I've been holding off on a bluray player because I can't yet afford an HD capable receiver. I am wondering if I could still benefit from upgraded video by picking up a player for my HTPC and living with downgraded audio.
Do bluray discs contain regular 5.1 tracks for those that cannot decode HD audio yet? If I can maintain my current sound quality and upgrade the on screen image it would be worth it. Unfortunately this HTPC protected path stuff is quite convoluted.
My current setup is an older based on a Gigabyte GA-MA69G-S3H mobo with hdmi 1.1 out to the display and optical out to the receiver.
My concern is that the I will be forced to use the on-board graphics chipset to down-sample the HD audio stream and that may not work so well.
Can anybody here enlighten me??
If your receiver has analog inputs and you buy a Blu-ray player that has analog outputs and decodes the formats DTS HDMA and Dolby TrueHD internally then you are covered for the lossless soundtracks. This is what I do with my Panasonic BD55.
And yes Blu-ray disks contain both the standard soundtrack as well as the lossless soundtrack.
The mobo does have analog out, but if I go this route I am forced to go through the onboard graphics and it will downsample to 16 bit before sending it to the analog outs. I do not think there is a way around this.
Sounds like I can continue to do optical out though. Thats good news.
What player did you end up going with?
I use the Panasonic BD55 for Blu-ray/DVD and it is awesome. The new OPPO Blu-ray player has all the bells and wistles as well and will fit anyones needs. There is a big thread on that model here.
Oops, just realized that you are using an external player. I am looking at an internal drive for my HTPC
Fred, yes the Blu-ray discs contain audio tracks besides those using lossless compression. These are at a higher bit rate(640Kbps)than the DD tracks(448Kbps)on regular DVDs. It's been discussed here a couple times, but if you haven't studied it, the
Home Entertainment Magazine tests , blind and otherwise, done last year should be read. The bottom line was that the difference between the higher rate DD tracks and the HD tracks was so small as to be inaudible in most cases. So, if you want to go that way, don't worry about the audio being "downgraded" to a significant extent if neither your player nor your receiver can decode the HD formats.
Thanks John. I do remember reading that now. My main concern is avoiding audio reprocessing by windows. It looks like an ATI Radion 4650 and bluray player will do that.
Following up at AVS forum it looks like Asus is still the only company out there that is able to provide protected path audio. If that new Oppo bluray player was a little les expensive I would just give up on the idea of an HTPC. Its a great idea, but I suspect content providers are so paranoid the don't really want it to become a reality.
Isn't a new MOBO, video card and BR player for a PC, nearly the same cost as the OPPO?
Oppo BDP 83 = $600 cdn
BD drive + Radion 4665 = 205 cdn (don't need a new mobo)
Considering I still need to upgrade my receiver, its not worth the difference to me right now.
I missed the part of your original post about your present mobo. IIRC, I have the same one in my son's PC.
I think I would just keep saving pennies till I could afford the Oppo and not bother with the HT PC, then all you have to do is upgrade the receiver
"I think I would just keep saving pennies till I could afford the Oppo"
Three times the price, but how much do I gain? I don't own any DVDs, so scaling is not a major requirement. SACD would be nice, but its a dead format. Johnk pointed out that the differences between HD audio and the compressed stuff is not that large.
For me, it dosn't seem worth it. Am I missing something?
If you're using a 4650 (or any modern 4xx0 series radeon) you do get the HD formats over the HDMI connection on the card. If I follow right, you don't have a receiver that does the decoding, though, right?
Good point Fred, I don't think you are missing anything as you are looking to use the higher bit rate compressed audio sent out along the optical out and not the HD Audio signal.
Yup. No HD decoding capability. Thats the 'in stages' part.
So you are saying that the 4650 would do HD audio passghrough?? I thought that DRM policy restriction would not let HD audio off the disc unless it verified protected audio path. I find this stuff confusing.
It appears to me that the 4650 does do HD audio as it looks for the DRM handshake, Ken seems to think so as well.
Yes, the 4650 does do HDMI, so by definition it does HDCP.
OK, according to
this AVS forum thread the 4650 will bitstream HD over HDMI (whatever that means).
In another interesting twist, it looks like some of the players will send the audio stream through the windows mixer (where it gets downsampled/mangled) rather than forwarding to the receiver for decoding. Sigh.
On the upside, If I really really want direct access to the HD formats FFDshow seems to be able to bypass AACS/DHCP and slysoft is working on an audio player.
What fun.
Fred, you might want to look at this forum that CB919 mentioned in another thread. I only just started checking it out, but it seems to have an incredible amount of info there. This section seems like it would be just right for your questions.
Maybe worth a look.
http://forum.blu-ray.com/forumdisplay.php?f=35This thread looks like it would pertain to your questions:
http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=99689
Fred, I thought only the Xonar card was a "one cable" solution. Are you saying that the 4650 will allow you to send BD video and HD audio over one HDMI cable?
Until my beer calls me, I sometimes read through the AVS "Building a HTPC" thread. I remember reading that you can get HDMI bitstreamed audio from a Nvidia 8200+ mobo and HDMI video from a separate Nvidia video card. That's a "two cable" solution, but I think it "works".
If you get this all figured out, make sure you let me know
You are (edit: almost) correct Tom. Its so damned confusing!! I rechecked the table in the AVS forum link i gave above and it will only bitstream DD and DTS over HDMI.
Edit: The 4 series ATI cards will do downconverted 16 bit 5.1 and 7.1 LPCM [sometimes]. You really need to read the table in the link I gave you. Downconversion is forced when PAP is not present.
THe Xonar is the only one cable HD solution. From what I read last night, the Xonar has its own driver related (read HDCP/PAP) issues.
I am quite certain that the Studios don't want anybody playing anything on their PC... ever. You don't even see any product anouncements for future support of PAP (protected audio path).
Tom. I suspect if you drink enough beer my post, and this topic in general will start to make more sense.
Thanks for the links papad. The responder in the second link is mostly correct. He fails to mention that when the HD track is decoded on the video card, it is also downsampled. Whether or not you and I can hear the difference is another question.
Yes, Fred, I am going to try the beer solution soon.
I went around on this topic about a year ago, and it doesn't appear that any of the significant problems have been addressed yet. This really is one of the more frustrating show-stoppers relative to convergence. I've been holding off on buying a BD player hoping for some progress, but it doesn't seem imminent (at least in my price range). I'm going to go post in the Oppo thread now.
I guess all this frustration might be a good reason to just buy an Oppo or much cheaper BR player, I saw the Samsung BDP1500 on sale for $198.
So does the Oppo have 7.1 channel analog outs? This is the one thing I need since my Denon AVR4802 doesn't have HDMI connects. I can run the HDMI directly to my TV for the picture quality, but I'll have to buy a player that decodes the new formats internally and sends it via analog outs. If the Oppo does this, then I'd say it's the player for me.