Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Xbox One as a Blu-Ray Player

Is anyone using their Xbox One as their Blu-Ray player? Have you done any A/B testing with other players (cheap or expensive)? What are the pros and cons of using a gaming system for this?

Thanks

The video quality is very good. I can't tell any difference between the PS4, Panasonic BD 55 etc. Load times are excellent as well and A LOT faster than the older BD 55 (to be expected)

The only issue (and it's a big one) is that it doesn't bitstream the Dolby and DTS HD codecs so I don't use it as a blu-ray player especially if I want to watch a movie in Dolby Atmos. The PS4 Blu-ray app has the ability to bitstream all formats, I don't see any options on the Xbox One except to bitstream regular dolby or DTS. The best and only real option under HDMI audio settings is the 5.1 or 7.1 uncompressed setting depending on your setup.

For the PS4 I use LPCM in it's main menu and in the Blu-ray app bitstream is selected. For instance when I play a game it's LPCM and when I watch a DA movie for instance it will say Dolby Atmos on the receiver display.

Does the Xbox accept IR codes? It seems like - at the dawn of the BluRay era - people were advocating use of game systems to play the physical media, but had to go to great lengths to integrate the commands into the rest of their stuff. I mean, *sometimes* I'm willing to have more than one remote if I don't have to use it very often, but our particular lifestyle (where gaming is not a central activity) wouldn't be amenable to the necessity of having remotes and game controllers laying around just so you can watch a movie.

Hey Tom

We think alike; that was one of the first things I checked out. The Xbox One does have an IR sensor on the front and codes for the Harmony remote. User reviews say it works fine. I do have a harmony at at home, so I'd have to set it up for Xbox One, then use it to teach my URC Customizer remote. A bit of work, but in theory it should work.

My receiver isn't Atmos compatible/capable. But True HD audio is important. Can you still get True HD audio with the Xbox one?

Thanks

Yes, you will get Dolby True HD or DTS Master Audio but the receiver will not display the codec. It will show as multi-channel PCM along with the Xbox One.

Sample rates are limited to 48khz. Any 96khz disks or greater will be downgraded to 48khz by the xbox one. There can also be issues with the 7.1 uncompressed setting when you watch a 5.1 movie (see avs forum).

OK, I get it. I was hoping to use the Xbox One as an all-in-one solution but it looks like there is still some way to go. Why MS doesn’t allow one of the most basic functions of any Blu-Ray player on the planet on their $400 plus flagship product is beyond me.

I also found out that even though Xbox One supports MKV files, it does not support MKV with DTS. My $100 LG BR player does this and could do it 5 years ago.

I could probably live with the first issue, but the 2nd is a major problem as 99% of all the movies I watch are downloaded MKV files and many, if not most are in DTS.

If it wasn’t for Halo…

The XBOX ONE does the decoding and passed the uncompressed audio to the receiver like BlueJays said. So you do get DTS HD decoding, but the problem comes into play when you want a receiver to DECODE the audio, and not just play back the already decoded sound from the XBOX ONE. The decoder in the XBONE and a receiver are not created equal though. Most will prefer the receiver doing the decoding, but it doesn't mean that the XBONE doesn't support DTS HD.

Last week here in the US you could upgrade from to a XBOX ONE and get $175 if you traded in your 360 at Best Buy (half off of a $350 bundle). This week it is $150 for the 360 at GameStop and you can use that towards an XBONE bundle starting at $350, OR a PS4. With the announcement earlier this week about the XBONE adding backwards compatibility with games from the 360 (rolling out this fall), some people may want to upgrade to the XBONE. It was kind of funny how Sony was totally shocked by the announcement. They were completely blindsided by it. Again, I just mention the upgrade deal for anyone following this thread and want to get the latest XBOX of PlayStation.

How would you know if it is decompressing the HD stream or if it's just not taking the embedded compressed stream instead.

Like DTS-HD Master Audio is a combined lossless/lossy audio codec so that it is backwards compatible with systems that does not support the HD.. but if Xbox ONE just decoded internally how do you know if you are getting the lossless or the lossy stream?

Making sure that the settings are correct?

I don't own an XBox One, so I just simply googled it. Lots of talk about it, and I remember seeing some responses right from Microsoft that it is decoding it internally and passing it on.

But, I agree that ideally you would have the option to internally decode, or pass the stream for decoding by the receiver/processor (and thus not only get *potentially* better sounding processing, but also the DTS:HS MA light on the front of the display).