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In Reply to: RE: As prices come down on the PS3 & more blu-ray games and movies come out, that hope will come to fruition posted by Jazz Inmate on September 18, 2007 at 17:29:39
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.
Follow Ups:
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!
.
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.
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