True HD / DTS MASTER on BD  

I was thinking about this also and was wondering what if.....the BD group is actively discouraging on board audio decoders in the players. This could be a way of forcing people to buy new receivers and/or pre amps in the future and insuring more electronics sales.

If the DL BD discs become the standard media, then uncompressed multi-channel audio can be put on the discs and there is no need for the advanced audio compression chips. They will have plenty of room, especially if they used VC-1 on the video. We will just have to wait and see.

On the otherhand, if the price for DL is extremely high, or hard to manufacture in sufficient quantities, then there will be problems. It will take some time for external TrueHD and DTS-HD decoders and HDMI 1.3 to become available in receivers. It will mean that in order to enjoy the new advanced audio formats, users will need to upgrade their systems and at a substantial cost. This pretty much locks me out of BD for now, because I recently bought a receiver, and I don't want to spend another chunk of change to replace it. In hindsight, they really should have put the decoders in the players so we could at least use the analog outputs.

This is probably even more critical for those that have expensive dedicated amps that do not include HDMI 1.3 inputs (which I believe would be all of them right now). Perhaps there will be a market for external decoder boxes like there were for DTS when it first came out many years ago.

As a side note, what really surprises me, thebland, is that this slipped under your radar, as I know you have an awesome sound system and enjoy reading your movie reviews. (Especially related to the audio bass).

bakpakva


(This is probably even more critical for those that have expensive dedicated amps that do not include HDMI 1.3 inputs (which I believe would be all of them right now)

What do you mean? All you need is a preamp with the HDMI 1.3, the output to the amp is through analogue output on the preamp. Amplifiers DO NOT NEED HDMI jack. Am I right??

Unfortunately, I don't have HDMI on my receiver, but the analog works great and I will stick with that until there is plenty of supply of new ones with HDMI 1.3. If the DTS-HD site is correct, then HDMI 1.2 or lower will not support the DTS-HD format. That leaves us with analog or built in decoders for quite a few months.

I was also looking at the BD players as the projected release dates were coming up soon. Now it looks like there is only one choice, the Panny DMP-BD10, and a possible firmware upgrade that would give it DD+. I haven't heard anything about adding TrueHD.

The best to hope for now is that DL is coming. Fox states they will be releasing a few in the coming months, so perhaps we don't have long to wait.

Fox's titles have already been announced to support DTS HD Master Audio so they are not using uncompressed PCM. This is one of the reasons I won't own a BD player anytime soon. I am not going to pay a premium for something I know I will have to replace shortly afterwards anyways. I won't buy a player that doesn't support ALL of the audio codecs used by the format, especially since software has already been announced that use them. At $1000+ there is no excuse in my mind, and I am not replacing my SSP (Anthem Statement D2) for some cheap receiver just because it supports HDMI 1.3 either. And right now, the only receiver that has been announced that supports it is cheap.

I'm having a tough time distinguishing any appreciable differences between Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus on those HD DVDs that have both, differences that would justify the expense of upgrading to HDMI 1.3 equipment were in-player TrueHD decoding not available. Call it a limitation of my current equipment or a limitation in my ability to hear. So on the one hand, I agree with Kris that I wouldn't want to cheat myself out of the ability to play discs with DTS-HD MA; I just doubt I would notice much of a difference over regular DTS.

Hmmmm....sounds like the official launch of BD...at least for me...is going to be a while :(

Kris..what cheap receiver are you referring to....and does it have built in decoding of DD tru HD and DTS master audio along with 1.3?

I was thinking maybe I could use a cheap receiver in my home office after this all gets sorted out....and use this receiver short term.

Being an early adopter sure is fun :mad:

The audio setup definitely plays a factor. I notice the most difference between DD+ an TrueHD in the very quiet and low volume scenes. The ambient noises are more realistic and defined to me. Louder scenes do not produce any noticeable difference to me. For me, the visual analogy is like having more detail in low light scenes where contrast really matters. YMMV.

Personally, I believe that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray were released to quickly. OR Dolby Labs and DTS took to long to engineer and release TrueHD and DTS-HD.

In my mind, there shouldn't be a disc released without uncompressed PCM, TrueHD or DTS-HD. Every Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player should be required to decode all three formats to analog and be able to send the raw digital stream through HDMI 1.3. In fact, there should have never been a HD-disc player without HDMI 1.3.

Well, you might say that "they wanted to get the HD disc formats out as the consumer is demanding it and it can make money NOW." So what? Now we end up with a mediocre disc format where only certain audio tracks are required and that may not include an HD-audio format. There should never be a disc released that doesn't have an HD-audio stream. Period.

Of course, now it's just like DVD. I have to look at the box to see if it includes my favorite audio. What's up with that?

I agree with you for the most part, ckenisell. HD-DVD players already decode all those formats and can output them on analog. While HDMI 1.3 would be nice, it is just too far away from production for my liking, plus I don't want to have to buy a new receiver to utilize it. HDMI will be mainstream, someday, but that will be at least a year. In the meantime, we have people with HDMI 1.2 or DVI inputs on their displays and a very few with HDMI on their audio equipment. Unless you planned up updating all your equipment when you bought into the HD era, then your argument would be valid. If you want to use what you already have, then building the decoders into the players, and offering analog for those without HDMI inputs was the right way to go.

That said, I would like to see all new releases with either TrueHD or DTS-HR. Otherwise, they are not much better than DVD in terms of the 'sound of perfect" or "beyond HD".

To make matters more confusing, this thread peaked my interest at looking at the official Dolby and DTS web sites. Appearently, DTS-HD doesn't always equal a lossless compression.

They have something they are calling dts-HD High Resolution Audio. They say, "DTS-HD High Resolution Audio can deliver up to 7.1 channels of sound that is virtually indistinguishable from the original. DTS-HD High Resolution Audio delivers audio at high constant bit rates superior to standard DVDs---6.0 Mbps on Blu-ray discs and 3.0 Mbps on HD-DVD to produce outstanding sound quality."

I don't know about you, but I hate when companies use the word "virtually". "Virtually", to me, means "absolutely nothing". Kinda like "Virtual Reality." Anyway, it looks like DTS-HD could either be DTS-HD High Resolution Audio or DTS-HD Master Audio. Something tells me that the box won't distinguish between the two.

"DTS-HD Master Audio delivers audio at super high variable bit rates -24.5 mega-bits per second (Mbps) on Blu-ray discs and 18.0 Mbps on HD-DVD." Wow! How about leaving some room for the VIDEO!!! :confused:

:(

A TrueHD decoder is included in the Toshiba/RCA HD player so it could have been done in the Sammy also. It should be standard equipment on all the first gen players because there are no receivers to do the decoding. Plus it will take a few years for Everone to upgrade. Also you can use HDMI 1.0 to pass the decoded TrueHD/DTS-HD audio in uncompressed 192/24 format so analog is not needed.

As far as 1.3 being in all players. This would have unnecessarily delayed the launch since the 1.3 transmitter chips just went into production. Also with a onboard decoder there is no need for 1.3.

the 1 player that will be able to take advbantage of this is the PS3 since it has HDMI 1.3.

But what will you connect the 1.3 to?

a 1.3 hdmi reciever when they become available.

One good thing about DTS-HD is Backwards compatible with DTS so you can still enjoy the sound through optical to your dts recevier.

Personally, I think decoders built into players makes the most sense. It requires only one purchase, whereas the HDMI 1.3 route requires at least two to get the benefit.

B I N G O! Give that man a cigar!

See my speculative post right below the OP. ;)

Are you saying that the Fox title's will not include the lossless PCM audio track? I completely missed that in the press release. Now that would be a major change. Unbelievable. :rolleyes:

The first player to take advantage of TrueHD over HDMI is the Toshiba/RCA HD-DVD player.

If they have a DTS-HD Master track I doubt that they would also include a lossless LPCM track. Besides being redundant that would require too much band width and rob too much peak data from the video.

User William, do you think the DTS-HD MA (if it ever becomes available) can be sent over HDMI that is not 1.3 ? Would onboard decoding negate the need for HDMI 1.3? I know that DTS-HD HR can be sent over 1.1.

I was really hoping the Panny would decode DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD. Is this not the case? Have the final specs on the Panny (and the Pio or Sony, for that matter) even been released yet? Panasonic doesn't even have any specs whatsoever up on their website for their player.

Specs on these players are as scarce as hen' teeth, but according to Crutchfield the Panny has the following:
» built-in audio decoding for Dolby® Digital Plus
» built-in audio decoding for Dolby Digital, DTS®, and multichannnel uncompressed PCM

No mention of DTS-HD or TrueHD, but I could swear I read somewhere that it may be offered later with a firmware upgrade. A lot can change in the coming months.

Pio/Sony no CD playback and no decoders other than your standard DTS, DD. Perhaps that will also change before release, but I would doubt it since it would be a rather substantial hardware change to add the decoders.

ckenisell wrote:
If the box includes DTS HD-MA (master audio), I am sure you will see the logo on the side. If it has the "MA" part, then it has to include the lossless codec.

Don't forget that without the decoder in the player, there is no option to have some of the advanced features like director commentary overlayed on the movie soundtrack while the movie is running. If the decoding doesn't take place in the player, there is no way to mix the two. In that case I guess you would have to drop down to DTS or DD or something else the box supports.

I thought skuttlebutt was that the Panasonic would include the 2 lossless codecs?

Yes just like decoded TrueHD. I don't understand why it was not enabled along with TrueHD on the Toshiba/RCA. Hopefully the next firmware update will include DTS-HD decoding.

I posted this in another thread so I'll copy it here too:

Here's an old link here claiming that the Pioneer will at least do DTS-HD...but this is Jan.2006 terminology...and DTS-HDMA now was named DTS-HD then...so did they pull this feature recently?

http://reviews.cnet.com/Pioneer_BD_...12.html?tag=vid