Experiencing audio dropouts on Star Wars? - Page 16

Denon 3808 AVR & Denon 3800 BD player (Bitstream mode). I updated the fw on my 3808 as recommended in other posts. It was not a very smooth experience since it's done over the network, but the end result is that my 3808 is now completely up to date, so I'm back to bitstream. Tried the "skip to chap 16 on Ep4" test several times. No bomb. I'll watch the entire movie this weekend and see how it goes. I watched Ep3 this past weeked and no issues. Ep3 is my favorite in the saga and a definite reference quality BD.

how come they have an update for the bd30,bd35,and bd55 but no update for the bd50.

I watched Episode IV a few days ago, my Oppo BDP-93 has latest firmware, my Denon AVR-3808CI had v2.04, not the latest. I had no audio issues bitstreaming. Today I just finished updating my 3808 to v2.07, haven't watched the other movies yet.

Yup, bits are bits and pits are pits. Though it is possible to have a bad stamper or other manufacturing defects those would be very rare in a modern optical disc manufacturing plant. Some claim they have NEVER ran into a bad BD, but I have ran into several, esp. rentals that get beat up and sent through the mail in flimsy sleeves in all kinds of temperature extremes etc. Some players (older mostly) are way more sensitive to minor issues on discs, dust, dirt and fingerprints. Others play dirty scratched discs just fine.

Per Chris Boylan's post a couple pages back

BD50 owners have to wait an additional month, but the update is coming.

Pioneer BDP-120 - Pioneer elite VSX-23 and I watched all 6 movies with no problems here.

ThePrisoner, the reason you didn't have any issues is because you likely had the latest DSP firmware with A2.04. Firmware A2.07 is only for Feature pack upgraded units(original units did not have this, but was a paid add on feature later). All Non Feature pack units are still on 2.04. It was the DSP update back in April of 2010 that fixed this issue. The A2.07 update just reenabled Rhapsody. Check this thread to find out more about 3808 updates
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=995566

All right! I confirmed that the BD35 firmware version 2.4 has fixed the video glitches in Episode II!

Overall, not bad - a month and a day from release date, Denon fixed the audio glitches and Panasonic the video ones.

Thanks for info. When you say Feature Pack update, is that the Audyssey Dynamic EQ & Volume update. I did that update in 2008, it was $100 I believe.

Yes, that would be the one. All units that upgraded have firmware with an A in front of the number. You should have A2.07.

+1. AOTC is now glitch free on my 35.

Not the forum for it, but from what I have read and heard from friends that have the BD35 it's loader has just as bad or worse longevity than the one in the Sammy BD-UP5000. The average life expectancy of the loader in the 5k is 1-2 years. I got 2 years out of my 1st, a little over a year out of the 2nd (which was used). Now on my 3rd out of a used broken (for other reasons) player. I have heard from a couple friends that their BD35s started having issues after a couple years. Not definitive, but it seems that many of the older/original BD players just were not built to last. However as you say, this could just be a new firmware bug. That sort of thing has happened way too many times with my main player, the Sammy 5k, they released code last year for Avatar that broke ~20 older movies and prevented them from being able to be played at all, they quickly released new code, but that new code has caused trouble with never Disney BDs and even some DVDs.

Sounds exactly like what I dealt with when the Star Wars Blu-rays were released. I thought the discs were the root of my video issues (which were just like yours), but then the same issues started cropping up on discs that came out well before Star Wars, titles that I had already seen on my BD35 without problems.

New player (a Sony S580) and no issues whatsoever for Star Wars, Jurassic Park, older titles, etc...

Not that I have gone back & confirmed older discs have new issues popping up, my only problem (outside of a beat up rental BD or 2) with BD35 playback has been with the repeatable video pixelations on the Ep II BD. The most recent FW update cured that.

I assume most other 35 users aquired thier players around the same time I did (XMAS season - 2009? - when they sold for $225-$249). HOwever, I have had weeks go buy without ever firing the thing up. On average, it has probably seen more SD DVD use than BD.

Guess I'm saying that I'm hopeful mine will last a while longer. I can easily get a faster loading player for less than the 35 cost back then - it's that little factor of WAF that holds upgrading back in this particular case.

I hope yours lasts a long, long time. It's been a great player for me.

FWIW, mine was used exclusively for Blu. And if I remember correctly, the Blu-ray drive has been the one to give up the ghost in this unit, not so much the DVD drive.

Mr. Kludge, in a previous post, discussed the fallibility of earlier generation Blu-ray drives.

I replaced my Onkyo TX-SR805 with an Onkyo TX-NR809, changed my Blu-ray output from PCM to Bitstream, and now the dtsHD Master Audio signal is output correctly. Sounds absolutely fantastic, with everything balanced as I remember and expect. So there was definitely nothing wrong with my disc, thank goodness. This amp puts out absolutely amazing sound. Woo hoo!

Hi ALL,

I had posted about getting the DTS Bomb on my Onkyo AVR (TX-SR705) and I had contacted their support and was given a trouble ticket. That was several weeks ago and I had heard nothing. So I called today and gave the guy my trouble ticket and after a while he came back to tell me that Onkyo is in contact with the disc producers and he acknowledged that there is a problem. He believes a firmware update is in the works but had no time table as to when it will be out. He also said that his manager will be in contact with Onkyo Japan to get more details on the problem. The support guy told me he would call me back next week with an update.

We shall see what we shall see!!!

Gerry

Player: PS3 Slim
Receiver: Pioneer Elite VSX-92TXH
Episode: II - AOTC, Episode IV ANH, ROTJ
Player set to: Bitstream

Must say that I have never had the issue before till now and when it happened - scared the living **** out of me! Searched online and found that amps are the issue, not the players used. Pioneer claims to have an update available now for a few receivers in the older series to correct the DTS bomb.

Changed the output to PCM and no issues, switch back to bitstream and BAM!

I have a Denon 3310 that I never updated the firmware on due to all the issues people reported with the NIC card but after experiencing the audio dropouts with star wars I decided to give it a try today

It took a few mins to obtain an IP address but I was able to successully connect and update my firmware without any problems. It took about a half hour and after testing star wars ep 2 the issue appears to have been resolved

I was having similar audio and video problems with Star Wars blu ray. My dealer was surprised when I described the problems. I returned the set and got a new set. No problems now.

Gerry,
Any word from Onkyo? Inquiring minds want to know...

The way Onkyo handling this is really frustrating!! let's hope fixed will be coming soon and for me, lesson learned!

Hi Jon,

Well, actually I had a good deal of contact with them the week of 10/24! I got a couple of calls from them asking for more info. Things like the firmware version of my AVR and of the Panny player. Since I first submitted the trouble ticket I bought a new Panny player but didn't really try to make it bomb.

The last call I got from them asked me if I could try to make it bomb and make a video of it as it seems they are having difficulty reproducing it. I don't have a video camera but my photo camera can make videos. So I told them I would try to make the video.

Here it gets a little interesting. So now my system has the newer Panny (DMP-BDT110 vs the old DMP-BD30) and the first thing I tried was to jump to ch 16. Of course my speakers were VERY low!! So I did the jump and . . . nothing! What? I tried it many times and also jumping at random to other chapters and still nothing. Then I noticed on the AVR every time I jumped the audio stream would re-sync which takes only a couple of seconds but enough to mute any bomb if it happened. As I recall the old Panny player did NOT re-sync when jumping to a chapter.

I really didn't want to hook up the old Panny so I tried this. I jumped to ch 16 and waited for the audio to re-sync. Then I used Rewind to go backwards a few seconds to the end of ch 15. The end of ch 15 is where Obi-Wan is talking to Luke and then there is a "wipe" to the beginning of ch 16 which is where a Star Cruiser flies across the screen. Once I got a few seconds into the end of ch 15 I let it Play. As soon as the wipe between scenes is done I hit Pause. Then I hit play and you can see the video start to move again and within a second BANG!! Even though the volume was quite low the bomb is relatively very loud. Nothing that would do any harm to the speakers but still quite loud. (When playing a movie at normal to loud volume the bomb is EXTREMELY loud!!)

So the above procedure produces the bomb 100% of the time. Then I make a video with my photo camera and it looks OK but its 45 MBytes! To make a long story shorter I re-made the video at a lower resolution and it was 5 Mbytes.

I e-mailed the video along with a description on how I made the bomb occur and I got a reply that they got it and were able to watch the video and they said it should help quite a bit.

However this last week I had not heard from them so as soon as I finish this post I will send them a new e-mail asking them for an update. By the way, they did say they are aware of AVS and this specific thread so the more people who post here about their Onkyo problems the quicker it may be solved. If you do post please include a detailed procedure to produce the bomb and the specific equipment (firmware version numbers if you have them) in your setup.

If I hear anything else I'll post it as soon as I can.

Gerry

Hi ALL,

Just got off the phone with the US Onkyo support engineer and based on the video I had sent them they ARE able to duplicate the DTS Bomb in their labs. That is very good news. The problem has now been escalated to the engineers in Japan who hopefully will be able to come up with a solution and a firmware update for us!

I'll keep everyone posted.

Gerry

thats amazing you had to send them a video but glad to hear its being worked on

i had an Onkyo when this problem first happened few years ago and they had an update out fairly quickly

Hi T-smith,

Yes, but that's when Blu Ray was just coming out, DTS Master HD was rather new and the DTS Bomb was much more universally happening. It was happening on many mfgs' AVR and on many discs. This time around it seems to be happening only on the Star Wars discs and only on certain AVRs. I know of Onkyo and Denon were affected and I believe Denon has sent out a firmare update to fix their AVRs.

The popular supposition is that the SW discs are using a new feature of DTS (I think called DTS-X) which is supposed to allow more precise placement of sounds from the various speakers. Only new AVRs that specifically support that new feature will benifit from it and older AVRs are supposed to simply ignore the extra data. The theory is that some how this extra data is not being ignored and is then screwing up the decoders and thus causing the Bomb! And it only happens under certain circumstances and can sometimes be hard to duplicate.

So I was kind of lucky to find a repeatable way to cause the Bomb and now that Onkyo can duplicate it hopefully they will be able to send out a firmare update to fix it.

Gerry