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08/21/09
08/21/09
Unless your rocking something truely impressive, with the receiver and preamps to back it up, theres no difference and this is just an attempt to slap one more checkmark to the box to make it seem better then the fatty ps3. Games, who cares about all that fancy codecs. Movies, thankfully enough I have a S350/550 to handle my blu-ray needs.
08/21/09
08/21/09
08/21/09
1) My understanding is that decoding of these formats has to be done *somewhere*, so it really doesn't matter whether it's done in the PS3 or in your receiver, it's just a question of which has the better decoder. No?
2) Right now, I have my PS3 set to output Dolby TrueHD and when I play a Blu-Ray disc, it says "Dolby TrueHD" on the receiver face. But this is not "real" Dolby TrueHD?
08/21/09
All this allows you to do is let your receiver do the converting instead of the PS3. Bottom line is, you get the same end signal no matter which component decodes it so adding this capability was somewhat pointless although nice because it lets the user choose which component does the decoding.
08/21/09
On HDMI 1.0, people defining the norm thought : including 8 audio channel at LPCM 24b/192kHz is enough for any situation. And it was true. Instead of having a cable for video (composite, S-Video or component) and one or more cables for the audio (stereo or 5.1 analog RCA or SPDIF in RCA or optical), you could have a single connection with the best quality in every domain, both audio and video.
Before HDMI, SPDIF in RCA or optical was great. Not because it was a lossless way to transmit the raw bitstream contained on the source material (this is was purists say) but because you could replace a cluster-fuck of 6 analog RCA connections by a single wire. With HDMI, you can go even further : you have a single wire for both audio and video. A dream come true.
But people started asking for the AC3 and DTS bitstream. Why would people ask that ? Any DVD player can easily decode those codec (at least AC3) and decoded audio could be send lossless in LPCM thru HDMI. Some crazy purists could claim that their very expensive AC3 decoder does a better job than the one included in the player but those guys could use the already available SPDIF output on the player to connect a gold-plated-unicorn-tear-washed optical cable and use their marvelous dedicated decoder. What people really did want is that the LED displaying AC3 or DTS on their HC receiver would light up. They did want the decoding to happend in the receiver instead of the player BECAUSE THE FORMER HAD A LED FOR IT.
The easy solution was to tell people to use a additional SPDIF connection from their player to their receiver. And this was not really a problem because early HDMI receivers were not able to read the audio from the HDMI stream anyway (those 8 great audio channels at 24b/192kHz) and still required a dedicated audio connection.
Then came the HD codecs. There are 2 important things to know with those codecs. 1st, they are lossless. That means that the output of the decoding is exactly the same as the input. That could also be described as : every output from every single decoder will all be exactly the same since they are all exactly identical to the original signal before encoding. So no purist can come and tell "my decoder is better than yours" because all outputs will be identical, that would be irrelevant. The second thing to know is that the raw data bandwidth needed to transport those HD lossless codec is higher than what the good-old SPDIF could do. The trick to parallel-wire HDMI with an optical cable can not be used in this situation. But, this is not a problem because, the codec being lossless, decoding it in the player or in the receiver would be EXACTLY THE SAME. With those 8 high resolution LPCM audio channels available in HDMI since 1.0, that should not be an issue. In between, HDMI came up with 1.1 and 1.2, supporting new audio features but those were relevant evolutions since DVD-Audio contains additional DRM data and SACD in not encoded in LPCM.
So far, receiver manufacturers were very happy with the release of new codecs. From Dolby ProLogic to DTS NEO:6, they were able to sell again and again new receivers to their customers. Now, with the 8 channels of decoded LPCM audio in HDMI, no one would never need to upgrade again. You would upgrade your player when a new media is available, supporting new codecs, as you need to by a BluRay player since your DVD player can not play Bluray disc, but you won't buy a new receiver since by supporting HDMI audio channels, it won't be obsolete. So they asked HDMI to include something 100% irrelevant : bitstream of lossless audio. That way, they can sell brand new Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD receiver, WITH 0% ADDED VALUE from a BluRay player and, above all, DISPLAY A CORRESPONDING LED.
All this, for a lossless audio format that won't give a single difference in audio quality. Worse : if the decoding is done in the receiver, the end user WILL LOSE FEATURES !
Let me get this straight : decoding HD codec audio in bitstream inside the receiver does not increase the quality and removes features. One more time : this "added feature" is only minus and no plus.
I already explained why this can not add anything since the codec is lossless. Now, I'll explain what features I'm talking about. In DVD, interactivity was pretty limited. You could display a static image or a dynamic video with a solid color overlay (menus) and jump from one video/image to another with actions (left/right/up/down/enter).
With BluRay, people decided to go a lot further in interactivity and included a complete java implementation inside the specs. With this, you could do modern stuff, like displaying your disc menu as an overlay of your movie, without stoping it. One feature is to play audio on top of the actual movie audio. This is used for menus clicks and pops but also for commentaries. The BluRay producer doesn't have to produce a gazillion of audio tracks for every single commentary, you just keep the initial movie audio track and mix in the audio commentary you wanted to include. Simple and neat. To do this, the player decodes the movie audio and mix the tracks. But this can not be done when streaming the audio track to the receiver in bitstream ! because there's no way to tel the receiver : "hey, get those 4 raw streams, this one is mp3, this one is AC3 and mix them together". You could just provide one single audio stream : raw or 8 tracks LPCM. Providing the complete mixing process over HDMI would make it a complete nightmare to describe in the protocol and receiver would need to be very very complex and thus expensive.
So bitstreaming hidef codec introduced in HDMI 1.3 is only here for receiver manufacturers to sell you a new set with a dedicated led.