Will you rebuy your movie/TV collection in HD? - Page 3

Ummm...sorry Dave, but you can't. Don't forget the player's role in the process. IIRC, you own a Toshiba. It's decoding either Dolby True HD or Dolby Digital Plus, depending on which you select and re-encoding in DD or DTS (most likely), to fit over TOSlink. The Receiver is not down sampling anything. Instead, it's unwrapping either a Dolby Digital or DTS bitstream that was transcoded in your player.

If you heard a difference, there might be other variables to consider. For example, when you select DD+, the player is decoding, then re-compressing an already compressed soundtrack. Meanwhile, DTHD is only be compressed once.

Why not? I never said lossless compression. Here's an interesting thread discussing LPCM.

I voted that I would replace may favourites but even among them, the selection will be very limited. I'll limit "upgrades" to those films I feel will really benefit from the new formats: Star Wars, The Matrix, LOTR etc. I figure I will be in and around 20 odd titles I would feel worthy of an upgrade. Otherwise I'll just buy my new stuff as BR. My in-laws have nearly 8000 DVDs and my wife and I inherit half of them. Given this, we aren't really into buying movies. We do purchase TV series' that we know full well her parents won't buy. With the amount of tv/movie time I commit to, I would say I'm pretty close to halting my dvd/br purchases or at least limiting them to a few titles a year.

I want the Sopranos on BR...other than that series, I can't think of anything I am really itching for (though I am hoping the new Star Wars series is good, I'd buy that on BR).

I'm not sure what you're doing other then arguing over where the signal is being transcoded. Never once did I say a legacy receiver actually receives a TrueHD signal: it gets a DD signal that's an approximation of the TrueHD track (which is a seperate track then DD). Sorry, but I can play a TrueHD track over toslink and get a 5.1 DD signal on my receiver. My player tells me its playing the TrueHD track, and my reciever is showing a 5.1 DD signal....you want to tell me how that can't happen?? Now I realize it's not really a full and true "TrueHD" signal....but my point has been that it is a different source then the seperate DD track on the disc. My point is that it is a different track and is played as such....even on an older receiver.

From wikipedia:

"HD-DVD players can also transcode the TrueHD bitstream into a different legacy format (such as Dolby Digital or DTS), providing a high-quality approximation of TrueHD audio over a legacy TOSLINK cable for those that do not have HDMI."

My receiver is seeing just one bitsream.....does the player have some separate audio settings for decoding TrueHD vs DD? Maybe.....but it also stands to reason that the studio mixed the audio differently with TrueHD vs DD. Whatever is going on, Virometal, I can hear a difference with TrueHD over DD on a HD DVD...with my legacy setup. I'm not going to dump my very good Harman Kardon for a very cheap TrueHD reciever, when chances are I would still prefer the Harman Kardon. So these are the main reasons why I'm holding out for Harman Kardon to come out with TrueHD recievers

You said this:
"Content wise, 24 percent of HD-DVD's and 64 percent of BD's offer lossless soundtrack mixes via Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, DTS-Master Audio, or Linear PCM."

Your source also surveys LPCM as the main percentage of "lossless" for BD. Maybe I'm just picking on the fact that LPCM is not lossless, but uncompressed; the way you're trying to pick on transcoded TrueHD not being TrueHD :P

LPCM is lossless, free from loss. Linear PCM captures and encodes audio without lossy compression. I thought the linked thread was interesting - especially post #7 - not a source.

That track is not Dolby Digital. It is Dolby Digital Plus which is lossy and decoded then encoded in the player to either DTS or DD for S/PDIF output.

I doubt the mixer produced a master for encoding to DTHD with a separate master for encoding to DD+. However I can't discount it,

I love it....it looks like we like arguing for the sake of arguing LPCM would not be lossless, it would be lossfree!! If you take the definition literally, lossless means LESS LOSS. There's still some loss....just not enough to be noticeable. LPCM is an uncompressed digital representation. It's like the difference between JPEG vs TIF: one is a lossy compression, one is a bitmap image that transcribes out color values for each separate pixel. Now you can compress an image using advanced algorithms to have compression, but reduce the number of artifacts that come from lossy compression. Increasing size/bandwidth is the easiest way.



Dolby Digital Plus is mastered the same way as Dolby Digital.....it just has a higher bandwidth and can support some higher dynamics. And why wouldn't a studio mix their multichannel source for those "outdated" lossy codecs us Harman Kardon fans have to make do with? Studios would never tailor the sound dynamics to be optimal for auditoriums, TrueHD receivers that can support full 24bit dynamics of their original masters, or legacy digital receivers that receive 16bit audio and might do better with some compressed levels.....

Nah, it's like DD vs DTS on older DVDs. I noticed when DTS first came out, movie titles seem to really have different dynamics with DD vs the DTS track. It also helped market DTS recievers. But later on, without special edition DTS movies....I found some would wound almost identical with their DD and DTS tracks....from what I can assume as having optimal audio settings for both the DTS and DD encode.

Just because Sony is a larger corporation and has more money to throw around and buy those studios, it doesnt mean it will dictate consumers' choice. On the contrary, in the current American economy facing a recession, lower prices will dominate the market. Toshiba has made a very wise strategic move.

I highly doubt anything about the recession is anything more than financial analysts wanting to get air time. Consumer spending is up every month, always shocking all the "analysts".

I doubt any of this format war will have anything to do with the perception of a recession.

Not LPCM, that's PCM which is encoded losslessly by LPCM.

So the theory is that on one hand, studios use a different master to encode DTHD. On the other, they use the same master to encode DD+ and DD. Plus on early DVD's, the studios sabotaged the master for DD encoding to encourage DTS receiver sales. I wonder if Dolby knew since they are in competition with DTS.

LPCM is encoded much as the same way as PCM....there is no compression that is going on. They are both methods for sampling a waveform to bits. No algorithms for compressing storage space are used. What your above link mentioned was that audio engineers have to reduce the number of samples to reduce the size of a LPCM track:

Linear pulse code modulation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Have you done any video compression Virometal? If you have, you would notice that most programs let you adjust video and audio encodes to alter the quality (ie dynamics and color balance) for the final rendered, compressed format. Dolby and DTS are seperate schemes that have seperate licensing fees. Wouldn't it stand to reason that the studio would spend more time setting optimal audio settings if they had one audio track to output; vs having to focus on two....where the studio would focus on the one that most people are going to strive for (DTS and now TrueHD or DTS-HD MA)?

Anyway, I found this interesting article on the whole history of DTS vs Dolby (dated, but informative):

DTS, Dolby Digital and DVD: A History

LPCM also encodes the audio signal, and that it is why it is lossless. After decoding, the sampled signal is the same as before. Just because lossless is used as an adjective for compression, does not mean that compression must be involved. The two terms are neither inclusive or exclusive unless used in conjunction.

Pulse-code modulation

Would it not be possible for the studio to use the same master for encoding between formats? While DTS and DD are separate schemes, do they not use the same speaker configuration depending on version?

Thanks for the interesting link, and Happy Birthday.

Well if that was true....then why don't we call all PCM sources as lossless? CDs aren't lossless....even the wikipedia link on PCM says that Blu-Rays use uncompressed PCM. With normal video or audio compression....something is "lossy" if you are reducing the number of bits on a system that can regenerate those lost bits. In my years of graphics, I've never heard of an uncompressed system as being labeled as "loss" anything. If it's not a system that has compression, then you can have limitations from the amount of sampling or color space that's used....but that's something entirely different over compression. With those systems....it's all bit for bit.

To me, the best analogy might be older DD and DTS is like a 128kbps mp3. TrueHD or DTS-HD MA is like a larger FLAC file (which is another lossless file format). And then, if you had the space for all of it....you have PCM which is like CD (but with multichannel 24bit audio, you really run into bandwidth limitations).


The original source might be the theatrical master (which I notice a lot of time the end credits will list both Dolby and SDDS/DTS...can assume they do have separate tracks to support more theaters).....but the studio also has to make a separate master for the DVD or Blu-Ray. Compressionists have to adjust compression/ color range/ dynamics for each separate video and audio encode. There are many factors as to why each audio track sounds different: and it can't just be attributed to it being a Dolby or a DTS sound scheme.

I notice that link does go into some detail about the differences in dynamics with DD vs DTS. When encoding, there is a lot a producer can potentially do to enhance or totally screw up the quality of an image or sound. So with that....I'm going to call it a day. These are very minor points: whether you really want to call uncompressed lossless....how different TrueHD might sound to DD: even on a legacy system. I guess we can all agree that you should just stick with what sounds good to you. For me, I like the PQ of HD movies....and I'll bask in "complete" TrueHD glory when my preferred audio brand gets into it. I find HK to be more of my preference over Onkyo or Denon: and the receiver's tonality does so much more then what the receiver can decode.

Thanks for the Birthday wishes and I'll have another tech talk with you soon

its probably a recorded version, the film has a bit of grain and less black level than the dvd version it seem. i am not sure which is close to the original, i guess the dvd gets more post processing. but yes that is really convincing , the real res should be like 1920x1080.

Is it worth it? I've never seen anything in HD.

yes

I do not plan on buying very many high def movies on bluray (I own a PS3). I prefer renting movies from Netflix. However, I may buy a few favorites when they are released on the format.