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**Official Toshiba HD-A3/30/35 Thread** - Page 121

post #3601 of 3673
5/16/09 at 1:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by lchiu7 View Post

You would be much better off connecting the A3 via HDMI to your 606 as others have noted. Then you will get the maximum audio available from your HD-DVD's - either DD+ or TrueHD. And it will be multichannel PCM coming from the A3 to the 606.

Over optical the best you will ever get is DD

Tried the optical, no sound improvement that I can tell.
So went back to HMDI/PCM.
But now thinking of getting the Toshiba HD-A35?
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post #3602 of 3673
5/16/09 at 5:07pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tacoboy View Post

Tried the optical, no sound improvement that I can tell.
So went back to HMDI/PCM.
But now thinking of getting the Toshiba HD-A35?

The A35 is what you want...lchiu7 offers poor advice about the A3...The A3 will not bitstream HD audio...So you will not hear any difference between the optical and the HDMI audio...
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post #3603 of 3673
5/16/09 at 5:12pm
lchiu7's advice sounds good to me and doesn't require buying another player. Sure the A3's not bitstreaming but PCM over HDMI will sound just as good.
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post #3604 of 3673
5/16/09 at 5:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quentin2 View Post

lchiu7's advice sounds good to me and doesn't require buying another player. Sure the A3's not bitstreaming but PCM over HDMI will sound just as good.

Another false statement...PCM over HDMI has no chance of sounding "just as good"...Thats like saying EDTV (480p) is "just as good" as full HDTV (1080p)...Yes the difference in quality is that noticeable...As a matter of fact...PCM over HDMI will sound indistinguishable from optical audio...
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post #3605 of 3673
5/16/09 at 5:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Splicer010 View Post

The A35 is what you want...lchiu7 offers poor advice about the A3...The A3 will not bitstream HD audio...So you will not hear any difference between the optical and the HDMI audio...

You do not need to bitstream HD audio to get HD audio. Whether the HD audio is decoded at the player and sent as MPCM to the AVR or bitstreamed to the AVR it is the same lossless audio.
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post #3606 of 3673
5/16/09 at 6:56pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by toby10 View Post

you do not need to bitstream hd audio to get hd audio. Whether the hd audio is decoded at the player and sent as mpcm to the avr or bitstreamed to the avr it is the same lossless audio.

+ 1
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post #3607 of 3673
5/16/09 at 8:38pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by toby10 View Post

You do not need to bitstream HD audio to get HD audio. Whether the HD audio is decoded at the player and sent as MPCM to the AVR or bitstreamed to the AVR it is the same lossless audio.

Last time I am going to tell you people the FACTS about the A3...The A3 can only output DD or DTS...The stripped down core of DD+...DTS-HD...and True HD audio...If it were "the same lossless audio" as bitstreamed HD audio then there would be zero reason to 'upgrade' to the better audio outputs of the A35 or XA2 as example...Thats why some players can only decode "core only"...The A3 is the basic entry level HD DVD player with audio no better than a standard DVD player...

Now using the internal decoding capabilities of the A35 to output 5.1 analog HD audio is a completely different subject entirely but should be noted that that feature is unavailable with the A3 however the A35 can also output the same core only audio that the A3 can...

Now if you want to continue to believe what you want to justify to yourselves for some reason that the A3 can output audio that "is the same as lossless audio" by all means knock yourselves out...But don't go around spreading your fud that the audio output of the A3 in any way shape or form can equal the lossless audio bitstreamed by the A35...
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post #3608 of 3673
5/16/09 at 8:52pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Splicer010 View Post

..

Now if you want to continue to believe what you want to justify to yourselves for some reason that the A3 can output audio that "is the same as lossless audio" by all means knock yourselves out...But don't go around spreading your fud that the audio output of the A3 in any way shape or form can equal the lossless audio bitstreamed by the A35...

That's strange. On the box and in the manual for my A3 it says it can output DD+ and TrueHD, not as bitstream but as PCM over HDMI. I understand that means it's near lossless (DD+) or lossless (TrueHD) audio. Of course it can't handle DTS HD Master but I have yet to see a HD-DVD that has that audio format on it, if indeed any do.

So it's hard to what difference there would be between bitstream TrueHD from the A35 and multichannel PCM decoded from the TrueHD track internally in the A3
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post #3609 of 3673
5/16/09 at 9:04pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by lchiu7 View Post

....Of course it can't handle DTS HD Master but I have yet to see a HD-DVD that has that audio format on it, if indeed any do.....

All the Euro HD-DVD's I own have DTS Master audio.
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post #3610 of 3673
5/16/09 at 10:34pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Splicer010 View Post

Last time I am going to tell you people the FACTS about the A3...The A3 can only output DD or DTS...The stripped down core of DD+...DTS-HD...and True HD audio...If it were "the same lossless audio" as bitstreamed HD audio then there would be zero reason to 'upgrade' to the better audio outputs of the A35 or XA2 as example...Thats why some players can only decode "core only"...The A3 is the basic entry level HD DVD player with audio no better than a standard DVD player...

Now using the internal decoding capabilities of the A35 to output 5.1 analog HD audio is a completely different subject entirely but should be noted that that feature is unavailable with the A3 however the A35 can also output the same core only audio that the A3 can...

Now if you want to continue to believe what you want to justify to yourselves for some reason that the A3 can output audio that "is the same as lossless audio" by all means knock yourselves out...But don't go around spreading your fud that the audio output of the A3 in any way shape or form can equal the lossless audio bitstreamed by the A35...

Yes, I choose to believe what millions of other HD and Hi-Res audio users believe, what studio sound engineers believe, what every AVR manufacturer believes, and what every HD-DVD & Blu-ray manufacturer believes. That is that player decoded HD lossless audio sent as MPCM to an AVR via HDMI is the same lossless audio as bitstreamed HD audio decoded at the AVR.

Lossless is lossless.

Now, if you want to continue to believe that you *needed* an HDMI 1.3 AVR with on board HD decoding cuz you fell for the marketing hype of HDMI 1.3, then knock yourself out. Lord knows the AVR manufacturers are glad you did.
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post #3611 of 3673
5/17/09 at 3:18am
Quote:
Originally Posted by toby10 View Post

Yes, I choose to believe what millions of other HD and Hi-Res audio users believe, what studio sound engineers believe, what every AVR manufacturer believes, and what every HD-DVD & Blu-ray manufacturer believes. That is that player decoded HD lossless audio sent as MPCM to an AVR via HDMI is the same lossless audio as bitstreamed HD audio decoded at the AVR.

Lossless is lossless.

Well now you are talking about
Now, if you want to continue to believe that you *needed* an HDMI 1.3 AVR with on board HD decoding cuz you fell for the marketing hype of HDMI 1.3, then knock yourself out. Lord knows the AVR manufacturers are glad you did.

Sorry but whatever you seem to think about lossless audio is you really should not speak for others when you have no idea what they think...Also you need to get what each player is capable of straight...The A3 WILL NOT OUTPUT LOSSLESS AUDIO...It simply cannot do that...You really need to talk to the engineers at Toshiba if you think otherwise...As I said earlier...there is a reason for the different player 'levels'...

The ONLY way that "lossless is lossless" in the context that I am discussing has to do with the A35...If the A35 decodes and outputs as 6 channel analog OR bitstreams the codec for a AVR to do the processing the difference will be minute if any...However the A3 & A30 DO NOT have the same capability as they output lossy since that is all they are capable of...In other words the audio sounds no better than SDVD DD or DTS on those players...

Now if you are talking that the audio out through optical on the A35 is the same as the A3 then you are correct...Optical CANNOT output the lossless information...But you seem to believe some insane reason that HDMI is "hype" so I am sure you are not talking about optical...
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post #3612 of 3673
5/17/09 at 3:59am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quentin2 View Post

lchiu7's advice sounds good to me and doesn't require buying another player. Sure the A3's not bitstreaming but PCM over HDMI will sound just as good.

That's what I said. With the A3 it cannot bitstream DD+ or TrueHD so you go HDMI and Multichannel PCM. This gets your the almost and lossless audio.
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post #3613 of 3673
5/17/09 at 4:00am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rachael Bellomy View Post

All the Euro HD-DVD's I own have DTS Master audio.


That's news to me. I have only 3 Euro HD-DVD's and none have DTS HD audio. And even if they did, my A3 wouldn't be able to take advantage of that audio anyway.
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post #3614 of 3673
5/17/09 at 5:20am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Splicer010 View Post

Sorry but whatever you seem to think about lossless audio is you really should not speak for others when you have no idea what they think...Also you need to get what each player is capable of straight...The A3 WILL NOT OUTPUT LOSSLESS AUDIO...It simply cannot do that...You really need to talk to the engineers at Toshiba if you think otherwise...As I said earlier...there is a reason for the different player 'levels'...

The ONLY way that "lossless is lossless" in the context that I am discussing has to do with the A35...If the A35 decodes and outputs as 6 channel analog OR bitstreams the codec for a AVR to do the processing the difference will be minute if any...However the A3 & A30 DO NOT have the same capability as they output lossy since that is all they are capable of...In other words the audio sounds no better than SDVD DD or DTS on those players...

Now if you are talking that the audio out through optical on the A35 is the same as the A3 then you are correct...Optical CANNOT output the lossless information...But you seem to believe some insane reason that HDMI is "hype" so I am sure you are not talking about optical...

You are correct, I have no idea what you think, cuz your thinking is incorrect.
Sorry, but you simply do not understand HD lossless audio capabilities.
I'm only refering to HDMI, you keep throwing in Optical in a discussion of lossless HD audio, I'm well aware of Optical audio limitations
Player decoded HD lossless audio, sent as MPCM via HDMI is indeed LOSSLESS AUDIO! And the A3 *IS* capable of this for TrueHD.
I never said HDMI was hype, I said HDMI 1.3 is hype (i.e. not needed for lossless audio) as HDMI 1.1 is MORE than capable of handling HD audio as MPCM.

I suggest you try this link as a starting point to these very facts. It covers the HDMI 1.3 "hype" in general for both audio and video, but includes a very nice section on just this discussion of player decoded LOSSLESS audio:
http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/853
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post #3615 of 3673
5/17/09 at 10:09am
Quote:
Originally Posted by lchiu7 View Post

That's news to me. I have only 3 Euro HD-DVD's and none have DTS HD audio. And even if they did, my A3 wouldn't be able to take advantage of that audio anyway.

Before I had an A35, my A2 transcoded DTS Master to PCM and sent it via HDMI to my Onkyo 805. Lossless is lossless, no matter how you arrive at it.

All my Euro HD-DVD's have DTS Master, even if it's just 2-channel like Elephant Man. DTS Master has been and is the prevelant audio for Europa as far as I can see. If I have a disc without it, I don't recall it.
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post #3616 of 3673
5/17/09 at 1:09pm
im in the UK and have over 100 HDDVD titles and i dont have one with a DTS-MA audio track,the only ones im aware of are T2 and Pans Labyrinth,both of which feature a 7.1 mix.You mention The Elephant Man,which other titles do you have with DTS-MA?
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post #3617 of 3673
5/17/09 at 1:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by a4lloxo View Post

im in the UK and have over 100 HDDVD titles and i dont have one with a DTS-MA audio track,the only ones im aware of are T2 and Pans Labyrinth,both of which feature a 7.1 mix.You mention The Elephant Man,which other titles do you have with DTS-MA?

King Kong '76

Total Recall

The Pianist

Stalingrad

The Graduate

East is East....which might be DTS HD....?

...and Elephant Man.

Maybe I got the wrong impression but this lot all have DTS. I think these are all my Euro titles.
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post #3618 of 3673
5/18/09 at 12:17am
Does anyone know if the HD-A35 uses the same audio processing chip as the HD-A3?
If so, what's the chip make and model number?
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post #3619 of 3673
5/18/09 at 12:49am
Quote:
Originally Posted by toby10 View Post

..
I never said HDMI was hype, I said HDMI 1.3 is hype (i.e. not needed for lossless audio) as HDMI 1.1 is MORE than capable of handling HD audio as MPCM.

Alas for whatever reason, HDMI 1.1 won't pass lossless audio (and DD+ for that matter) as bitstream so it does require the player decode it to PCM.

And re-reading the A3 manual, it states quite clearly that to get the benefit of DD+ or TrueHD from that player you need to use HDMI, set the HDMI audio setting to PCM (or Auto) and ensure your AVR can handle MLPCM audio over HDMI which any AVR that can process TrueHD or DTS HD Master can, and many AVR's that cannot process those audio streams as bitstream can do also (e.g. the Onkyo 576)
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post #3620 of 3673
5/18/09 at 3:58am
Quote:
Originally Posted by lchiu7 View Post

Alas for whatever reason, HDMI 1.1 won't pass lossless audio (and DD+ for that matter) as bitstream so it does require the player decode it to PCM.

And re-reading the A3 manual, it states quite clearly that to get the benefit of DD+ or TrueHD from that player you need to use HDMI, set the HDMI audio setting to PCM (or Auto) and ensure your AVR can handle MLPCM audio over HDMI which any AVR that can process TrueHD or DTS HD Master can, and many AVR's that cannot process those audio streams as bitstream can do also (e.g. the Onkyo 576)

Correct. If the player is decoding and sending via HDMI the format is PCM. But, it is MPCM (Multi-Channel PCM). The number of ch's (most common are 5.1 or 7.1) depends on the source materials coding. But it IS still lossless audio regardless of the delivery method (MPCM or Bitstream). This same process will work for SACD, DVD-A, and HDCD assuming you have the appropriate player (like an OPPO) that can handle such formats without downsampling.

Actually, the original spec HDMI version 1.0 is more than capable of HD audio via MPCM in regards to speed and bandwidth, though no HDMI capable AVR's at that time (that I am aware of) had the chipsets to handle MPCM. HDMI 1.1 added support for DVD-A.
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post #3621 of 3673
5/19/09 at 11:20am
Splicer, you are flat out wrong about this. The A3 CAN output lossless audio. But you need a receiver with an HDMI input.

You seem to be hung up on bitstreaming and a believe that decoded lossless audio can only be passed via 5.1(7.1) analog paths.

You are correct that the A3 cannot BITSTREAM the lossless audio, but you are INCORRECT about the decoded lossless.

Decoded HD lossless audio CAN be passed via the analog 5.1(7.1) path, but as you rightly point out, this is not available on the A3.

Decoded HD lossless audio CAN ALSO be passed via MPCM on the HDMI cable, which the A3 most certainly CAN (and DOES) do.

My A3 does it just fine, and my Onkyo 875 receiver likes it just fine. No problems.
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post #3622 of 3673
5/21/09 at 11:21pm
what capn trips said, my hda2 and hda35 both sound exactly the same on every movie, they both output the audio as LPCM as the audio signals are internally decoded and are then sent via HDMI as LOSSLESS signals to the avr. As long as the reciever can process audio from hdmi, not even necessarily bitstreamed audio from hdmi, you will recieve lossless audio. that was a major benefit of hd-dvd from the beginning...all internal decoding of all formats from the beginning of the format unlike blu-ray...of which none of the first gen units process DTS-MA and very few (such as the panny bd10ak) processed DTS-HR.
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post #3623 of 3673
5/22/09 at 3:56pm
Over at the "XD-E500 Owners Thread" I'm comparing a HD-A3 to a Toshiba XD-E500 upconversion SD-DVD player.
I'm using a both an HD-DVD and SD-DVD of the movie Serenity.
If you have any ideas on what setting to use to get the best from both, please join over at the "XD-E500 Owners Thread".
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post #3624 of 3673
5/22/09 at 5:40pm
There is no comparison...Having seen the move in question on both...The A3 is the better value...Better value meaning the A3 plays both formats... Picture is indiscernable and reliant only on the display itself...Anyone telling you different doesn't know what they are talking about...
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post #3625 of 3673
5/22/09 at 6:41pm
Toshiba's blowing smoke with their new upconverters and unfortunately confusing the general public. If you have a quality HDTV, upscaling a DVD on any player is not going to hold a candle to true HD DVD or BD.

Still, lots of people can live with decent upscaling, I do with my existing DVD collection but when I want "oohs and ahhs" I pop an HD DVD in my A30.
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post #3626 of 3673
5/22/09 at 9:48pm
I've just been wanting to try Bitstreaming over HDMI.
I would rather have my nice Onkyo TX-SR606 decode audio
then a player
Some people in other forums have rated the up-scaling of the XD-E500
over the HD-A3.
I just had to see it the with my own eyes.
I only own about 10 HD-DVDs and I'm not planning on buying any more HD-DVDs
I'm guessing I'm going to return the XD-E500 tomorrow and ask for a Blu-ray for Christmas.
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post #3627 of 3673
5/23/09 at 1:28pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tacoboy View Post

... Some people in other forums have rated the up-scaling of the XD-E500 over the HD-A3. I just had to see it the with my own eyes...

So how did your testing go? I would expect the A3 upscales better than the XD-E500.
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post #3628 of 3673
5/23/09 at 3:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quentin2 View Post

So how did your testing go? I would expect the A3 upscales better than the XD-E500.

So far testing has been HD-DVD in the HD-A3 and SD-DVD in the XD-E500.
But now I can not find the Serenity SD-DVD.
So testing is on hold.
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post #3629 of 3673
5/23/09 at 4:21pm
My A30 purchased spring 2008 is freezing. I've tried several discs, and they play fine for awhile then the image freezes. I scan forward to the next scene, and the disc plays. I have version 4 firmware. Any one experiencing the same? Any thoughts, or suggestions appreciated.
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post #3630 of 3673
5/23/09 at 4:36pm
Have you tried washing the disc, even a brand new one? Crazy, but that often works when the picture freezes but the LED counter keeps going.

Since this is something that's just started happening, the opposite may be more likely - a dirty laser lens/pickup in the player itself.
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