What can we do about Warner Bros? (1 Viewer)

[Yumbo]

Bring on the default TrueHD.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Yes I own more Warner blu-rays that all other studios combined. Of course that may have something to do with their consistent release of classics, and the fact that their classic library is much larger than just about any other studio.

Doug

 

[Michael Reuben]

And this appears to be where we parted company. I don't believe Warner does include an additional regular DD track. Rather, instead of hiding the legacy DD track, they list it as a separate, user-selectable option on the menu.

 

[Brandon Conway]

No, fact is they do both - a fully separate track, and a hidden legacy track within the TrueHD. Hence the dropout issue on Led Zeppelin only occurring if one was getting the full lossless TrueHD audio and not the core/legacy track of the TrueHD audio.

 

[Jeff Whitford]

Because I shouldnt have to

 

[Michael Reuben]

I don't have the "Led Zeppelin" disc, but just from your description, I don't see how that proves the existence of an additional track. Still, we've gotten enough cleared up that I think this can be left alone.

For future reference, confusion can be avoided by not referring to the legacy track as being "within" the TrueHD or a "core". TrueHD is based on Meridian Lossless Packing, while DD is based on AC3. They're separate codecs and create separate digital streams. It's possible to have a TrueHD track with no legacy DD, as was the case on HD DVD, where no legacy track was needed, because every player was required to have the ability to play TrueHD in some form. The hidden legacy track is strictly a Blu-ray issue.

 

[Adam Barratt]

There are only two tracks present: one TrueHD and a complementary Dolby Digital track for backward-compatibility. If the TrueHD track can't be processed by a player, the second track is used instead and the TrueHD bypassed entirely.

There is no 'core' legacy Dolby Digital track that can be extracted from 'within' a TrueHD stream. The technologies used by these two formats are fundamentally different and incompatible.

TrueHD doesn't use legacy lossy audio as a foundation (i.e. core plus extension) the way DTS-HD and Dolby Digital Plus do/can. There is simply nothing to extract. If a TrueHD track can't be processed by a player, it is ignored. The separate legacy track(s) that can be processed is/are used instead (PCM, DTS or, in most cases, Dolby Digital). The TrueHD track plays no part at all.

The lack of a legacy core to extract, together with the point made by Michael earlier that TrueHD compatibility isn't mandated in the Blu-ray spec while Dolby Digital is (among others), is why Warner (and others) include a completely separate Dolby Digital track on their discs. How or whether this track is accessed is up to the studio. Warner allows the track to be selected directly via the menu system. Sony instead hides the track and uses logic within the player to play it when required. Both methods still use same two separate soundtracks, however.

If Warner (or Sony etc.) really wanted to, they could include a TrueHD and a DTS-HD track together; or a TrueHD and a PCM soundtrack, or any combination that included a TrueHD soundtrack and a second soundtrack that could be processed by all Blu-ray players (Dolby Digital, DTS or PCM: the formats players are mandated to support) for compliance. They choose to use Dolby Digital because it offers the greatest compatibility for users with legacy equipment.

The processes used by TrueHD (and Dolby Digital Plus) are explained in more detail in Dolby's TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus White Paper.

Adam

 

[Brandon Conway]

Sorry for all the confusion. I've never been one for tech detail, so I only go with what lingo I know. Sony's internal lingo for the AC3 track that is accessed when a player can't read the TrueHD MLP is "core". That's why I started by using that term. When Casey used the term "legacy" I ran with that because that seemed to be the lingo that got the idea across to everyone.

Correct terminology aside (which you both just outlined), Warner titles are currently authored with:

Audio Track 1 being a regular DD 5.1 AC3.
Audio Track 2 being a MLP 5.1.

Now, whether it's AC3, MLP, ABC, 123, or E=mc2, the whole reason I brought this up is that they could save themselves from complaint #1 in this thread by making only the on-the-surface visible English audio, accessed via the single Audio Track 1, the TrueHD track, which then automatically accesses the AC3 track when a consumer can't play MLP.

On a current Warner release, if one plays the MLP Audio Track 2, their discs are already set up to play back the AC3 while staying on Audio Track 2. Now, whether Warner is putting the AC3 track on there once or twice I really don't care. But they should save themselves the trouble with having the menu option for the AC3 DD track. So that, like Sony's current releases, all parties are happy, and no one has to bother "choosing" between Audio Track 1 and Audio Track 2, because they are both perceived as Audio Track 1 by the consumer via the player display; then those with lossless ability will get it, while those without won't, all without knowing the difference.

I think that (finally) will make sense to everyone. In the end, we just went the long way around for me to essentially say "Warner should do it like Sony is doing it."

 

[Edwin-S]

Never thought I'd ever hear or read these words.

 

[Brandon Conway]

LOL. Things have indeed changed in some respects over the last couple years.

 

[John H Ross]

Oh well. I guess "put up and shut up" is the official stance then, much like it was when a "minority" kicked off over the flipped music channels on the Star Wars DVD and the colour/sound changes on the Bond UEs.

I'm glad that people can take these "inconveniences" and live with them (and yeah, even the folks here who "don't mind" carrying out an unnecessary setup change during the movie seem to admit to it being an inconvenience, albeit minor).

I for one will continue my "campaign" via my signature.

For those that don't care? Those that value a smaller number number of button pushes than a smoother, uninterrupted movie experience? Well you get the presentation that you deserve.

I'd be interested to know how WB handles its TV product. Would you have to configure the audio during every single episode? If that's the case count me out of ANY WB TV titles.

 

[Christian Preischl]

Nope. All the episodes on a disc play automatically. Sort of like an automatic play all function, so you only have to set up the audio once (not that I had to do that yet since all the Warner TV shows I own on BD only have a lossy DD5.1 track to begin with).

Here's what annoys me about Supernatural on BD: You can sleect whether you want to watch the episodes with the "previously on Supernatural" segments on or off. The default is "off".

The problem with this is: Even if you turn this feature on while the first episode is playing, the change won't be applied unless you also manually select an episode from the pop-up menu. That means if I turn the previously segments on while the first episode is playing and decide to let it run, the upcoming episodes will still be missing the segment.

It's not a major inconvenience by any means (at least they do give you a choice at all), but still badly programmed.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I'm sorry you feel that way, but not everyone will agree with you on any matter despite how correct you might think your POV is.....

 

[Geoff_D]

John, if Blu-rays simply started playing as soon as we thought about it, then I'd be sympathetic towards your "campaign". Yet my system doesn't work with psychic projections, funnily enough. I've got to turn on my display, my subwoofer, my amp, my Blu-ray deck, and then make sure that everything's set to the correct input with the correct post-processing before settling in to watch a flick. This is all hardly conducive to a "smoother" cinema-like experience, so one more button push after the thing has started is simply not a huge problem.

I love how you're interpreting people's replies too. As far as I can tell, none of the dissenters (with a suitable set-up, natch) is saying that they prefer to have to switch the audio, just that it's not a major issue for them. Hardly the same thing.

 

[Robert Crawford]

That about sums it up for me too.

 

[Frank Ha]

And me too

 

[Jeff Adkins]

I've been a pretty vocal critic of Warner Bros since the early days of Blu-Ray. I was mainly concerned with :

1) The lack of any HD audio track on numerous releases. Every title should have a lossless track included, regardless of the age or sonics of the film. Sony, Fox and Disney have done this from Day 1. There's plenty of bandwidth and space available. We could debate the necessity of this all day long, but it should be always be included given the space and bandwidth of Blu-Ray. I don't see how cost could be an issue based on what I've read.

2) Some titles seemed to have heavy DNR (allegedly to keep the bitrate low for HD-DVD). This resulted in the infamous waxy, soft look on some titles.

It appears to me that both of these issues seem to have been addressed. Unless I'm mistaken, they are doing lossless on everything now and I haven't seen the DNR issues lately. I can't assign blame to Warner for the DNR issues with Amadeus because the master was likely done by Saul Zaentz, not Warner.

As far as the default audio track issue...it just doesn't seem to matter to me. I always set everything up through the menu before viewing, so it's a non-issue in my case.

While I was one of the first to complain about Warner Brothers, it's only fair that I point out the great product they've been putting out recently. I no longer wait for reviews before purchsaing Warner titles. I think they are hands-down, the most improved Blu-Ray studio.

 

[Sanjay Gupta]

Personally I think they ought to simply use 'DTS-HD Master Audio' on all Blu-Ray titles. This way all titles would automatically output lossless audio for those that have systems capable of handling it and for the rest it would automatically output the core 1.5 mbps DTS audio. This would also do away with the need for any legacy DD track taking up space on the disc. Ofcourse knowing Warner they would never go for this, after all how can they deviate from their long standing legacy of mediocre audio at best.

By the way, count me in as one of those who simply cannot understand the logic of defaulting to a low resolution audio track when there is a lossless track present. Also, it's not "that much trouble" or "it's not that big a deal" are no excuse for it either.

 

[Edwin-S]

The problem with this solution is there may still be a lot of people with players that do not decode DTS HD MA.

 

[John H Ross]

Thank you!