Blu-ray newbie (1 Viewer)

I just got my first blu-ray player today. It's an LG BD570 and it's connected to an Insignia NS-R5101HD receiver. In the Audio options I have PCM Stereo, PCM Multi-Ch, DTS Re-Encode, and Primary Pass-Thru.

I need to know which one to put it as. I tried a blu-ray movie (Fourth Kind) and on PCM Multi, it does not come through as Dolby Digital or TrueHD or whatever. On DTS Re-Encode, the insignia shows it's in DTS mode but thats it.

In the audio options of the disc, it just shows DTS-HD but no matter what I select it doesn't show DTS-HD is going on the insignia.

I'm very confused by this and probably confused you guys but if you can help, that'd be great.

 

*Update*

I'm not at home so I can't try this but after reading the manual, it looks like I should set it to Pass-Thru. The only thing is, it says "Select if you connect this unit's DIGITAL AUDIO OUT and HDMI OUT jack to a device with LPCM, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS and DTS-HD decoder"

The receiver has the decoder but it's only connected with HDMI. Do I have to connect it with HDMI AND Digital out (coaxial or optical)?

 

[Jason Charlton]

I can't seem to find any definitive information on whether or not this receiver is HDMI Repeater (I hate when the retailer just uses the ubiquitously cryptic descriptor "Built for Blu-Ray"), but several sites seem to indicate that it is, and the receiver includes Dolby HD decoding, so it would stand to reason. If you are able to get any audio via HDMI, then you should be OK.

The PCM options in the Blu-Ray mean that the player does the decoding. Setting it to PCM-Multi probably was giving you the best sound, however your receiver didn't recognize the format (since it was already decoded) so it doesn't light up the corresponding indicator on the front panel. It simply takes the already decoded audio stream and pipes it to the speakers.

HDMI Pass-Thru should send the encoded audio stream to the receiver for decoding/processing. The corresponding indicators on the front panel should light up as expected.

 

[Brian McHale]

In my opinion, AVS Forum is the best place to research stuff like this. Here's a link to the "Official LG BD550/BD570/BD590 Owners Thread":

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1229543&

 

[Adam Gregorich]

Welcome to HTF Lance. Using your example of the Fourth Kind, you can either decode the soundtrack (in this case DTS-HD) in the player and send it out as multi-channel PCM to your receiver, or send it out from the player as bitstream (primary pass-through in LG speak) and let your receiver do the DTS-HD decoding. The fact that in this instance you don't see DTS-HD displayed on the front of your receiver is OK because it means that the LG is doing the decoding. Personally I don't think it makes much difference if the player or receiver does the decoding. The one thing to keep in mind if you like to listen to a lot of the secondary audio that goes with picture-in-picture content that usually will only work if you do the decoding in the player. To answer your second/updated question, no. Just use HDMI. I looked at the manual and that part is poorly worded. The digital cable would be for someone who had a receiver w/o HDMI inputs.

In my opinion, AVS Forum is the best place to research stuff like this.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. The thread on my pre-amp is over 500 pages long so you have to wade through 50 pages of posts to find something good. If you ask a question that has been asked and answered 28 times prior over the last 100 pages people jump on you for not using search to get an answer.

I did confirm looking at the receiver manual (http://insigniaproducts.com/cms/documents/NS-R5101HD%20UM%20EN.pdf page 18) that the receiver does do Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD.

 

Thanks. I set it to pasthru and it works great. I did take notice to what you said about the features and I haven't played with it too much yet so I'll watch for that.