High Resoltion Sound Codecs Question (1 Viewer)

[Gustavo Menendez]

What are the necessary characteristics of an HD-DVD Player in order to supply an advanced Pre-Amplifier/Processor with the correct “bitstream” to permit it to decode the following:

1.DTS-HD Master Audio
2.DTS-HD High Resolution Audio
3.Dolby TrueHD
4.Dolby Digital Plus

What would be the “bitstream” difference?

Are there any existing HD-DVD Players capable of the above requirements?

Is HDMI 1.3 or HDMI 1.3a a requirement?

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Only one current DVD player will pass any of the HD codecs as bitstream - the HD-A35. All others decode in the player and pass to the receiver as decoded LPCM. You would require a HDMI 1.3 receiver with the capability to decode HD audio in order to process the bitstream from the A35. The processing of the decoded LPCM requires an HDMI 1.1 receiver that can process HDMI audio.

DD+ and TrueHD are required by the HD DVD spec to be decoded in all players. How DTS-HD decoding is handled depends on the player (some only pass the DTS 1.5 Mbs core). At this time, there are no HD DVD players that can decode DTS-HD Master Audio.

 

[Chris S]

The Toshiba HD-AX2 with the upcoming firmware is suppose to also support bitstream output too. Last I heard it was coming before the end of October.