Prologic II revisited (1 Viewer)

[ChrisDixon]

GlennK,

I agree that ABC seems to be the best network in terms of sound quality (I watch Alias, The Practice, and NYPD Blue), but the dynamic range is still pretty flat.

Conversely, we watched Blue Crush on PPV (not one of the DD channels) last night. Not a bad "wife/date" movie, actually (good sound and er... eye candy for us guys). Anyway, the sound was surprisingly good in PLII. Lots of dynamic range, surround effects, and pounding surf filling the room during all the surfing scenes. Hearing this proved to me that the networks are still holding back.

I don't have an HD DirecTV receiver, but I do have an optical out, and listen in Dolby Digital 5.1 when watching HBO and some pay-per-views. My Marantz receiver always senses the 5.1 on those channels. Is there a Dolby Digital stream that I can get for the networks, or is it only available if you have an HD receiver?

Chris

 

[BrianAe]

I don't have a digital audio out from my older digital cable box. Do people think this will make a difference? What are other's experience with digital cable and sound quality?

 

[Andrew Pierce]

The sound quality on my cable box's digital out is far superior to the analog out on the channels with digital sound. The difference in dynamic range is night and day. The digital output has all kinds of dynamic range, the analog output, which is just downsampled in the cable box, has very little. The difference is so marked I would say that the cable box deliberately applies dynamic compression for people listening through low quality tv speakers.