Dolby True-HD and DTS-HD (1 Viewer)

[Greg T]

According to this....the Toshiba HD-XA1 (at least the one being released in Japan) will not be decoding any DTS-HD....but rather converting that signal to normal DTS.

http://release.nikkei.co.jp/attach_file//0127465_01.pdf

 

[JediFonger]

just finished reading the latest copy of sound&vision. they mentioned that True-HD is capable of 14 channels total. the channels other than 8 spec'd are used vertically.

 

[Elbert Lee]

my belief is that the Toshiba players will decode DD Plus and DTS HD and pass them through its 5.1 channel analog output. That being said, i don't know if the first wave of releases are in any of these two new formats. Even if they were, i'd personally be disappointed because I have two surround back speakers and will lose that extra amount of sound fill behind the listening area if I chose to use the analog inputs.
EL

 

[Joe Schwartz]

I don't know about the capabilities of specific players, but Dolby and DTS have been recommending that HD-DVD and Blu-ray players should decode the new formats to 5.1 (or 7.1) PCM and send it digitally over HDMI. This should be supported by the existing HDMI devices, since it's PCM. (HDMI 1.3 adds support for passing the new Dolby and DTS formats *natively*.)

 

[PeterTHX]

Warner has "Phantom" in Dolby TrueHD. The rest are Dolby Plus.

I imagine this will be par for all HD formats, all in Dolby plus, some in Dolby TrueHD, a few in DTS-HD.

 

[JediFonger]

does anyone have new info on a/v receivers being able to decode these new formats?

 

[Paul.S]

It was my understanding--I think consistent with Tim's in his his post #3--that the HDCP-encrypted signal passed via HDMI is the only way to get Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD. Any other output, whether via SPDIF, analog multi or optical digital is 'legacy'/not HD. Half a cigar?

It's curious that HDMI 1.3 supports DVD-A/SA-CD, yet we've heard nothing of future (second gen?) HD DVD/BD players supporting those formats?

 

[JediFonger]

even if the HDMI 1.3 supports hi-res audio, music labels have all but stopped releasing music on SACD/DVD-Audio platform. after dark side of the moon, i've been waiting for the rest of pink floyd to come out on high-res. there's not been enough titles to make it stand out.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Don't worry. SACD and DVD-A can die completely because you can get lossless high-res music on BD and HD DVD...so any music studio could use those formats which will gain much more market acceptance and work in everyone's HD player (unlike SACD and DVD-A which worked in very few DVD players)

 

[Marc Colella]

I highly doubt the labels will use BR or HD-DVD for hi-res audio. The failure of SACD and DVD-A, and the enormous success of MP3s and the iPod proved that consumers don't care about hi-res audio.

I can only see hi-res audio being utilized through HD video concert DVDs... and even then it would be rare.

 

[Hartwig Hanser]

If you like classical music, SACD is far from dead. Each month dozens of titles are released, constantly additional labels (albeit small ones) offer their first SACDs, with more than 3000 titles the selection is not overwhelming, but enough to build a small collection. So, in this niche, SACD is almost thriving.

 

[Paul.S]

Thx, Hartwig. I've long since grown tired of hearing about the 'death' of DVD-A and SA-CD just because Umma Gumma is not on hi rez. As long as John Hiatt and, say, Telarc--the largest American classical record company--are doing hybrid SACDs, I'm in. Regardless of whether there are new releases or not, it would be nice to have a new HD vid player to replace my already-a-coupla-years-old Pio uni that also plays my hi rez aud library.

All this being said, per Marc C., the potential for hi rez music on, say, BD doesn't mean it's gonna actually happen: it sure would be nice if UMG gave some indication of what they had on their minds when they announced BD support.

 

[Shawn Perron]

I think he meant "dead" to mean to never exist in the average consumer's home. Sure SACD/DVD-Audio may linger on in small quantities catering to people that enjoy classical music, but classical music itself is not something most people listen to these days. The formats may not be dead, but they are certainly moribund.

There is definitely the potential for music companies to push out a product interesting to consumers utilizing one of the HD formats. But considering the popularity of DVD and the fact it was never really utilized this way to any great extent, I wouldn't count on it.

 

[Hartwig Hanser]

My personal opinion is, that HD DVD and Blu ray will also never exist in the average consumer´s home. The average consumer is not interested in quality, shown by the niche existence of SACD and DVD Audio. He/She will not be interested in HD video and DOlby/DTS-HD any more than he is interested in SACD and DVD Audio. All I personally hope for is, that HD DVD dies quick death and BLuray plays the role of SACD (or the role LD played in the 1990s).
The future will tell.

Back to topic, I hope for the use of Dolby/DTS-HD in opera/ballet/concert videos. Up to now I had to chose between lossy surround and stereo PCM, if at all.

 

[Shawn Perron]

While it may never be used as a HD player by most owners, the PlayStation 3 video game system is a full Blu-Ray player and may exist in more then 100 million homes if it acheives the same level of success as the PS2 (incidentally it also plays SACDs). Even if it's only half as successful as the PS2 and reaches 50 million homes, I'd still almost put that into average user territory.

While many people can't or won't distinguish between crappy sound quality and good sound quality (nevermind great), video definitely makes the improvement much more obvious. If you look at the number of people that paid big bucks for a display, but either never added a stereo to thier tv or bought a crappy home theater in a box, you can see this in action. Case in point, my father recently bought a $1500 37" LCD HDTV, but has no plans to buy a sound setup that will equal his video. My father, who never spent more then $500 on a tv in his life, convinced me more then anything else that HDTV is really going to take off. His plans for a killer sound system to match? none.

While I can appreciate the improvement in quality from HD audio, the amount of music available in it that I am intrested in is negligable. Where there is no content, there are no sales. Truthfully, the fact that people are impressed by mediocre car stereos should show you how important 96/24 was to most people.

 

[JediFonger]

i totally agree:

-Shawn

 

[Roger Dressler]

In case you want to know more about how the "core 5.1 mix" is prepared in Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD formats, a new paper was recently posted at: http://www.dolby.com/assets/pdf/tech...whitepaper.pdf

Regards,

 

[Manus]

" the PlayStation 3 video game system is a full Blu-Ray player and may exist in more then 100 million homes if it acheives the same level of success as the PS2 (incidentally it also plays SACDs). "

True but how many of those homes will actually be using the Bluray or Sacd functionality of their Ps3 s ????Similarly,lots of people are not aware they already own Sacds , they thought they bought CDs but it sure gives Sonys marketing gurus something to play with

Thanks for the link, Roger

~M~

 

[andy wells]

So the only way to get DDplus right now is to use the 5.1 analog connections on the player, correct?

 

[DaViD Boulet]

or use the decompressed LPCM via HDMI if the player supports it and your receiver can accept it.

Roger,

will Dolby be advocating for dialog normaliztion to have a default other than "0" for the new "high res" compressed signals on HD media? IMO the forced level-change/digital filtering that gets triggered by the dialog flag on current DD soundtracks is a key compromiser to the final sound quality...one reason I think that often DTS gets picked as the better-sounding result. I noticed that the DD DEHT mix on the Lion King DVD really blew me away...my impression was "Wow...that has the dynamics and realism of DTS". Then the audio mastering engineer told me that, unlike most every other Dolby Digital soundtrack mastered for DVD, he had taken care that the Dialog Normalization flag be set to ZERO for that disc. I'm thinking that it's not a coincidence that it sounds as good as it does given that bit of trivia.

(since dialog normalization requires the decoder to recalulate the waveform datapoints to perform level-adjustment prior to d/a, I'm convinced that the typical quality of amplitude processing is not transparent in most consumer gear...given that even "audiophile" software for the PC operating at 24/96 often degrades the sound when level-changing in the digital domain).