Making the jump to HD

David Lindon · 02-22-2007, 01:45 PM

I'm planning on upgrading to high def mainly for the improved audio and my plan is to get the xbox 360 add on HD DVD drive and add it to my existing HTPC setup. I plan to run the audio from my sound card analogue outs to my received (Denon 1803)
Are there any problems with this idea? Will there be any problems trying to run dolby trueHD through a sound card? I have the HDA Auzentech X-plosion (http://www.auzentech.com/site/products/x-plosion.php)

I've checked out some HD dvds and most only seem to have dolby plus not the full trueHD, is there going to be much of a difference between dolby and dobly digital plus to make it worth the whole idea?

Am I better off waiting for blu ray to drop in price is more DB titles have the trueHD option?

Tim Glover · 02-22-2007, 02:43 PM

That's alot of questions!

...regarding Dolby Digital Plus over Dolby Digital? To me, there is a noticeable difference.

Re: formats:....you just have to weigh the advantages and risks for both. Look at what films are already out and what's on the horizon. In a perfect world, there would be no format war or one can go with both like many here on the HTF have.

Good luck.

Neil Joseph · 02-22-2007, 03:11 PM

Dolby True HD is just one of 3 new sound formats on the HDef disks, the other 2 are dts HD Master Lossless and PCM x.1 (up to 7.1 that I have seen thus far). HD-DVD has a few titles that have DD TrueHD and as I am aware, Blu-Ray only has one, maybe 2 with this sound option. I do not know of any HD-DVD's with dts HD Lossless, or pcm x.1. Those two options seem to be limited thus far to Blu-Ray.

I kind of agree with the last poster and that is how I made a decision in which format to buy into because most of the titles that were available and were to come for me at least, were on blu-ray. For others, that may be hd-dvd. The other thing that was a swinging factor was to be able to take full advantage of lossless audio now on many titles using pcm x.1

RAF · 02-24-2007, 02:05 AM

I can't stress enough the remarkable difference in sound quality between SD audio and HD audio (assuming that you have a somewhat decent audio system and are not limiting yourself to a display's speakers.) The bitrate numbers tell it all. SD audio maxes out at around 640KILObps (usually much less than that due to space limitations on the SD discs) whereas uncompressed (lossless) HD audio codecs provide bitrates on the order of 5-7 MEGAbps! If you are familiar with the various bitrates available on iPods and Mpeg3 players you'll understand what I'm talking about. A higher bit rate (bits per second) results in a cleaner sound. Most iPods use bitrates of 192Kbps and while that's adequate for casual listening it doesn't translate well to audiophile quality sound systems. Imagine something with 10 to 50 times the sound resolution!

This is a significant improvement in sound and, to me, the most compelling reason of all (and the least mentioned except at places like here) to consider HD titles (both formats.) I'm finding that listening to "concert" HD discs (things like "Legends of Jazz," "Eagles' Farewell Tour," etc. etc.) are truly ear opening as well as eye opening experiences.

Neil Joseph · 02-24-2007, 03:09 AM

Legends of Jazz Showcase is one of my absolute favourite BR's because of the audio quality and the thing is, what I am hearing currently is the downconverted ddtrueHD. Man, I can't even begin to imagine the fidelity when I get the firmware update to hear it at it's full bitrate.

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