this release had that audio DRM watermark that seems to be getting some momentum. Perhaps it is the cause or an additional variable in conjunction with THX Media Director.

Best Regards
KvE

so i can change the output format on the panny bd?

Player: PowerDVD 10 (Windows 7 64-bit, ATI HD 5970)
Receiver: Pioneer VSX-1120
Episode: IV
Player set to PCM

I tried a couple different software players (PowerDVD 10 and 11, as well TMT 5). I first experienced colorful pixelation approximately every five minutes or so on all of the players. All software and drivers were up to date. All players were set to decode to PCM. I experienced no audio dropouts though. Then halfway into the movie using PDVD 10, the screen went blank, the audio dropped out, and I got the audio bomb.

Player: Samsung BDP-C6900

Receiver: Yamaha RX-v667

Episodes (so far):
- video freezing: Episode I, II (player recovers after a few seconds. Don't recall when, haven't tried to repeat.
- video freezing: Bonus disc (player freezes at beginning of Weird Al song, does not recover or respond until rebooted. Definitely repeatable.)

Player set to: Bitstream

Anyone tried different processing? For example turn on or off thx dsp and see if it makes a difference?

Yes, you can. Go to Setup, then Audio, then HDMI Digital, and then switch from Bitstream to PCM for the DTS content.

Of course, do this AFTER you've tried it with Bitstream ON, so you can report your results over here.

After a quick test of the main problem scenes on disk IV (near 36:55 and on the THX logo at the end, plus a lot of chapter skipping), I didn't notice any problems with bitstream from an Oppo BDP-83 to a Yamaha RX-V1800.

Edit: I watched the whole of episode IV, and had no problems bitstreaming to my RX-V1800 with the latest firmware (that's either the latest version available from Yamaha, or the custom firmware that's based on that version but has the larger volume display).

If you haven't tried it yet, you might try turning off BD Live. This has been reported to work by some Pioneer BD player owners who were having pixilation issues, so it may be worth a try.

Despite there being no apparent BD Live stuff on the disc, I do get the "Network Connection Started" screen msg with every SW disc. Do not recall seeing the msg on non-BD Live discs in the past (I could be wrong).

I use BD Live features roughly never with most discs & only really need a network connection for updates. Will give that a shot later & report back.

Blu-ray player: Sony 1000ES
Receiver: Denon 3310

I get dropouts on Episode IV. Some in the same places (times during the movie) that other members have said. The start of chapter 16, has 2 dropouts during the first 30 seconds, for one example.

When i switch my Blu-ray player to "mix" and play it PCM all is well. But still...i should not have to change my settings for ONE movie. This is the first time i have had issues like this.

No problems with the audio on my other set-up...
Player: Sony 360
Receiver: Pioneer

Sony BDP-S360
Denon AVR-590
"Direct" setting on Sony (Bitstream)

EP IV and EP II have audio drop-outs; worse in EP IV. 100% repeatable.

Sound is perfect on "Mix" setting.

Swapped discs at retailer after initial viewing of EP IV because EP V and EP I did not have problems. New set behaves exactly the same.

Swapped in PS3 set to Bitstream -- exact same dropouts. Both players are fully updated.

Gave the suggestion of turning BD Live off on my Panny BD35. AOTC picture glitches still there.

I am MORALLY CERTAIN that this is THX Media Director's fault.
No other release has it except these six discs.
THX's quest to remain relevant has possibly just botched the biggest release in home video history. It's kind of ironic actually.

My guess is each disc in the set has it's own unique set of glitches that will only become apparent with the binary compound of AVR and Player.

This reminds me of what Montgomery Scott once said; "The more they think up the plumbing, the easier it is to clog up the drain".