Re: New Panasonic DMP-BD10a Announcement - $599 - 5 free BDs
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Originally Posted by Brian L
I believe that you have been mis-informed.
Certainly my A35 HD-DVD Player does all HD audio formats via 5.1 analog, and my Panny 10A does TruHD and PCM, just not DTS-HD MA.
Brian
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Hey, BGL. Agreed on Ken being misinformed (more on this later).
But, although I think the A35 can
bitstream all legacy and advanced codecs, the only advanced codec it can decode onboard is Dolby TrueHD. It can extract the core only from a DTS-HD
High Resolution track, but it can't do onboard decoding of a DTS-HD
Master Audio track. This is the case with my XA2 and I don't think I missed word of a firmware upgrade giving greater audio endowments to any third gen player, did I?
Toshiba HD-A35 HD DVD Player: Review by Chris Boylan on BigPictureBigSound
Ken:
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Originally Posted by Ken Arnold
{snip}
Dolby Digital/Dolby Digital Plus Decoder: Bitstream output using required HDMI™ connection.
Dolby TrueHD Decoder: Bitstream output using required HDMI™ connection.
DTS/DTS-HD High Resolution/Master Audio Decoder: Bitstream output using required HDMI™ connection.
So from everything I looked at (major name brands) this one seems to be the first to output HD audio through analog.
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I re-formatted the punctuation of the text you quoted from the manual to hopefully make it more clear. Where are you getting "HD audio through analog" from what you quoted? What you quoted states that the player will
bitstream--meaning it will pass a digital bitstream--via HDMI to be decoded "off board"/outside the player by a pre/pro or receiver.
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Originally Posted by Ken Arnold
Which leads me to a question - in the setup, for delay times, do you have to set ms or can you use distance (feet)? All the players and receivers I've owned use distance in feet or meters. I use an SPL meter for sound, but would have no idea (unless there's a chart) how to set delay's accurately in milliseconds.
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There is a chart on the mildy headache-inducing page 23 of the manual (under "Changing the speaker setting to suit your speakers") whereby you convert distance in feet to milliseconds to adjust delay time based upon where you have your speakers set up.
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Originally Posted by Ken Arnold
In all the places I've looked at specs on this unit, there's no mention of DTS-HD MA - is this an omission or is this format missing? Don't know how important master audio would be over DTS-HD...
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It's "missing" insofar as the player doesn't support it on an either bitstream or onboard decoding basis. We've been hoping for a long-rumored firmware upgrade in this regard, but I unfortunately think that ship has sailed. It's as important as the difference between lossy and lossless audio.
Paul:
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Originally Posted by Paul Padilla
The whole reason I resurrected this thread was for the 7.1 analog. Many units decode onboard, but not all do DTS-MA which it seems the BD10A doesn't either. I'm not likely to be able to update my reciever to HDMI any time soon, hence the yearning for this unit. What I don't understand is how so many units are limited to 5.1 analog but they have an additional stereo L/R. It seems like those outputs could easily be toggled to give the extra two surround channels.
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First off, I think it's a good idea in this sometimes-confusing mess to be precise. Let's make sure we're on the same page in terms of delineating legacy codecs (vanilla DTS and Dolby Digital) from next gen, the latter being what I think we're all most interested in. I therefore have to take mild issue with saying "[m]any units decode onboard."
It's closer to the mark to say that there are several HD DVD players that decode Dolby TrueHD onboard (it's mandatory in that spec), but there are not as many BD players that do, and even fewer (perhaps the Pioneer? anyone?) BD players that decode DTS-HD MA onboard. The BD50 will be the first to both decode onboard and bitstream both codecs.
I also don't understand your seeming fetishism of the BD10's analog 7.1 outputs.
Others can chime in with other titles, but in my entire (admittedly not huge) HDM collection the only titles I have with more than 5.1 aud tracks are
Waiting (7.1 PCM) and
Crash (6.1 DTS-ES). However, every Fox and MGM BD title I have sports a DTS-HD MA track, from
Die Hard to
Flyboys. Since you said that you, like me and many others, are less than interested in upgrading your receiver right away, there are a greater number of titles that will benefit from the BD50's onboard decoding of DTS-HD MA (and Dolby TrueHD) than will benefit from the BD10's 7.1 analog outs (and current lack of ability to decode DTS-HD MA onboard).
Unfortunately, we still don't yet know the price of the BD50, but if it is available for ~$500, are you really more interested in paying just $100 less than that (for a used BD10) to forgo onboard DTS-HD MA decoding in favor of the BD10's 7.1 analog outs (and DVD-A playback ability, which I don't think you've even mentioned)?
), fired it up and with only a few min. of set up was ready to go. My first impression was that is was a nice looking component and looks solidly built. Then I picked it up. This unit probably weighs half the weight of my Toshiba XA2 and does not have the solid feel of the Tosh, but weight isn't everything.
Yikes!!
