NetFlix BD's Without DTS-HD Master Audio / DD 5.1 Instead - Page 23

perks of a wallflower had everything, DTS track, extras. had the lionsgate logo

Am I correct in that a rental is a rental regardless whether it's NF or RB with respect to the studio to choosing lossy over lossless?

Yes.


Ian

All the lossy rental copies that I have received from both Netflix and BB were from Lionsgate, and were pretty much the same. I can only assume the same can be said for Redbox.



Ian

So a bit of good news I suppose in this ongoing drama.

I rented The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 and Sinister from redbox and I was quite surprised that both titles include DTS-HD MSTR audio.

Hopefully they realize it did not affect their bottom line and decide to stop this practice.

One can hope I guess.

That's because the Twilight series is Summitt.

Having said that, Red Box can be a mixed bag since they do sometimes buy retail versions of movies. Since Sinister was Lionsgate, I'm not sure if that's what they did or if it simply wasn't enough of a tent pole movie for them to cut the HD audio tracks. I'm still betting on the next Hunger Games movie to be stripped.

Yes and No....the Rental is 5.1 while the Retail is 7.1

If it's lossless it should be in 7.1. I've never seen DTS MA or Dolby THD offer two different channel configurations for their lossless audio formats, regardless of the disc. Optional 5.1 down mixes on the same disc are in lossy DTS. Part 1 rentals were in 5.1 DD lossy only. NetFlix Part 2 rentals are also in DTS MA, but there's no listing for the channel format.



Ian
Edited by mailiang - 3/8/13 at 11:43am

Rental:

Track information
Type: Audio
Name: Lossless (English)
Language: English
Codec: DTS-HD
Channels: 6
Sample rate: 48000
Bits per sample: 24
Output format: Copy as is ( Lossless conversion )
Output description: Copy track as is

Retail:

Track information
Type: Audio
Name: Lossless (English)
Language: English
Codec: DTS-HD
Channels: 8
Sample rate: 48000
Bits per sample: 24
Output format: Copy as is ( Lossless conversion )
Output description: Copy track as is

Where did you get a rental spec? Just watched the Alex Cross rental in 7.1 DTS MA. Same studio and producer. I haven't seen a lossy since Expendables from Lions Gate. If I do I will post.


Ian
Edited by mailiang - 3/8/13 at 9:20pm

Rental is from Redbox. Ordered Breaking Dawn part 2 from Amazon, Family didn't want to wait until Monday so I rented it from Redbox on release day...

I'll check it out tonight. Haven't seen it yet. But if it is, it will be a first. At least they went back to lossless. Thanks.


Ian
Edited by mailiang - 3/9/13 at 7:52am

Isn't summit a subsidiary of lions gate?

If I recall, summit also stripped rentals of lossless audio, like the movie Red in 2010, and I think one of the twilight movies although I can't be certain of that.

I didn't pay much attention to the discs to recall if they had rental written on them or if they looked like retail discs.

Yes, Summit is a subsidiary of Lions Gate. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, Twilight Part 1 rentals were in lossy 5.1 DD. The current trend seems to be back to lossless.


Ian

I have used netflix from about the beginning, I noticed the BDs have "Rental" on most of them. I just got Skyfall tried to play it in the computer bd. I have PDVD12Ultra and checked the lossless option with my 7950 gpu, 990FXA UD3 board with 8channel but the audio is direct to the onkyo 608 via hdmi. I got audio and lists in the onkyo as master hd 7.1 as i expected but the audio drops out at some points, seems possibly at louder action , not sure , never happened on other master audio hd. have never had issues. i have used the iso as well (not this one, using directly from netflix rental bd) the plain DTS 5.1 plays just great,normal. but no matter how i set up, the lossless drops off now and then. at the ending of the lion's roar. and on the first parts intro chase scene , appears to be dropping for some continuous blasting or shooting. I checked for some loudness protection, but i played the latest Bourne which is quite loud , blasting etc. no issue, nor has there ever before been shut off. just this disk . i may be wrong about the only times it cuts off/drops audio and loudness, i changed the audyssey dynamic eq/vol controls among light , med, high, no effect i could actually tell. only did a short time test with this. changed hdmi cables to brand new....no change. check and re check the settings , though they are the same as with the other bd ISO and discs which work. any time there is some controversy , i dont know if i could have just gotten a bad disc where the audio track is not as good, or if it is a driver issue, (which i meticulously clean installed the Realtek 2.70/hdmi and brand new catalyst 13.1-i rolled back from the 13.3beta 3 i had used for a week, just in case)
Just my 2¢, since i have usually been successful with the amd/audio from my asus eah5870s v2 and those issues to this sapphire 7950 and all of its supposed audio upgrades for multi monitors.. i am only connected to 2 with audio through onkyo to one particularly for BD movies

That's funny. I have a retail BD of Skyfall and the DTS HD Master Audio is only 5.1.
I think Ralph Pot's review backs that up.

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1458740/skyfall-blu-ray-official-avsforum-review

There are two retail versions, the digital DVD copy BD with bonuses and the Walmart BD single disc with just the movie, which is the same one I received from Netflix. Both are in DTS 5.1 and run 143 minutes. Only a few of the BD's I rent (and I rent 2 to 3 new releases a week) are labeled as rental discs. It all depends on the studio.


Ian

i must report and apologize for my error. I got 2 netflix today. one was skyfall and the other is Bourne Legacy which is the one with DTS Master Audio 7.1. I had been staring at my screens and trying to figure which thing along the line was the cause of the issue. I have the LG BD570 player that has a pass through for lossless. I had to put batteries in the remote or i cant operate it. I have been using the combo drives in my computers for most of the very few discs i watch. I have been saving everything i have to iso and almost exclusive home use it streaming them or streaming via net, netflix being a primary service for me.
I was lucky and can tract my problem after only a few hours of looking. It appears my problems are in the LG r/w combo drive in this computer. Not sure why. LG has a tool kit and updates for firmware and software when available so i was sure it was up to date and it is only 2months old with very little play time. Not sure it is the reader, dust in there or what. I have used a compressed air type can to try to keep it clean. the discs are clean when i put them in top and bottom to try to minimize any dirt getting in there. I had taken out a LiteOn BD Rom combo drive because it had trouble with reading or seeing BD movies after only 6 or 8months . i have gone through BD players quickly, they lose their capability to play bd discs though each of them was still able to play dvd or cd as well as burn cd or dvd media. I dont think i ever got just a player but rarely burned in the bd roms and have yet to burn any bd, only make iso and a couple of mkv. i have a small spindle of 25gig bd media i have had since before they even sold the 50g. never used one and now anything i had been inclined to possibly burn is well over 25gig and i do not want to compress any , since i have no experience with them being compressed related ot the quality of product. do not want to wait as long as it might take .buy may one day. i just got a new application which claims to be able to compress bd movies with no quality loss from the give away of the day site that made a very good iso of just the main title in a bit more than an hour for a 35gig main title, no menus
I am sorry about my erroneous conjectures earlier, would have gotten back sooner but got involved watching the Bourne Legacy, though there were some fairly long periods in the 2 plus hours i could have posted this much and not missed anything of consequence. The DTS MA 7.1 played perfectly well in iso format through PDVD12Ultra using the lossless/hdmi setting in audio and set to 24mhz. But constantly dropped the audio in pdvd using the rental disc in LG drive WH14NS40 SATA drive. With hindsight, i can see that my bad audio symptoms were like a dirty disc only i had looked and cleaned both drive and disc with the microfiber,no lint junk. I was wrong. there is some loose connection, bad ground, dirty lens or gremlins. I hate it when this happens on nearly brand new equipment. I have looked at plenty of forum postings on bd players from when my 2 prior LiteOn bd roms started to misbehave and ultimately stop playing or seeing bd discs in under a year. normally, i had good luck with the product for other combo drives. seems bd readers are more sensitive?
John

I have found that BD's are more sensitive to dirt and scratches then DVD's.




Ian

The Last Stand from Red box was DTS-MA 5.1 vs DTS-MA 7.1 retail discs.

Thanks, I thought it was the opposite. I try to make as many bd movie copies to iso now, to save them from audio degradation and getting those little colored boxes and other electronic visual noise like static on psychedelics. I have mixed results with the rental bd movie audio. I do get all kinds of Dolby and dts high end audio that is not 7.1 or 5.1. documentary like 'The Great Rift' or Crusades. Sometimes the bd video like those can sound 'better' through pdvd 12 ultra internal codec going into my Onkyo options. But that is far off the point, i appreciate the tid bit of info on the sensitivity of bd playback.I had eliminated it, even though it had all the appearance of dirt. I must have remembered what i read wrong.

Same here.

I've had BDs with no visible issue fail to play, but DVDs that looked they went through the family dog play perfectly.

BluRay has a coating that makes it more difficult to scratch, but since the pits/lands representing the 1s and 0s are so small any minor scratch can render the disc unplayable (either for sections or the whole thing). In my experience renting BluRay, I find that the coating does not stand up to the abuse the average person inflicts, Blockbuster is much worse than Netflix in this regard (at least in my area).