[Rahul Sethi]

I just recently bought a 3DTV (Samsung ES8000) and realized that my home theatre receiver is not working. It's an old home theatre so it wouldn't be worth getting my current receiver fixed as its not 3D capable.... (Speakers work perfectly) ..... I want to know if its worth my money buying a new 3D capable receiver and 3D blu ray player separately or buy a Blu Ray Home Theatre system much like the kind Samsung makes.


Please let me know what is the best option and which products I should buy. I'm looking for a good buy nothing too cheap/expensive.

 

[Selden Ball]

If you buy a packaged system, if either part fails you have to go without until it's replaced or repaired.


You can buy a Sony or Panasonic 3D Blu-ray player for $150 or less, but you'd have to use a digital audio connection to the receiver. (i.e. you wouldn't get lossless audio). For about $250 you can get a player with dual HDMI outputs so you could connect one output to the TV for 3D video and the other to the receiver for lossless audio.

 

[Rahul Sethi]

I'm not too familiar with lossless audio. What is it?


Also, would an optical audio connection be better than digital?

 

[Selden Ball]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Rahul Sethi  /t/1417448/buying-a-new-receiver#post_22165559


I'm not too familiar with lossless audio. What is it?

"Lossless audio" on a Blu-ray disc is having the equivalent of CD quality audio on as many as eight (7.1) audio channels at the same time. On DVDs, Dolby and DTS audio tracks have to be filtered to eliminate sounds that you wouldn't be able to hear, reducing the amount of audio data that needs to be stored. On a Blu-ray disc, both companies use encodings which add information to their lossy compressed audio tracks to restore the sounds that otherwise would have been omitted. It takes up a lot more room (5x or so), but that's readily available on Blu-ray discs.

Quote:
Also, would an optical audio connection be better than digital?

For stereo PCM, digital optical audio connections have a lower maximum data rate (96 K samples/second) than digital coax connections (192 K samples/sec). You really can't hear the difference between the two, though. Optical connections have the advantage of not being susceptible to electrical interference. Both are limited to transmitting lossy 5.1 DD and DTS.

 

[Rahul Sethi]

Can 3D sounds only be heard on 7.1 systems?

 

[ccotenj]

^^^

3d is video, not audio...

 

[Kilian.ca]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Selden Ball  /t/1417448/buying-a-new-receiver#post_22165824


For stereo PCM, digital optical audio connections have a lower maximum data rate (96 K samples/second) than digital coax connections (192 K samples/sec).

There isn't a 96kHz limitation for SPDIF optical generally and in any case the point is moot because in the context of Blu-ray (and DVD) copy protected content is generally limited to 48kHz via SPDIF output, and as the OP is going to get a new AVR he is much better off getting a HDMI one.

 

[Selden Ball]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Kilian.ca  /t/1417448/buying-a-new-receiver#post_22173658

Quote:
Originally Posted by Selden Ball  /t/1417448/buying-a-new-receiver#post_22165824


For stereo PCM, digital optical audio connections have a lower maximum data rate (96 K samples/second) than digital coax connections (192 K samples/sec).

There isn't a 96kHz limitation for SPDIF optical generally and in any case the point is moot because in the context of Blu-ray (and DVD) copy protected content is generally limited to 48kHz via SPDIF output, and as the OP is going to get a new AVR he is much better off getting a HDMI one.

My understanding was that 96K was indeed an optical limitation, although that might be an error in the documentation that I had read. (Of course, I can't find it now.) A quick perusal of the Wikipedia article (and we know how accurate they are

) points out that plastic optical cables (the most common) have a significantly lower bandwidth than glass cables. Interestingly, the S/PDIF document at http://www.epanorama.net/documents/audio/spdif.html mentions a max of 48K.


As you point out, though, HDMI does not have that limitation, although audio bitrates are determined by the accompanying video bitrates.