Hello folks. I will be ordering my axiom speakers soon, so right now I got a little bit concerned about the blue-ray player Actually I use the one from my notebook computer, which also has HDMI outputs. Should I get another one or the one from my notebook will do just fine?

I would try that one first!

+1

Your notebook should work fine.

If you're set on getting DTS-MA or TrueHD then you will need a separate player though.

There's no reason to require bitstreaming of DTS or Dolby. As long as the player can decode all the formats into multi-channel PCM, and the HDMI interface on the machine can output that, you'll be getting everything you'd get with the bitstream, except for the light on your receiver. The sound quality is the same.

Yes, but not all HDMI ports found in notebook's or PC's support 8 channel LPCM, especially early ones.

And not every receiver treats bitstream'ed information the same way. For example, Marantz cannot apply Audyssey to bitstreamed high def audio.

So in theory, LPCM == bitstreamed. But in reality, other factors can play a role. This may also explain the never ending debate about "PCM/BS is better than BS/PCM!"

That's true, some older receivers didn't have the processing power to decode HD lossless streams, and apply room correction at the same time, but when fed an already decoded LPCM stream from a source they could do just fine. Also some receivers will not let you apply Prologic to DTS streams or the other way around, but allow either matrix expansion to be applied to LPCM.

As I've said, bitstreaming is a hack left over from Laserdisc days, it served its purpose, but it's time to go back to letting the player do the decoding, just as it does for video frames (your player doesn't send the AVC/VC-1 bitstream to the display, it sends unpacked frames).

Thanks for clarifying! The only thing I will need it a new DVD player though. Since I wanna get movies from US. ( which is much cheaper than Japan )

Japan and the US have the same zone code for Blu-rays, if you didn't know.

Hello ClubNeon! Thanks for the tip. I already knew that the only thing is that I was wondering about getting a region free DVD in order to watch the movies I have, this was my main concern. As for newer acquisitions I will definitely get BD from now on!