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In Reply to: RE: Sony had this great hope posted by DavidLD on September 18, 2007 at 05:02:39
I don't know what you mean about "accidently get a blu-ray player", since that's what the PS3 is, and in less than a year it already has a greater installed base than HD DVD...it's interesting how some people interpret solid first-year growth as "losing". Sony is looking a few yrs down the road and can afford to lose a year or two to X-box and Wii to come to market with the right product.
As far as source material and whether you really need 1080p...for the past 60 yrs we have been stuck with NTSC, an interlaced, low-res technology that is ready for the junk yard of the industrial age. Now we have an opportunity to choose the next technology. Carpe diem, friend. 720p may look fine, but are you sure you want to limit yourself to that when you can have 1080p? I myself watch blu-ray on a 720p plasma, but my next plasma will be 1080p and it will have a significantly better picture. No, resolution will not be the only reason, but it will be a reason.
I just can't understand people who would argue against better technology, better capacity, better resolution simply by arguing that it may not be visible or audible. Using your gear or my gear it may not, but that's the thing about new technology. Sometimes when you're on the bleeding edge, you are afraid of cutting yourself. Don't let that stop you from adopting the best format you can when you're ready to upgrade.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
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Which IMHO would be a very idea if I were Sony! :)
Actually it is a bit scary and while I have no specific stats to back this up other than reading through forums is that the PS3 (which would be regarded as a gaming console if a poll was done with J6P) may actually be more reliable as a BD player than the standalones at this point!
Bundling a game console with BD at this point hasn't exactly worked but that may be more still due to the price and the games not being all that great. But the PS3 is actually a very good piece of hardware for the buck considering the fact other BD player cost as much without half the features.
On another note and a horse of a different color, Sony tried to bundle SACD with DVD players and I'm not sure that went over well.
No "surprises" with PS3 this year. Of course, they have been know to deny it before it happens.
jack
No analog outs. One would need an amp with HDMI if I'm not mistaken.
Perhaps there is a workaround with switchers, bypassers, and the like but one needs to also get an audio upgrade IMHO than just a video upgrade for high def to be worth it.
There is a decent amount of PS3 games. The quality is being questioned for what has been released to date.
The player also allows for SACD, 2 channel and MCH. As a throw in, that isn't bad. Also, it's other capabilities puts it above standalone BD players in my mindset.
Unless you have a super-expensive receiver, it's easier to buy the Onkyo 605 ( <$499, Nebraska Furniture Mart) which has the HDMI 1.3x TrueHD and DTS HD MA and make someone else happy with your cast-off! This Onkyo got a very favorable mention in passing in the latest Stereophile.
BTW, even if Gefen made an HDMI-> high-def audio conversion device, it would probably cost almost as much.
As for 5.1 analog output, it's not clear to me whether the typical HD DVD / Blu-Ray player can output it's highest-quality audio in this manner, or whether the hardware is all that great-sounding to begin with. Someday when I've got nothing better to do, I will hook up my Toshiba HD DVD to the 2-channel system and see how it fares with music via the analog outs.
For better or worse, PS/3 defines the Blu-Ray state of the art, and if someone dares to add features that the PS/3 can't utilize, they've already lost most of their potential audience. Even things like B-D Profile 1.1: Either PS/3 will be firmware-upgradeable to support it, else that standard likely doesn't stand a chance. Either way, I'm covered ;-)
Last I looked. I didn't see the latest edition of Stereophile but it promised last month it would do a review of that AVR and I want to check it out. I cannot believe though for the price it would be anything else but entry level for sound quality.
I'm unsure about outputting audio through 5.1 analogs. I have no experience other than what I read on forums but it sure seems the audio signal is weak on most players utilizing this instead of going through coaxial or optical and just using DD or DTS for the sound. It may be these first gen players or the amp utilized though more so than the audio track one is trying to play.
We haven't actually seen companies dealing with higher end equipment dipping into high def yet so there isn't any real high quality out there IMHO!
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Figure that most upscaling DVD players won't output anything better than 480P through the analog outputs, and HD players typically top out at 1080i, and if you want 1080p, you are forced to use an HDMI connection instead--I wonder if they similarly limit analog audio output quality?
The built-in processing/decoding capabilities of mass-market players are rarely, if ever, as good as what you can get from a pre/pro, or even a good-quality HT receiver. This isn't so much a matter of the manufacturers "deliberately" trying to make things bad - it's more a function of the cost to engineer and implement. See my comments below regarding the TrueHD decoding capabilities of the Panasonic BluRay players as an example.
What I actually want to know is whether you get "full resolution" from the analog audio outputs, up to 24 bits? Because it's not generally the case with the video outputs which are deliberately limited, and not out of cheapness, but as a form of copy protection.
As to analog "resolution," there have been a number of low-end DVD-Audio, SACD, and universal players that don't output better "resolution" via the analog ports for DVD-Audio or SACD than they do for Redbook CD. Again, it's not deliberate, it's because of cheap/low-quality engineering and implementation.
Since those low-end players come from some of the manufacturers building hi-rez video players, it's reasonable to expect similar limitations - again, not "deliberate" in the sense that you mean, but because of cheapness.
The audio bitrate just went up significantly over DVD; how much R&D has gone into audio processing algorithms to handle 5.1/7.1 TrueHD or DTS HD MA or uncompressed LPCM ? And have the processor heavy hitters (e.g. Meridian, Lexicon, Levinson, Theta, Halcro, Classe et al) even started on this given the format war uncertainties ?
Neither my Toshiba HD-A20 nor Sony PS/3 even offers 5.1 channel analog audio, so an HDMI 1.3x-connected receiver or processor really is my best bet for surround audio!
Meridian should be intimately familiar with the TrueHD spec because they helped to develop it. But at the moment, they don't seem to offer a product that will actually process it.
I think I will not be shoveling many thousands of dollars into this particular hobby, because I'm not convinced that I need to in order to have a lot of fun. In the 2-channel world, I've already owned my share of Levinsons, ARCs, c-js, etc, etc, etc, so a lot of that whole "pride of ownership" business is mostly out of my system. And I got no problems with doing minor circuit mods to a Denon or Onkyo receiver if it'll get me to where I want to go.
from a Sept 2007 review of an Onkyo receiver on ultimateavmag.com:
"In addition to the usual multichannel Dolby Digital and DTS modes, the Onkyo provides decoding for those high resolution, lossless audio modes mentioned earlier if it receives them in raw bitstream mode. But none of the HD DVD or Blu-ray players available to me are apparently capable of sending Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio bitstreams to this AVR. We are still investigating why this is so at press time, but there is no indication that the reason for this failure originates in the receiver."
Onkyo told me they tested the Samsung BDP-1400 and it was successful.
> > Onkyo told me they tested the Samsung BDP-1400 and it was successful. < <
Maybe you should buy a Samsung then.
While there should be a significant difference with these new audio tracks, I do really think I was getting my hopes up too high at this juncture of the game regarding their quality given the first and second gen players and what processors are available (as I stated in an earlier thread).
I expect the audio portion of the new hi-rez video products, and the codec capabilities of receivers and pre/pros, to lag behind the video portion for a long, long time.
Less than 15% of HD DVDs have lossless audio tracks. Some will blame this on HD DVD studio indifference to lossless audio, but they'll have to start proving it's not a bandwidth limitation issue (and/or storage issue) by combining pristine video with lossless audio on their blockbuster releases.
The list of Blu-ray music videos with 5.1 24/96 lossless audio tracks is still fairly small but it's growing and the number of releases is a non-zero quantity unlike HD DVD.
Chris Botti, Dave Matthews, Legends of Jazz, etc. Have you done any comparisons with DVD-A per se? I wondering how the sound compares.
I'm more intrigued with high def because of the audio. The video is nice but if one is use to upconverted SD DVD on something like an Oppo, I don't feel there will be a large difference in quality with lots of these high def titles (ie. 1080i versus 1080p).
Maybe I'm getting my hopes up too high and perhaps the audio isn't a vast upgrade than what is on some of the better SD DVDs already released? Perhaps it is a matter of one's equipment to note a vast difference?
You'll definitely hear it between lossy DVD music videos and lossless HD media music videos. I don't have enough source material to make a real comparion between DVD-A and and 5.1 24/96 lossless blu-rays. I'd expect the same source material released on both at the same resolution will sound the same (TrueHD dialog normalization BS might screw it up).
Is "Immortal Beloved". The audio is something that needs to be heard from what I'm reading. Unfortunately, there has been a long wait on Netflix for this title. It looks like an outright buy if I ever would want to experience it in the near future.
Even with the new "approved" triple-layer discs, storage capacity may be up but bandwidth hasn't budged. It's also kind of interesting that Toshiba hasn't outright made a statement as to the ability of today's players to actually play triple-layer discs. You'd think that they would have tested this already. I guarantee that the line from HD DVD fans will be something along the lines of "Oh, well. That's the price early adopters have to pay. I'll just get a new player to play the triple-layer discs. HD DVD players are cheap, anyway." if those discs, should they ever make it out of the lab, refuse to play (thus rationalizing their "investment" and quietly dismissing the crap they threw at Blu-ray owners for purchasing -- incorrectly -- so-called "obsolete" Profile 1.0 players).
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