Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Toshiba A30 and A35 HD player...differences?

I am going to pick one up tomorrow....whats the difference between these two? All I can tell from there site is the A35 has 5.1 analog outs. Thats just for the lossless audio right? If I also pick up a onkyo 705 can I save a 100 bucks and get the A30 and send it to the reciever throiugh HDMI nad let it decode? They both upconvert SD the same?

My understanding is that the main difference is the A-35 will pass through High Bit Rate Audio via HDMI so mthat the receiver can decode the audio. The A-30 decodes the sound and passes it as PCM. From what I read, the up conversion is the same.

Edit: I checked Toshiba's site and I am wrong about the A-30 not being able to pass the high bit rate audio. So apparently the only difference is the 5.1 analoge output.

The A30 does NOT pass high def audio bitstreamed (I own one). It has the physical capabilities, but I have not heard that players were yet allowed to do that.

The A35 and the recently released Panasonic BD30 are the ONLY two players that recognize and output DTS-HD-Master in bitstream format. Many other players, including the A30 output DDTrueHD and the rest of the formats.

You will need an audio processor with HDMI 1.3 and a decoder that will unpack the bitstream formats if that is the route you want to go. I'm pretty sure the 705 will do this.

To whether the A35 internally decodes all the formats is a question I can't answer because I do not have any HD disks with DTS-HD:M and I do not think there are any either…... The BD30 is targeting owners of HDMI 1.3 audio processors.

Interesting to know.

mdrew,

While the Toshiba HD-A35 apparently has the capability to pass DTS High Resolution Audio and DTS- Master Audio (along with DD+ and Dolby True HD) as undecoded bitstream through HDMI 1.3, fine print says "core only" for these latter two DTS formats. Since you have the A-35, could you please confirm if the player can pass the entire expanded codec or only the core DTS by bitstream through HDMI 1.3? Thanks.

John

I would if I had an HD disk that had DTS-HD:M. Do you know of any that I could order?

I'll also have to wait a few days to try bitstream as I am still using an HDMI 1.2 AVR. My 3808 has not been shipped yet.

I can tell you that the A35 does a wonderful job outputting DD+ and DDTrueHD as unpacked PCM. It even upsamples to 96 hZ.

You might get DTS-HD:M on Blue-Ray, but since all HD-DVD players must support DolbyTrue-HD at its max rating (24/192), I doubt you will see a lot of DTS on HD-DVD disks anytime soon or ever. You have more chance just waiting for the producers to allow players to outout DDTrueHD as bitstream.

I believe all of the music HD DVDs by Alexander Golberg Jero have DTS-HD Master Audio tracks. I could be wrong.

So I should get the 35 then? I just dont want to shell out the extra 100 if I dont need it with the 705. Future plan is to add a emotiva amp to the onkyo for a pre-pro. I just want the reciever to do the audio decoding so it can use its bass managment and all.