True HD / DTS MASTER on BD - Page 2  

I've seen the Crutchfiled specs, but I'm not sure those are the finalised specs.

I though so myself, but AFAIK, that has never been confirmed.

This is true, but if they are still planning on shipping these things in November, I would have thought that most of these things would have been finalised and we would be seeing some official specs already.


It's very silly, I know, for a new disc-based player to not play CDs, but I really don't care about that either way. I have my Sony XA9000ES SACD/CD player, Denon DVD-2200 universal player, and Pioner 563a universal player. Any Blu-ray or HD DVD player will be strictly for HD content and up-scaled DVD playback in my house. I do realise, however, that others are more concerned about the lack of CD playback.

Absolutely.

^^ Ok, I see what you were talking about in that PM.

I agree with everyone: Info is still pretty scarce across the boards on these forthcoming players and I'm not sure these specs are finalized yet or not.

Not that I would probably ever use that feature (but who knows?), I never thought about that restriction. WOW!! :eek:

I read this on the bigger High Def forum. From DTS' own website.

So basically, Mr. Bland, you're in luck. Sorta. You can have access to DTS-HD with your current rig.

DTS is a scalable codec that goes up and up until it reaches lossles. So first you get DTS at 768kpbs (what we used to call in DVD half-bitrate DTS), then DTS Encore at 1.5Mbps (what we used to get when DTS was supervising the DTS DVDs), then DTS HD which is what we're going to get with BD and HD-DVD, then if the encoding gets to lossless, it gets the DTS - HD Master Audio label.

DTS - 768 kpbs - SPDIF/Coax
DTS Encore - 1.5 Mbps - SPDIF/Coax/HDMI 1.1 & 1.2
DTS HD - Constant bitrate up to 6 Mbps - HDMI 1.1 & 1.2
DTS HD - MA - CBR at 1.5Mbps up to VBR at 24.5Mbps - HDMI 1.3 only


fuad

bakavak

Are you ignoring my question??

I don't know. Logically if that can be done it beats the purpose of 1.3 which is to make you buy new equipment. But if the HDMA unpacked stream can be outputted by the HDMI (eeek, too many acronyms), I would think that DTS would charge the CE more for that capability on that player.

As it is now, no news. That Panasonic and its reviews can't come soon enough.


fuad

Once decoded, it's just another PCM signal. The HDMI 1.1 interface has no idea what the signal used to be before decoding. It simply sees a PCM signal and transmits it.

Sanjay

Sorry about that, I missed your question. Yes, I would think a pre-amp with HDMI would work just fine. As long as you can attach a player witn HDMI output to another device with HDMI input that should work. I didn't think there were any pre-amps out there with HDMI 1.3. I don't know much about pre-amps, but there are several hi-enders here who I am sure could answer better than me. Once you had the PCM stream, you could then use it in analog form.

Yes, once TrueHD or DTS-HD is decoded it is then converted to LPCM which can be sent over any HDMI.

Actually, what you need are decoders, whether they are built in the player, or in an external box that is connected by HDMI. (And if the DTS site is correct, you need HDMI 1.3 for an external decoder to use DTS-HD MA). We will either need to see some external decoder boxes with HDMI 1.3 on the market next year, or BD players with the decoders built in. Without either of these, BD is stuck with DTS encore and DD. The point I was trying to make is that these advanced external decoders do not exist today, and receivers with built in decoders are probably going to be mega expensive. If you already have a top of the line expensive amp, then you won't want to replace it anytime soon. You bring up a good point in that it is not the amp that needs HDMI, it is the external decoder box.

Its my opinion that the audio codec/decoding situation is a HUGE difference between HD DVD and BD. The HD DVD side acknowledges that NOBODY has a receiver that decodes the new codecs yet (since none are currently made) and allow you to decode and enjoy them now. The only one HD DVD doesn't decode is DTS-HD (and the whole new slew of tiers), but I believe the player is fw upgradable for when the discs start including it. Like I mentioned before, any receiver with analog ins can enjoy the new codecs NOW with HD DVD, not with BD.

The BD side ignores that NOBODY has a receiver that decodes the new codecs yet and figures you will buy one of their receivers in order to decode them. I personally believe this is intentional, but that's my opinion. They have had more than enough time to include the decoders even if the specs weren't finalized to allow future fw upgrades, but did NOT. I may not have believed this if it were JUST SONY, but its seems to be all the 1st gen players are lacking TrueHD and DTS-HD. At least the Panasonic has DD+...for $300 more than the Samsung.

Personally, if i were Dolby or DTS, I would put heat on BD to include decoders in players. It seams to me that SONY likes using uncompressed PCM because its free. Thats bad for both companies (and a way for SONY not to pay royalties). I would go so far as to say they should exclusively support HD-DVD...that would be huge!

Agreed. Sounds like Liteon is the first company to understand that. While PCM sounds great, it's not feasible due to space issues. Even on 50GB media, it just makes more sense to use lossless codecs, and I won't buy into BD until there's a player that can do all of them in the player and the majority of discs use them.

Your patience will be rewarded. Why don't we catch up after CEDIA?

The whole discussion on this thread is what I have been talking about at another site as one of my primary reasons for liking HD-DVD better than BD since BEFORE the A1 was even released.

If you care about these new HD audio formats, you should NOT buy ANY 1G BD players PERIOD. They will NEVER allow you to use the new HD audio formats. This is why I have referred to the 1G BD players as a very short dead end road. None of them have the decoders built into the players so the only other way would be to send the undecoded bitstream to a receiver to decode it. The problem is this means the BD player MUST have HDMI 1.3 to send the undecoded bitstream and NONE of them will have this.

The PS3 is said to have HDMI 1.3, but then you have the second problem, which is that there are NO receivers even announced ASAIK that have BOTH HDMI 1.3 AND the built-in decoders.

Now I guess you know why the biggest receiver mfg also are the biggest BD supporters. They want you to replace your current perfectly working equipment with a new receiver with HDMI 1.3 and the new HD audio decoders, to hear DtHD or DTS-HDMA. Early adopters might be will to do this but most enthusiasts will not. IMO

Here is the math I did in the spring:

Scenario 1
$1,000.00 minimum New BD player (with no HD decoders OR HDMI 1.3)
$1,000.00 (guess for the first models) New receiver with HDMI 1.3 and HD decoders
$1,000.00 (guess since none are even announced) Replacement BD player with HDMI 1.3 NO HD decoders
$3,000.00 (the first 1G BD player being a waste of money) Total cost to hear HD audio

Scenario 2
$ 600.00 Playstation 3 (HDMI 1.3 edition since no analog5.1 output)
$ 100.00 Minimum added bundle packaging costs (conservative)
$1,000.00 (guess for the first models) New receiver with HDMI 1.3 and HD decoders
$1,700.00 Total minimum cost to use a game machine as your primary BD player

Scenario 3
$1,000.00 minimum MSRP New BD player (with no HD decoders OR HDMI 1.3)
$1,000.00 (guess since none are announced) Replacement BD player with HD decoders
$2,000.00 With the first player being a waste of money Total cost to hear HD audio

Scenario 4 (HD-DVD)
$ 500.00 Buy a HD-A1 Total cost nothing else to buy to get the HD audio

Also you cannot go by whether a player has a logo for the new HD audio formats because it does not assure that it has a decoder in the device, but only that it can properly pass the bitstream to a decoding device (ie receiver/prepro).

DTS uses different logos for the devices that actual have the standard DTS decoders in the device. They had DTS "OUT" if it passed it, and DTS "Surround" if the device had the decoder in it. I am not sure about how they will handle the logos with the new HD audio signals.

Dolby never did have separate logos like DTS did (I wish they did though), so you had the same logo regardless if the device merely passed the DD signal or decoded it.

Roger:

I read somewhere a while back that Dolby Labs preferred the decoders in the players versus the receivers. Is that still true, and why is that if it is true still?

Thanks for answering this!

Sure. For early adopters who don't have much cash, the HD-A1 is preferred for the reasons that you gave. But that's also the reason why the majority of CE manufacturers are in the BD camp. They want to sell you new receivers/pre-amps that can take advantage of the new lossless codecs and that can also be a HDMI switcher.

Toshiba, Microsoft and NEC are not known to make good receviers/preamps.

That is also why Sony included LPCM 5.1 in their early titles so that users can hear what lossless sounds like without having to upgrade new hardware. But you can't have it all so eventually these titles will be re-released with new video and audio codecs, I believe.


fuad

Oh yeah, I forgot one thing. This will come true 12-18 months from now.

One HDMI 1.3 cable from your BD/HD-DVD player to your receiver. One HDMI cable out of your receiver to your HDTV.

Less cable clutter - that is I think a good reason to upgrade to HDMI.


fuad

Now that we prove that the quality issue was not the BR format but the early MPEG-2 disk, the only thing that prevents me from buying a BR player is the availability of players with onboard audio decoders such as my Toshiba A1. This is really interesting!

Yes Mandatory at 1.5Mbps but we also need DTS MA which can't get out of the player on coax. I don't care at this point for HDMI 1.3. Therefore, it needs to be decoded in the player.

That is a rather bold statement since very little is know about even some of the 1 Gen, much less all of them. Best Buy has the Sony spec'ed as having built in TrueHD and DTS-HD decoders and the PS3 has been reported has having decoders built in. It even has the TrueHD and DTS-HD stickers on it.

I seem to recall reading that having the decoder in the player was closer to the source and could potentially do a better job since it had access to the disc. I could see this if it pre-buffered and read ahead a bit, but I'm not sure. Also, they don't have control of the quality of the decoder in the receiver, not that Dolby directly controls quality in players, just minimum requirements for standardization.

Page 9 of the TrueHD whitepaper go into more detail on this:
http://www.dolby.com/assets/pdf/tech...whitepaper.pdf

They say that the receiver could focus on the postprocessing of the audio, not decoding the codec also. Most practical way, but perhaps not the best.

They furthermore give reasons here:
http://www.dolby.com/consumer/techno...HD_avrs_1.html

Sort of like the reason why progressive scan DVD players often perform better than TV scalers and deinterlacers.

But, if you know you have a better external processor than built-in, you should be able to send it out via HDMI 1.3 (with required features) to your receiver/processor with same HDMI 1.3 features. Just like people wanting to send 480i over HDMI to their nice video scalers for DVD rather than 480p.

I'm not in this boat and do enjoy the decoders in my HD DVD player sending PCM over HDMI to my receiver and am happy I don't have to buy another receiver. If and when BD disks become good (i.e. BD-50 with VC-1 and video quality consistantly matching or possibly exceeding? HD DVD), I'll probably get a BD player too - but I think it will be probably mid-2007 before this happens IMO. I could live with LPCM tracks and don't need TrueHD or DTS-MA, but think that it is a waste of space on the disk not to have lossless codecs - space that they definately can't afford without BD-50. It's just a matter of time before all of this equipment is HDMI 1.3, but that could take a while. The most interesting feature of HDMI 1.3 for me would be the end of lip-sync issues on the video, since there is a feature in 1.3 to syncronize audio and video.

Best thread I've seen in both forums in a long time. Thanks for kicking this one off Jeff. It almost seems like the days of old again.

Like others I'll be holding out on the purchase of a BD player till the advance audio codec issue is resolved. The way I'd like to see it go is having the decoding done in the player. I've got to much invested in my system to start redesigning because CE's want HDMI 1.3 support. This could be a bit of a show stopper for me. Let's see want CEDIA brings to the table. We might just have a few surprises that could change the whole landscape.

Till that day comes I'll be enjoying TRUEHD via analog on my HD-A1. :D

And lets not kid ourselves that day is coming.

Due to either limitations in either my hearing ability or in my equipment, if a player is only capable of extracting the core DTS or DD stream from DTHD or DTS-HD, I probably would be okay with just that. If I were limited to two-channel only, like the early days of the A1 with DTHD, that I would not be satisfied with.

So I guess the Sony is back in play.

Not sure how good this is still looking. From The Sony Style page..

It looks as though the player will simply extract the core DD and DTS tracks from the advanced codecs. The better sound from the player will only come from PCM along the analog outputs.

The new Crutchfield flyer (received yesterday) makes a specific point that the new Panny DMP-BD10 is the first Blu-ray player to decode Dolby Digital Plus.

Also says it offers up to 8 discrete channels of surround sound (I wonder if they mean the player - or the format???)