"Waiting" on Blu-ray: My first 7.1 uncompressed PCM title! (1 Viewer)

[Paul.S]

Nice meeting you in Vegas, RAF! (I was the guy who asked both Nickerson and Graffeo about lossless support.)


Spill!

 

[Adam Barratt]

Bit-rate information can be found easily if you own an internal HD DVD drive, or one of Microsoft's XBox HD DVD external add-ons.


That's an easy one. Decoders for both TrueHD and PCM are everywhere, and TrueHD has widespread hardware and studio support. On the other hand there are no DTS-HD MA decoders, and even if there were the format offers no more than TrueHD or PCM right now, while taking a significant bandwidth and processing hit. In addition its biggest supporter, Fox, has vanished from the market meaning new software is now equally scarce.

DTS decided to create a lossless system by tacking a huge extension onto a lossy core that uses technology more than a decade old. This requires a tremendous amount of horsepower to weave together, and because of this core, even though DTS-HD MA is variable bit rate, a DTS-HD MA soundtrack can never use less bandwidth than the core itself. VBR TrueHD's bandwidth, on the other hand, can drop well below the MA 1509kbps core while remaining entirely lossless. DTS's approach is inefficient to say the least.

DTS should have started over from scratch and folded down rather than patching old technology to scale up. Scaling down rather than up is always preferable. But then that would mean considerable R&D effort and cost, without the ability to leverage an existing technology (as TrueHD did with MLP).

On an entirely different note, DTS continues to use the premise that more data equals better sound when advertising DTS-HD MA. This was a dubious claim on DVD with legacy DTS, but when talking about lossless on HD it's downright dishonest!

Adam

 

[Paul.S]

Thx for some of the 411, Adam.

I don't have either.

 

[RAF]

Of all the HD players I own in both formats (five if you include the two forthcoming that we got at EMA) the one that I like the best is, surprisingly, my PS3. When you hit the DISPLAY button on the remote you get excellent information bars (top and bottom - outside the 2.35:1 content areas in the bar bars) which not only gives you a complete time indicator - bar graph, current time and total time of the disc - but you also get full bitrate and type information for both the audio and the video! I wish that all players were so complete in this area.

However, this issue may be solved for me after CEDIA 2007. I've just received some advance information that at least some of the new AVRs and the Pre-Pro from Denon will display all this information (audio and video bitrates, etc.) from any source you feed into it so the information display will no longer be at the mercy of the capability of an individual player to show this. If it goes into the Denon then you can display this information regardless of the source. Needless to say, I welcome this trend.

 

[RAF]

??

How does one access video and audio bitrate information on the Xbox 360 HD DVD external add-on, Adam?

Thanks.

 

[Hartwig Hanser]

What happens when I have only a 5.1 setup and want to listen to the uncompressed sound? Am I just missing out essential information or is it compatible? I would be angry if I could not listend to uncompressed on those discs without having a 7.1 system (which would not work in my place).

 

[RAF]

I believe that if you feed a 7.1 uncompressed audio signal into a 5.1 audio system system you will still get the great sound, but with fewer channels. Remember, any surround system, if effective in recreating the original sound field, does not consist of constant sound coming out of all 6 (or 8) speakers. This is a common misconception when people complain that their surround speakers are not "working." The only thing you might miss a bit is some of the extra directionality of the additional two channels in 7.1 vs. 5.1. However, even that should be minimal since you still will have sound references coming from all around you in 5.1.

The bottom line (and the important thing here) is that what is fed to whatever number of speakers you have will be of much higher quality and that should yield audible dividends to even the casual listener. The only limitation is the quality of your speakers and of your electronics.

 

[CRyan]

Well back to this movie... What a weird sounding movie to say the least. Had a very similar sound to Napolean Dynamite... the voices are very "in your face" without any real crisp clarity or definition - And not much dynamic range involved - very planar even in scenes with "loud" music. Just kind of caught me off gaurd. Not to mention this title is fairly quiet even in the louder sequences.

I almost feel like I fell for a prank with this title being 7.1 It was, but certainly useless.


Oh and I was reminded why I dont like other people preparing my food!

 

[Adam Barratt]

Plug it into a PC then use a software player like PowerDVD Ultra to display the numbers.

Adam

 

[Hartwig Hanser]

Thanks for your reply, RAF. But some movies have single sound mixed only to the back channels, e.g. in the street crossing scene in Toy Story 2. Those kind of sounds are still reproduced in 5.1. when the back channel is done in a matrix configuration like in Dolby EX. In 7.1 uncompressed I would lose this sound, correct? A pity.

 

[RAF]

Thanks, Adam. I was specifically talking about using the HD-DVD add-on to the XBox 360 proper. Am I correct in stating that in that configuration you don't have access to audio bit rate information? I do understand that there is much more information available when using the HD-DVD drive in an HTPC.

All of this will be a moot point for me, of course, when I get my next Denon (either one of the new receivers or their new pre-pro after CEDIA when released.) It has been confirmed that the latest Denons will display incoming audio and video bitrate information on their new GUI - which eliminates the problem of not being sure what's being sent to the AVR/pre-pro.

 

[RAF]

Not sure, Hartwig. Why would 7.1 uncompressed sound compromise the back channels? 5.1 produces sound in the fronts and the sides. 7.1 adds the back speakers for further enhancement. What is sent back there depends on both the source material and how it's been mixed. I may have misunderstood your comment but wouldn't 7.1 reproduce all the 5.1 sounds PLUS some additional sounds (mono, stereo or matrixed)? Where would the loss of sound occur with 7.1?