Originally posted by: Atomic Playboy
Originally posted by: mugs
Originally posted by: fanerman91
Originally posted by: mugs
Originally posted by: destrekor
It sounds like it's going to be internal decoding for DTS-HD MA and DTS-HR. I'll be sorely disappointed if it's only bitstream, but I pretty confident it'll be internal decoding. And if that's the case:
YAY 🙂
edit: confirmed on the playstation blog, in one of the official comment answers to a question raised, that it is indeed internal decoding, so it'll output 5.1 or 7.1 PCM audio over HDMI. Sweet, as my receiver isn't HDMI v1.3 spec. But I'm going to LOVE this. Too many damned titles are DTS-HD MA. But now I won't care, and will be excited.
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OK, so I'm not much into home theater stuff... what you're saying is, previously if you were playing a BD movie with a DTS-HD MA soundtrack, it would default to some lesser audio format (like plain old stereo?). And now it will convert the DTS-HD MA so it'll work on receivers that don't support DTS-HD MA? That's good for me. I don't plan on upgrading my receiver anytime soon.
The PS3 can't do bitstreaming of any kind (as of now), ie, sending the DTS-HD MA straight into the receiver. The PS3 has to decode the DTS-HD MA into LPCM first, and then send the PCM audio over HDMI. So the receiver will always read PCM as its input.
(correct me if I'm wrong here) destrekor was worried that the PS3 would send the DTS-HD MA straight into his receiver because his receiver can't accept DTS-HD MA signals. It can only accept PCM signals. But since the PS3 has to send PCM signals, he's okay.
Previously, DTS-HD MA wasn't supported by the PS3. DTS-HD MA has the plain vanilla DTS codec (found in DVD's) embedded in its "core." I'm not sure, but I'm guessing that previously, the PS3 was forced to play the regular Dolby Digital track because it couldn't decode the DTS-HD MA codec and thus couldn't access the plain vanilla DTS codec. I could be wrong though. No matter what you were forced to deal with last-gen lossy sound, either regular Dolby Digital or DTS.
Of course the PS3 can only send converted DTS-HD MA through HDMI, and it can only send it in LPCM form. So your current receiver must support LPCM through HDMI for you to experience DTS-HD MA. Otherwise you'll be forced to deal with last-gen lossy sound, ie plain vanilla DTS or Dolby Digital. Both are still surround sound. If you don't have a receiver with HDMI that can accept LPCM signals, then either the update doesn't affect you or you now can play plain vanilla DTS tracks from Blu-Ray movies with DTS-HD MA (I'm not sure).
Hopefully that clarifies things. a little. Sorry for not knowing everything about the issue and still answering. Sorry if it confuses you more.
I'm sorry I asked. :Q But it sounds like your answer covered what would happen in my situation - I'll get plain old DTS through my optical cable, which is fine by me.
🙂
The simple answer is that the PS3 couldn't read the high bitrate DTS-HD MA audio, which ran at a ridiculous bitrate of 25 Mbps, so it would revert to DTS core, which runs at 1.5 Mbps. It's basically the difference between hearing an audio CD vs. a 96 bit mp3. Actually, it's not that pronounced, and most people will not be able to tell the difference in DTS core vs. DTS-MA unless they are really listening for it. But if you shell out $500 or more for a Blu-ray player, you want it to be able to play EVERY Blu-ray the way it's supposed to. Now it can. So the miniscule amount of people who actually have the equipment to take advantage of it can be satisfied (hooray for being a minority!).
Alright, let's clear this one up.
The PS3 can decode the high-end audio formats, which include:
Dolby Digital TrueHD
DTS-HD High Resolution*
DTS-HD Master Audio*
Uncompressed LPCM**
* - effective April 15th
** - This is already an uncompressed, 'non-encoded' native format that all HDMI receivers will see and playback. This is found in 5.1, 6.1, and 7.1 varieties. Best audio possible theoretically, but some have reported that TrueHD has sounded better, and can be the case is a disc has a DD TrueHD track that is 24bit audio, and the LPCM track is only 16bit. People have noted this with Spiderman 3, and really is subjective and unconfirmed. Expensive equipment or exceptionally great hearing will be needed to note the differences.
However, the PS3 cannot bitstream these files. What is the difference? Bitstreaming means it will send the audio to the receiver as encoded on the disc, and this is when you will see 'Dolby Digital ____' or 'DTS ___' on the receiver. Internal decoding, on the other hand, will take the audio and convert it into LPCM, which again acts as pure, uncompressed data, and the receiver will display 'Multichannel PCM' or something to that effect.
Also note, to receive multichannel LPCM audio, it has to be over HDMI. Optical cable cannot handle the bandwidth.
Previously, the PS3, when playing a DTS-HD HR or HD MA audio track, the PS3 would grab the DTS 'core' and decode that (if internal decoding is enabled) and send that to the receiver as LPCM. Now, the PS3 will be able to decode those two DTS-HD tracks and then send it to a receiver over HDMI as LPCM.
This is big news for BD fans, especially fans of Fox and New Line films, as they have only used DTS-HD MA for their audio, with no Uncompressed LPCM audio track. Some discs by other companies include an HD audio track and an Uncompressed LPCM track, most likely for those who have players that cannot internally decode the HD audio tracks, as well as having a receiver not capable of decoding those tracks (that is a feature exclusive to the HDMI v1.3 spec, so receivers without that version of HDMI cannot receive the HD audio tracks, which would mean no DD TrueHD or either DTS-HD track.
At this point, the PS3 is complete in terms of BD audio playback, except for those who feel wronged by no bitstream support, although the only difference is they would get the fancy DD or DTS logo displayed on the receiver during playback. All of the audio will playback in the quality stored on the disc.
For reference, DTS-HD HR and HD MA are extensions of DTS, but HD MA offers audio that is claimed to be an exact copy of the audio track from the film, just encoded in an efficient manner by DTS. The difference between HR and MA, is HR is designed as a more compressed HD audio track, with obviously a slight loss in audio fidelity. That core DTS track is a DTS 1.5mbps track, which is better than the standard 640kbps audio track that some DVDs featured.
I think that covered everything.
🙂
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