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Wow, cant believe that the studio did this...

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    Wow, cant believe that the studio did this...

    I bought a copy of the Transporter on Bluray the other day. I have the Panasonic DMP-BD10A and B&K Ref 50.
    I normally listen to movies through the Digital Coax cable from Panny to BK since I like the sound better.

    The movie started and I looked over to my BK and it says Pro Logic II. Im like wtfizzle?
    I forgot to look at the back of the BR disc and the only english recording is a DTS-HD mix. That means that I have to use the 6 channel analog out unless I want to listen in French or Spanish (both in 5.1 Dolby Digital)

    For me that is fine since I have the 6 channel analog out going to the 6 channel in for the B&K. But what if someone doesn't have that option (like a PS3) or if their preamp or rcvr doesnt have a 6 channel in?
    They are stuck with a 2 channel PCM mix for the whole movie!

    I have no idea why they didnt also include a standard dolby digital or DTS 5.1 track on the bluray since I am sure they had to have extra room on the disc.

    So for the Vudu, what is the stance on the uncompressed sound track recordings? it doesn't have a 6 channel analog output so I am guessing that it will only be standard DTS or DD mixes.
    Is version 2 of the hardware going to support this?

    #2
    Re: Wow, cant believe that the studio did this...

    Unfortunately, not every title is available in DD5.1. Vudu has to deal with what the studios give them. I imagine that HD movies when available will all be available in 5.1, but that is a guess.

    The 6 channel output is a good suggestion. I'm sure that's the sort of feedback they are looking for in planning hardware rev 2.

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Wow, cant believe that the studio did this...

      If the movie had a DTS-HD soundtrack the audio should be passed out the HDMI connector. You would need a receiver that has a DTS-HD decoder built in to here the soundtrack in that format. I do not know if Vudu will have any movies in that format but it should be possible to pass the sound out the Vudu's hdmi connector.


      Visit the 5 Star Cinema

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Wow, cant believe that the studio did this...

        Originally posted by kmulder View Post
        If the movie had a DTS-HD soundtrack the audio should be passed out the HDMI connector. You would need a receiver that has a DTS-HD decoder built in to here the soundtrack in that format. I do not know if Vudu will have any movies in that format but it should be possible to pass the sound out the Vudu's hdmi connector.


        Visit the 5 Star Cinema
        I'm not sure about passing DTS. DD5.1 is definitely passed through the HDMI cable as it is how I have things set up. There's some audio preference settings you need to tweak in order to have DD5.1 vs. PCM output through HDMI, but when you have it set up right it works very well.

        Given that DD5.1 seems to be the biggest standard in HD broadcast content at least, I've got a feeling that it will be the dominant audio standard on the Vudu. I haven't seen any DTS tracks yet. The biggest issue is what Vudu gets as source content both in terms of video and audio quality. I expect this to get "gooder and gooder" over time...

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          #5
          Re: Wow, cant believe that the studio did this...

          Originally posted by kmulder View Post
          If the movie had a DTS-HD soundtrack the audio should be passed out the HDMI connector. You would need a receiver that has a DTS-HD decoder built in to here the soundtrack in that format. I do not know if Vudu will have any movies in that format but it should be possible to pass the sound out the Vudu's hdmi connector.


          Visit the 5 Star Cinema
          I dont think HDMI v1.1 supports dts-hd over the hdmi connection.

          plus my pre-amp (B&K ref 50) doesnt have Hdmi inputs/switching. there still isnt any real preamps that do hdmi switching.

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Wow, cant believe that the studio did this...

            Originally posted by NA9D View Post
            Given that DD5.1 seems to be the biggest standard in HD broadcast content at least, I've got a feeling that it will be the dominant audio standard on the Vudu. I haven't seen any DTS tracks yet. The biggest issue is what Vudu gets as source content both in terms of video and audio quality. I expect this to get "gooder and gooder" over time...
            see my response above. It isnt just a firmware update. They have to update that actual hardware.

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Wow, cant believe that the studio did this...

              Originally posted by Rob Dizzle View Post
              see my response above. It isnt just a firmware update. They have to update that actual hardware.
              OK, yeah, over HDMI you'd need new hardware - interesting.

              But the Vudu does have an optical and coaxial output so you could theoretically get DTS via those ports. Howevever, looking at the specs on the box on the Vudu website, it only mentions DD5.1. Would be nice if it supported 6.1 as well, but it seems 5.1 is a pretty dominant standard right now.

              Still, folks, if you want a feature - make the request. Vudu is very attuned to customer input. Maybe it won't be in rev 1.0 of the box, but perhaps if enough people want DTS support it is something that can be added whenever the next hardware upgrade comes along. I have no idea what is planned but it never hurts to ask.

              Jon

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Wow, cant believe that the studio did this...

                We encode all our movies using DD+. Output wise we support DD (up to 5.1), stereo PCM and analog stereo.

                As stated before, we rely on the studios for the audio data that we get (and I also hope that all the HD titles will have 5.1).

                Since we can't support DD+ over HDMI our output is limited to a maximum channel configuration of 5.1 (that is what DD supports).

                ...hope that clarifies the audio output options/restrictions.

                Hagen.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Wow, cant believe that the studio did this...

                  Not really...

                  Are you saying that HDMI only supports DD5.1?

                  And what is DD+? Why doesn't HDMI support it? Could higher DD formats be supported then over optical or coax?

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Wow, cant believe that the studio did this...

                    Sorry for the probably too short version... So here is the long story:

                    We us Dolby Digital Plus (DD+) to encode the audio for all our movies. We will encode whatever audio we get from the studios (right now it's either stereo or 5.1).

                    HDMI in general can carry Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Digital (DD), other Dolby Digital flavors, multiple channel PCM audio, different flavors of DTS and other forms of compressed audio.

                    Different HDMI devices might support different types of audio. Recieving devices (e.g. TVs, AV recievers) report to a signal source what formats they support (and quite a few of them lie about it, but that's a different storry). Also different versions of the HDMI standard support different audio types.

                    The VUDU box can only support Dolby Digital and stereo PCM over HDMI. We support the same audio formats on the coax and optical S/PDIF audio outputs.

                    So for the surround sound output on our box we transcode DD+ to DD (at 640 kb/s). The transcoding is well defined by Dolby and is also being tested as part of the Dolby certification process.

                    I'm not 100% sure what happens when DD+ content with more than 5.1 channels (DD+ supports up to 13.1 channels) gets transcoded. I'm assuming that the extra channels will be downmixed into a 5.1 channel configuration.

                    Let me know if you have more questions,

                    Hagen.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Wow, cant believe that the studio did this...

                      So basically, DD+ is your container format but what goes in to the encoding and comes out of the box is DD. There is a 6.1 channel Dolby format that is essentially matrixes the rear channels to create a back channel. I believe it is DD-EX. Not too many movies use it but it would be nice to see it used on Vudu since to my understanding it will play as standard DD for receivers that lack a DD-EX decoder.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: Wow, cant believe that the studio did this...

                        Looking through the documentation it doesn't look like DD-EX is supported in the DD+ to DD transcoding process. But I'll check with Dolby about that...

                        I also read up more on the case where DD+ has more than 5.1 channels and the transcoding to DD in that case.

                        The DD+ signal for channel configurations higher than 5.1 channels contains a 5.1 downmix of the multichannel configuration. It also contains extra data to recreate the additional channels. When the signal gets transcoded to 5.1 channel DD, the transcoder has only to work with the already existing 5.1 channel downmix. And it does not have to do the downmix during the transcoding.

                        If my explanation makes you look like this then you might want to check Dolby's website. Since they invented it, they might also be better than me in explaining it.

                        For our box it would make sense to support DD+ via HDMI with higher channel configurations in the future. But that might require new hardware...

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: Wow, cant believe that the studio did this...

                          Check out 15 on the DD+ Faq http://www.dolby.com/assets/pdf/tech...DDPlus_FAQ.pdf
                          You should be able to encode a DD-EX stream. The output will still be a 5.1 DD stream over SPDIF but a receiver with DD-EX will be able to decode the rear channel signal.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: Wow, cant believe that the studio did this...

                            Thanks again for bringing the EX issue up. Dolby also told me that the EX flag should be preserved during transcoding.

                            Unfortunately we don't get much information from the studios regarding the audio streams that we get with the movies. So, right now we don't know if the 5.1 signal is EX encoded or not.

                            But we are working on figuring that out...

                            Hagen.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: Wow, cant believe that the studio did this...

                              Its pretty easy to figure out. There is a list of DD-EX movies here.
                              http://www.spannerworks.net/reference/10_9a.asp

                              If you have one of these movies and play it with a digital feed to a receiver with DD-EX capablity, the receiver should normally identify the EX flag and will display that it is decoding DD-EX rather than just DD.

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