King Kong '05 is there supposed to be audio with the PIP? (1 Viewer)

I have a Panny BD-30 with firmware up to 2.6.

When I watch the beautiful new King Kong disc and assess the Picture In Picture stuff through U-Control it seems that there should be audio but I can't seem to access it.

There is a secondary audio button beside the remote's PIP button and I believe that is supposed to give you PIP's audio but all the PIP stuff on Universal U-control setup is assessed through the colored buttons instead of the remote's dedicated PIP button. I think that may be the problem if there is audio in the PIP content that is not assessable.

Anyone else have this problem?

It's not too much of a big deal since this PIP stuff is mainly culled from the special features of the previous King Kong DVD's which I have but I like to see if there is something I am doing wrong.

I think you have to switch to the lossless audio, on your Blu-ray player. Of course i am assuming you have it hooked up with HDMI, and using the HD audio. I am not, and i dont, so i dont have that little issue. But i read about it.

I have it hooked up through HDMI to the TV (which includes the sound I hardly ever use the sound on the actual TV). My main sound is from the stereo and 5.1 line analog outs (no decoding outside the actual blu-ray player itself)

Yea, but your using the HD audio, right? If you are, from what i read, you cant switch on the fly to standard audio options. Thats where the audio for the pip lives. Not in the HD audio. Switch the audio options on your Blu-ray player (not the disc, but the player itself), see if it works.

Go into your player's firmware and turn 'Secondary Audio' from 'Off to 'On'.

NOTE: If you are bitstreaming your audio to your receiver via HDMI you won't get the full TrueHD audio, but rather the "core" audio, on BD-Java programming encoded discs when Secondary Audio is 'On'. Most discs nowadays use BD-J programming. I find that the best thing to do is leave Secondary Audio 'Off' unless I specifically have a PIP track I want to watch, simply because I watch more TrueHD audio than I do PIP tracks.

Using the analog outs as I do, I probably can only receive the Core audio right now anyway. So, I will do as you suggest and until I get proper equipment to process the lossless audio.

No, analog outs will give you the full lossless audio regardless. However, you still won't get the PIP audio unless you turn 'Secondary Audio' to 'On'.

Really? That's nice to know. I was told elsewhere that 5.1 analog outs will not give you lossless audio even though it will play the particular lossless track.

Analog can if you set the player firmware to PCM and the player can internally decode TrueHD or DTS-HD MA, which the Pan 30 can.

That's great!

Yes, switching secondary audio on worked.

I don't think the Panasonic BD30 can internally decode TrusHD or DTS-HD MA. It can bitstream them over HDMI, but not internally decode them. The BD 50, 35 and 55 all can, but not the BD30.

You know what, I think you're right. It's the only one of the Panasonic players that can't do that.

Sorry for the misinformation. The principle was right, but the player is lacking.

But I'm glad I could help out with the PIP audio.

So, given my current setup, using analog outs, I can keep secondary audio turned on and it would make no difference in audio quality?

I only need to worry about it when I go to HDMI or bitstream?

Mike

Correct. Secondary audio only "dumbs down" lossless audio to lossy you bitstream over HDMI on a disc encoded with BD-J.

If you're set up over analog keeping secondary audio on will not effect audio in any way.

Thanks to this thread I learned how to get the PIP in KK's UControl to work (with audio that is). When I did get the sound working, when someone was talking in the PIP the voices were slightly distorted.

But that's not what is really bad about this particular PIP. With a decent commentary there is a commentary over most of the picture. As a result, I find myself listening to the commentary and usually I'm "out" of the movie. I am following the commentary and not the movie.

KK's PIP is so infrequent and because the Movie's soundtrack rises to normal when there is no PIP, I find myself following the movie, not the PIP. So when the PIP does pop up, it is interrupting the movie and is quite annoying (even though I've selected it). Combine that with the fact that for the first 15-20 minutes of using UControl, I didn't find it all that informative. At that point, I gave up.

To sum up, UControl--Yechh!