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Comments on Panasonic or DTS presentation?

#1
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I am putting together quotes to use on our webpage coverage
that is going LIVE this upcoming Wednesday afternoon.

If anyone wants to give a brief description of what we saw
at the Panasonic and DTS presentations and what you thought
of it, it would be very helpful to us.

Thanks
Ronald J Epstein
Home Theater Forum co-owner
Email me at: repstein@hometheaterforum.com 
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#2
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Re: Comments on Panasonic or DTS presentation?

The DTS presentation was primarily a demonstration of the workings of their latest encoding software, which looked extremely efficient and virtually idiot proof given the complexity of options available. They started out with a slideshow primer on all of the various flavors of DTS used for home video, inclusive of the familiar 1509 kbps and 754 kbps varieties used on standard DVDs as well as the latest formats, represented in the extremes by the lossless DTS HD MA and by the very low bitrate variant (cannot remember the name) that is intended for applications such as secondary audio streams on Blu-Ray supplements.

We saw them do an encode from eight PCM files to a DTS-HD MA file with a DTS 1509 kbps core in real time, which was literally just a matter of a few minutes. They also demonstrated some of the features of the encoding software ranging from the obvious (selecting DTS "flavor", bitrates, and number of channels) to the more esoteric (specifying downmix parameters, isolating channels for monitoring before and after encoding).

The presentation was capped by a clip from the BD of Shoot 'em Up which sported a tear your head off DTS-HD MA track with lots of high volume activity in all 7.1 channels.

Regards,

Ken McAlinden
Livonia, MI USA

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#3
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Re: Comments on Panasonic or DTS presentation?

I've seen so many DTS demo rooms over the years that I wasn't too excited about their presentation. However, seeing how the tracks are actually encoded and the process was quite interesting. DTS spent a couple days getting the room set up and it provided an incredible soundstage. That clip of "Shoot 'em Up" convinced me to buy the disc, and I hope DTS puts that on next years demo disc. I've been a fan of DTS for years and they only continue to impress me with their encodes; now I have a working knowledge on what goes on behind the curtain.

Thanks to everyone at DTS for the demos and the nice spread!

All reviews done on a Marantz VP11S1 1080p DLP projector.

Displays professionally calibrated by Gregg Loewen of Lion AV.

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#4
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Re: Comments on Panasonic or DTS presentation?

The absolute best aspect of the DTS presentation (besides the mind blowing Shoot Em' Up demo which many of us knew was THAT good) was how easy it seemed it might be to make our own DTS-HD MA audio tracks. And considering that the price of the software (mentioned at around $1500), anyone could probably use this hopefully making more independent films use DTS-HD MA

----
Brendan Surpless
Reviewer/Editor for HighDefDiscNews
A quickly growing news site maintained by 2 folks who simply love film in ALL formats.

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#5
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Re: Comments on Panasonic or DTS presentation?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken_McAlinden
represented in the extremes by the lossless DTS HD MA and by the very low bitrate variant (cannot remember the name) that is intended for applications such as secondary audio streams on Blu-Ray supplements.

The low bitrate variant is called DTS Express.

BD-Live Tip: To save on storage space, always delete the BD-Live data for any Blu-ray rentals after you return them.
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#6
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Re: Comments on Panasonic or DTS presentation?

The highest praise that I can give the DTS presentation is that I dropped the $28 necessary to go get the BluRay of Shoot Em Up (the disk they demoed to us) and it's killing me that I'm not enough of a recording engineer to justify the $1500 necessary to go buy a copy of their DTS-MA encoding suite! Even if I DO know what an MD5 is =) I am severely tempted to get the $250 DTS core encoding suite tho, the demo that we were given was that awesome. Perhaps when I finally get that Mac Pro I've been thinking about!

As far as the Panasonic Demo goes, I really had no idea that PHL was so involved with mastering, authoring and encoding of Blu-Ray. The talk walked us through ALL of the areas they have their fingers in and it was really eye opening. I want to sincerly thank Panasonic for their donation of the BD-50 and wish all attendees the best of luck in winning it, it seems like the first deck that is a true worthy competitor the the PS3! As other attendees noted, its not clear if this deck has ANY on board memory tho, and it seems weird that a deck with this price point would require a further investment in storage to make profile 2.0 titles work and not support them 'out of the box'. Would like more info on that. Also, I had never heard of Profile 3.0 and cannot wait to get a BluRay Audio Disk 3.0 player in my next car! As someone who owns both SACD and DVD-A titles I say 'bring it on!'

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#7
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Re: Comments on Panasonic or DTS presentation?

What Ken said--that's a nice write up.

At the risk of being perceived as looking a gift horse in the mouth, if feasible perhaps in the future DTS could mildly lengthen the amount of time they allot for the structured group presentations (say, 45 minutes instead of 30?). It might afford Ronnie or whomever is presenting some latitude to not feel as pressured to hustle through the presentation as quickly and to be able to better respond to queries.

Additionally, I agree with Pat that we've all probably heard impressive DTS demos over the years . . . but personally I can never get enough. I've never seen such an encoder demo before and this was interesting, candid and novel to me. But a longer window of time for each presentation might afford time for listening to not just the rowse-the-troops, gunfire-laden film soundtracks, but subtler material as well. I would love to have heard one of those Surround Records classical titles with DTS-HD MA on that system they took so much time to set up.

I also want to specifically call out and thank DTS for providing beer, wine, other beverages and snacks. And pizza. It was either delicious foresight or a happy accident that the pizza was warm from having recently arrived from La Famiglia, too. Either way, thank you.

Re Panasonic:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sam Posten
As other attendees noted, its not clear if this deck has ANY on board memory tho, and it seems weird that a deck with this price point would require a further investment in storage to make profile 2.0 titles work and not support them 'out of the box'. Would like more info on that.

Per my PM to you yesterday, Sam, I think UltimateAVMag.com's review of the BD50 puts a pin in this issue. The player requires an SD card. It is not included in the box. Although I had already read the CNET and PC World reviews online before the show, that review just came to my attention and I read it after getting back home from Vegas. It adds to the small chorus definitively answering the question I posed during the q & a.

Props and much respect to Panasonic for, per Ron's comments, "bending over backwards" to accommodate us. Having said that, since the lovely Bhanu Srinathan was/is a PHL representative, we had the ironic circumstance of being able to look at and touch a BD50, located just behind a PHL presenter who couldn't speak to the questions some of us have/had about its local storage and availability for purchase.

Perhaps one way to handle this might have been for Ms. Srinathan to have had the business card of a Panasonic rep who could speak to those concerns available to give to interested parties. Or conversely, to take any HTFers e-mail address to pass along to the appropriate staffer.

Having said all that, thanks to Panasonic Hollywood Labs for making a representative available to speak to us, and thank you to Panasonic for both the DMP-B50 loaner and the one which was raffled to the lucky John Steffens.
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#8
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Re: Comments on Panasonic or DTS presentation?

Nobody beats DTS on hospitality at EMA or CES. Molly and her crew really set the standard in terms of treating visitors with consideration. The DTS folks were actually very interested in what we had to say about DTS and sound quality.

The other posts have covered the technical side of the DTS presentation in detail. All I can add is that it made me wish I was back in film school again so I could do a DTS soundtrack on my film projects. And those were the days of 16mm and Nagra recorders.
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#9
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Re: Comments on Panasonic or DTS presentation?

I have an update from Panasonic over the concerns raised in
this thread regarding storage on the BD50.

I have information from Panasonic that should address any concerns.
Additionally, Panasonic was concerned enough to provide contact information
in case any of you have additional questions.

Quote:
The subject of local storage in BD is pretty involved because there are different kinds of storage with specific purposes and was outside the scope of themy presentation at EMA. But I do want to clarify that although SD card is required to be present in BD-50 for downloading and storing AV content, it is not required for all Profile 2.0 titles. Downloading and storing AV content is just one of the many functions that is enabled by Profile 2.0. Profile 2.0 titles that download & display pictures or graphics stored on a remote server will function without SD card as these are stored in internal memory. Also, titles that save user preferences like audio/subtitle settings, game scores could use BD-50's internal storage. Multi-player games could be played without requiring SD card on BD-50.


Thank You!
Ronald J Epstein
Home Theater Forum co-owner
Email me at: repstein@hometheaterforum.com 
To View My Massive DVD Collection Click Here
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