stupid questions about decoding

[Anarchist420]

1. are all Dolby True HD decoders the same? or are some better than others?

2. is there such thing as an NTSC decoder? If so, then did some older TVs have better decoders than others or were they all the same? And if some had better decoders than others, then why was that never mentioned in advertising?

 

[poofyhairguy]

1. are all Dolby True HD decoders the same? or are some better than others?

Dolby True HD is uncompressed audio, so any decoder should provide the same output which would be 6+ streams of uncompressed audio. The trick is that True HD can be decoded with open source tools, while the competitor DTS HD cannot be decoded with open source tools (but it can be done).

Overall though if you decoding a True HD track for anything but downconversion on secondary systems (like your media center in the bathroom or kitchen) you are doing it wrong. Optimally DTS HD and Dolby True HD are bitstreamed to the AVR which does the decoding.

2. is there such thing as an NTSC decoder? If so, then did some older TVs have better decoders than others or were they all the same? And if some had better decoders than others, then why was that never mentioned in advertising?

I think you are talking about deinterlacing. If that is the case, yes some hardware had better deinterlacing than other hardware and back in the age of analogue sometimes the better hardware advertised on that fact. Most consumers didn't care for the same reason most consumers don't care about the quality difference between a Netflix stream and a Blu Ray.

Very few modern sources provide interlaced content.

 

[LoveMachine]

Dolby True HD is uncompressed audio, so any decoder should provide the same output which would be 6+ streams of uncompressed audio. The trick is that True HD can be decoded with open source tools, while the competitor DTS HD cannot be decoded with open source tools (but it can be done).

This PoofyGuy generally knows WAY more than I do, but I thought is was the other way around. For example, DTS-HD can be passed through when converting using Handbrake, but TrueHD has to be converted to FLAC, because the developers would have had to pay Dolby a license fee. Work arounds exist, but because it's not official, there might be differences in how the audio is presented. Probably not relevant to the OP, but for my own knowledge...

 

[poofyhairguy]

This PoofyGuy generally knows WAY more than I do, but I thought is was the other way around. For example, DTS-HD can be passed through when converting using Handbrake, but TrueHD has to be converted to FLAC, because the developers would have had to pay Dolby a license fee. Work arounds exist, but because it's not official, there might be differences in how the audio is presented. Probably not relevant to the OP, but for my own knowledge...

We are on the same page.

The fact that Dolby TrueHD can be converted to flac is because open source decoders for TrueHD exist. For DTS HD, Handbrake can only pass along the untouched and undecoded audio stream because no good open source DTS HD decoders exist. You can convert DTS HD to flac (I've done it), but not without some closed source libraries.

So one thing is a technical problem (no good open source tools exist to decode DTS HD in software) and the other is a legal problem (Handbrake can include DTS HD tracks in their files because it was made part of the MP4 standard while Dolby TrueHD wasn't).

Honestly though, if you aren't bitstreaming these tracks to a AVR you are doing it wrong. Makemkv is a great product for ripping Blu Rays to single mkv files with the HD audio tracks included. If you want to re-encode after ripping (because 30+ GB mkvs can get ridiculous), then re-encode the video in Handbrake and then add the TrueHD track back in with mkvtoolnix. This "workaround" will give you perfect audio because the track straight off the Blu Ray was never touched.