I was enjoying it just fine before the patch at 5.1 DD.
now is even better so... lucky me!
Elite Only Passing Stereo PCM
- Thread starter flec04
- Start date
I was enjoying it just fine before the patch at 5.1 DD.
now is even better so... lucky me!
So people are complaining about the HD DVD addon not allowing uncompressed multichannel PCM pass-through? How is this news? I thought it was known back in the DVD days that any DVD player that doesn't have multichannel analog output cannot pass lossless audio such as DVD-A? So why is it suddenly a suprise that the HD DVD addon follows the same protocol? HD DVD movies don't use uncompressed PCM anyway it uses compressed lossless Dolby TruHD and DTS-HD MA. As long as you can decode one of the lossless audio codecs and transcode it to high bitrate DTS, what is the problem? This is how the lowend Toshiba players does it since it doesn't have HDMI 1.3 or multichannel analog outputs. What am I missing?
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Sure but the PCM isn't lossless uncompressed unless you're talking about only 2ch stereo. TruHD lossless compressed is decoded and transcoded by the player to DTS lossy compressed and passed onto a receiver which then decodes the compressed DTS signal. Again what am I missing? You cannot pass uncompressed lossless without 1. HDMI 1.3 or 2. mulitchannel analogs same reason why you can't play DVD-A on these players.
ALL DVD players can pass 2ch PCM through the coaxial/toslink, but that PCM is NOT lossless. That PCM is converted from lossy compressed DD/DTS to lossy uncompressed 2ch PCM. Again if you want mulitchannel lossless, you NEED to have either HDMI 1.3 AND/OR multichannel analogs. There is no way around that.
The difference with HD DVD players is that they can decode lossless TruHD/DTS-HD MA which obviously DVD players cannot do.
PCM = already decoded signal
Bitstream = undecoded signal
PCM can be derived from compressed signals like DD/DTS as well as straight uncompressed lossless like DVD-A. To pass straight uncompressed lossless you need to have one or both of the requirements listed above.
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Yes it is. TruHD decoded internally and passed on as 5.1 channel PCM via HDMI to a receiver (HDMI1.3 not required) IS lossless. It's bit for bit identical to the losslessly compressed TruHD stream onto the disc.
You're getting this VERY mixed up. DVD player cannot decode either since it's not part of the DVD spec. TruHD and DTSHDMA are ONLY part of HD DVD and BR spec thus it's important when players are discussed and determined which advanced audio codec in decoded internally.
here's a good thread on HDMI variants and advanced codecs:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=843845
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Does HDMI 1.2 pass any bitstreams except PCM, DTS and Dolby Digital?
Afaik it´s only HDMI 1.3 that allows the passing of all the new codecs to a reciever (not PCM but Bistreams).
Only HDMI1.3+ can pass the bit stream but if authored in advanced format using IME, very good chance neither side can have the bitstream passed onto the receiver since it'd have to decoded internally for mixing.
The importance of HDMI1.3 and receivers that can decode a TruHD and DTSHDMA bitstreams is minimal since your best bet is internal decoding and output via PCM at which point version of HDMI is mainly irrelevant.
Read FilmMixer's comments in the insiders thread and Kjack in the thread I linked. Internal player decoding will be the norm this generation.
That sucks, i hope they find a workaround.
Do you have a direct link, that insider thread is huge!
That sucks, i hope they find a workaround.
Do you have a direct link, that insider thread is huge!
Wait, they have to do internal decoding. Unless some of the AVR makers create AVR's that can take two or more separate streams of 5.1(movie)/2.0(menu sounds)/2.0(or 5.1 commentary) and mix them there.
AFAIK, there are very few BR movies that use the advanced content creation, so you wouldn't notice that stuff(commentary, PiP, menu sounds) not working.
What's wrong with internal decoding? This is all-digital afterall; bits are bits.
From an earlier post i made:
I think this is just putting to much into the hands of the players, things that belong in the Reciever or Decoders. I have yet to see a player that gives the same options as standalone recievers/decoders do. I just don´t see this as the players field of expertise, advanced discs my ass, i want controls and options that makes my movie experience better, not some "hot" new downloads.
Ohh and bits are not bits in audio, if you read some of the boards about downsampling/upsampling how different recievers/decoders handle stuff like EQ and Volume.. it´s a science
Your receiver will still be able to 'touch' the audio the same as before; I maintain that decoding on the player vs decoding on the receiver is immaterial - we're talking 1's and 0's here. So long as the data isn't traveling incredible distances over the HDMI cable, whether or not the signal arrives as lossless PCM or lossless packed should be transparent, and the receiver will work its magic all the same, without loss of fidelity.
No, there are things that recievers/decoders can do in the decoding part that is pretty much impossible to do afterwards. As i said, if the player can do everything a reciever can do it´s not an issue, but it´s just not very likely. But each to his own, i think it sucks, and i doubt that Sony can lift this job and supply a software player that will be able to touch the old school Decoders features. Maybe some insane high end players will end up doing it, i guess the next gen movies just got a little less fantastic and the advanced discs is limited discs for me..
Tkf, firstly - I readily acknowledge that you are twice the audio/videophile that I am, but you'll indulge me I hope in helping me to understand where the potential for problems lie.
Now... no doubt we can view something like LPCM and say, here we have good lossless audio. Assuming there's nothing to get upset over in the scenario in which the native lossless LPCM is sent to a given receiver, I guess I'm just having trouble understanding what the problem is with a losslessly compressed track - basically unzipped into what should be an identical LPCM file - being sent to the receiver as well. For the purposes of the receiver, is it not simply a lossless LPCM track that is being received? An additional question I would have is, what is it that these receivers are *doing* to the track during their decoding of the compressed data that you feel is irrevocably lost vs receiving what should be a bit-for-bit identical PCM signal?
Now... no doubt we can view something like LPCM and say, here we have good lossless audio. Assuming there's nothing to get upset over in the scenario in which the native lossless LPCM is sent to a given receiver, I guess I'm just having trouble understanding what the problem is with a losslessly compressed track - basically unzipped into what should be an identical LPCM file - being sent to the receiver as well. For the purposes of the receiver, is it not simply a lossless LPCM track that is being received? An additional question I would have is, what is it that these receivers are *doing* to the track during their decoding of the compressed data that you feel is irrevocably lost vs receiving what should be a bit-for-bit identical PCM signal?
I'm aware of the fact that DVD players cannot decode the avanced codecs hence my mentiion of that in my post. My point was the fact that's the only primary difference between HD DVD players and DVD players. However I was completely unaware that HDMI 1.2 could pass lossless PCM. I guess they added that to the HDMI spec to also benefit SACD/DVD-A instead of depending on mulitple analogs.
So basically the X360 Elite cannot at this point in time pass 5.1/6.1 lossless to a HDMI equipped receiver...big deal. Anyone who has the speakers and ears to be able to tell the difference between lossless and high bitrate DTS wouldn't be using their X360 for serious HD DVD movie watching anyway.
jamesnmandy
Newcomer
i dont know about you guys, but the audio portion of HDMI is useless to me and pretty much everybody else out there in normal surburbia, only people who spend so much time with a spectrometer or whatever to ever actually enjoy what they have will give a damn
i run a separate optical Toslink cable to my surround receiver anyways
who (besides that 1% who will never make an impact on sales, which is what drives things) is ever going to be able to tell you the difference between DD5.1 or DTS and DD THD and such....
i run a separate optical Toslink cable to my surround receiver anyways
who (besides that 1% who will never make an impact on sales, which is what drives things) is ever going to be able to tell you the difference between DD5.1 or DTS and DD THD and such....
I just don't see it. The top tier manufacturers have DSP programmers, sure. And they have their custom sound processing. But why would they choose to write and test custom decoding routines for each type of bitstream in order to implement some type of audio processing instead of writing one routine designed to operate on the already-decoded bitstreams, multichannel PCM sent from an external source and even analog sources.
Not only am I scratching my head to come up with some kind of benefit that could be achieved by processing a partially decoded stream during decoding that couldn't be achieved after decoding, but I expect any that there might be wouldn't be worth the extra effort involved. It just doesn't make any sense.
If you take a look at the old AC-3/Dolby Digital codec you will find there are more to it than just 5.1 tracks compressed. I haven´t burned an afternoon trying to figure out the the new codecs. http://www.dolby.com/assets/pdf/tech_library/18_Metadata.Guide.pdf
Is a guide to some of other stuff that is hiden in the AC-3 track.
I guess i´m just to picky, maybe the recievers will be able to take the PCM track, apply volume, eq and delay to each channel without screwing up the sound quality, i just doubt it.
That's pretty trivial actually. If everything is done in the digital domain without resampling then where is the problem. Why would you need to resample anything?
Sure, point me to some manufactor of Recievers that has this trivial thing done.
