Dark Knight audio problems (1 Viewer)

[CptGreedle]

I am an avid Blu-ray fan, very active in the Blu-ray.com forums.
However I have run into an issue that no one there seems to be familiar with.

I got The Dark Knight as a Christmas gift, which is awesome. However, once I started to watch it, I noticed that the sound went out about 9 or 10 times during the movie. I did indeed change it to TrueHD in the beginning of the movie, but for some reason, the sound just goes out during the film!
I have determined that the sound goes out at specific points during the movie. If I watch it many times, it always drops at the same points, if I stop, back up, and re-watch the scene, it drops at the same points! I found that if I pause it, and play it again, the sound is back, although I don't know if it will come back on its own or not.
Talk about embarrassing. Here I am bragging about how awesome BD is, and then my sound keeps going out on me while I have guests over to watch it!
I even went so far as to return the movie to Amazon and get a new copy, which ends up doing the exact same thing. I did not go through to see if it occurred in all the same placed, but it did in at least 2 scenes.
I even tried watching it in the default Dolby audio, and (assuming it was indeed on the default audio), it still seemed to drop the sound at the same point.

A summary of my system: PS3, HDMI cables, Yamaha HTR-6090, Sony Bravia, Polk Subwoofer (new), JBL speakers.

Is there a bad batch of these movies, or a problem with some systems reading the sound? I just don't know what to do now since I already exchanged the disc for a new one!

Anyone else have this happen to them?
Thanks for the help.

 

[Carlo_M]

I'm going to guess there's something wrong with your hardware, because if there was a bad batch of these, it sold so many copies that the 'net would be abuzz with glitch reports.

I also use a PS3 (2.53 firmware) and have watched this movie a half-dozen (yes I'm that big a fan) with the TrueHD track and have never had a dropout. I have my PS3 decode the soundtrack and send LPCM to my Pioneer VSX-03TXH.

Have you tried to reinstall your PS3 firmware?

 

[Christian Preischl]

Have you already tried to play the film with the "Focus Point" feature activated to see if the drop-out happen whenever a focus point is available?

 

[CptGreedle]

I have not tried the focus point... not even sure what that is, I assume it is an extra that runs while the movie is playing.
I will look at my PS3, but I know it has the latest firmware upgrade. I will try to reinstall it, but I am not exactly sure how to do that.

I'll let you know if there is any further success or not.

I was afraid it was my hardware, but I have since watched Hellboy II, Horton Hears a Who, Animatrix, Batman Gotham Knight, Wall-E, The Incredible Hulk, and more all without any problems.
If there is something wrong with my system, I have no idea what it could be! Perhaps a small batch of these has an error that only a few people notice, since I did hear some people on Amazon report having similar problems, but not many.

 

[ToEhrIsHuman]

Yeah...you neglected to mention your PS3's firmware version in your initial post. My guess is you aren't up-to-date @ v. 2.53. I have had no problems with the audio on this title on my launch PS3 60GB.

PlayStation.com

 

[CptGreedle]

Well my PS3 has not requested that I update, and usually it does when i access things like Home.
I will check again, but I am pretty sure I updated it not that long ago.
If it is the problem, then great, but otherwise, there is something els going on.

I will check later tonight, just to be sure, but I am pretty sure it is up-to-date.

 

[BrettB]

Apologies Captain but I couldn't find the TDK review thread so....

TDK blew up my parents center speaker. At first I didn't really think too much about it as the speaker (Boston bookshelf) was pretty old but after thinking about it I thought I'd ask around.

During the huge explosion (some sort of ceremony?) the center bought the farm. The thing that's got me wondering is that the speaker made popping sounds. It sounded like a string of Black Cats going off. We rewound ;-) and watched again and it sounded exactly the same.

I've seen the threads about other discs and 'popping' sounds but have never experienced any of those. Just wondering if there was a similar 'popping' problem with TDK. It seems strange as the very quick popping sound isn't what you'd expect with an explosion.

 

[CptGreedle]

No popping sounds. Everything sound great when the sound is on.
But it just goes all the way out.
I just got a new subwoofer from Polk, but that is the only thing I changed to my system and other movies don't seem to go out so it is unique to this disc.

The speakers are not blown out, I don't normally play things that loud, although my old subwoofer did die on me (hence the new one).

Well, I will try a few things tonight, like the firmware, HDMI connections, etc, but I don't think I will make much progress.

 

[CptGreedle]

I ran some tests on my system on this...

First, I want to say that I tested ONLY the first 6 minutes of the movie, the first IMAX scene.
During the movie, at exactly 3 minutes and 38 seconds, the sound drops out, just as the bank manager is yelling at the robbers, shooting at joker.

I tested all the audio options on the movie and this is what I found:
* English TrueHD - sound drops
* Enlgish Dobly 5.1 - sound drops
* French 5.1 - sound does NOT drop
* Spanish 5.1 - sound does NOT drop
* English with actions spoken (2.0) - sound does NOT drop.

I also tested the signal and the connections and even tried hooking it straight up to my TV.
What I found here was that I could ONLY listen to the movie in stereo (no surround sound at all), and that the TV would not accept any signal besides a stereo one. So I had to change my PS3 sound settings to match this (automatically), and I got sound with NO DROPS. All audio works fine if it is decoded into stereo.

I also watched all of The Matrix, also from WB, also in TrueHD, with no problems. Clearly TrueHD runs fine on my system, as do other WB titles.

It seems to me that when it is decoded in surround sound in English, I get sound drops. Otherwise it does not drop.

I could not test this on other systems, and I could not get ahold of any rental copies of TDK either.
Anyone have a phone number I can call WB at? Cause right now it looks like their discs have an encoding error to me...

 

[Clinton McClure]

Once again, what firmware version is your PS3 running?

I am not familiar with that model Yamaha... Is your PS3 bitstreaming the audio to the Yamaha to be decoded there or is the PS3 performing the decoding and sending LPCM to the Yamaha?

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

The PS3 does *not* bitstream the lossless formats. It converts all of them to M-PCM for HDMI output.

FWIW, I'm still using v2.3 software (from early summer I think) for my PS3 (40GB version) running HDMI just for the audio into my Yamaha RXV663 and did not have any sound problems both times I watched the rental copy from Blockbuster. I did experience dropouts during the live chat event w/ Chris Nolan whenever he got disconnected and reconnected, but that's about it (and was probably normal for something like that).

_Man_

 

[CptGreedle]

I thought I already mentioned this but...
I am running the latest, 2.53, on my PS3.

I never said the PS3 streams TrueHD or DTS-HD MA. I already know it doesn't. The PS3 can stream only PCM and will convert all other HD/lossless formats into PCM before streaming that. It decodes/converts all those formats internally so it is NOT my receiver.

I did finally get an email from WB about it, and I gave them my address. They said they will send a stamped envelope to me so i can return the movie to them and they will exchange it for me.
We'll see what comes of that.

 

[Brandon Conway]

I'm thinking it was simply a bad disc. The case is so isolated for such a significant and highly sold title on too prominent a player to be an across the board authoring issue.

 

[CptGreedle]

Only problem with that is this is the second disc from Amazon with the same problem (in the same place).

I think this was a bad batch of discs but there are very few complains. But at least 2 discs I have had both from Amazon have had this problem.

 

[Mr. Film]

Remember me? And mabye you just have a bad disc.

 

[CptGreedle]

Maybe, your name is familiar.

However, I JUST got the stuff from WB to exchange my disc for a new one. I will fill this out tomorrow and mail it off Monday. I just hope that this doesn't take too long. And that it works out in the end.