Video Asylum

Posted by Joe Murphy Jr (A) on December 31, 2005 at 09:41:24

In Reply to: New Dolby & DTS formats.....what's brown & sounds like a bell? Borrringgggg! posted by suburbanDK on December 29, 2005 at 18:56:48:

DTS and Dolby have new formats that are backward compatible with the decoders in surround receivers/processors today. The new formats will not obsolete today's hardware or, more to the point, will not force you to upgrade your audio capabilities when they come out. The fact is, both new formats will allow you to get a lossy multichannel digital output via S/PDIF (TOSlink/coax) to your current surround receiver/processor just like you do today.

Now, to take complete advantage of what the new audio formats will offer, you may have to upgrade to a new surround receiver/processor. I say may because the players will probably do the actual decoding of the format to full-bandwidth uncompressed PCM, which would then be sent out via HDMI to a surround receiver/processor with an HDMI input. If that's the case, there are already products that can handle this situation if you want a digital connection. Many players, if not all, will also have 7.1 analog outputs that you can send to the multichannel analog inputs on today's surround receivers/processors. And yes, they will probably be able to convert that to a 5.1 output if that's all you have. Even a stereo output if you just want that as well.

If, however, the player doesn't do the decoding to PCM, then the stream sent out via HDMI will require that the receiving hardware be able to do the decoding -- requiring an upgrade over current technology for this capability. I seriously doubt this will be the exclusive case due to what I wrote above in paragraph #1. The players will have to do the decoding to give you the capability described in paragraph #1, but some players may give you the option to send out an undecoded stream via HDMI if you want to do the actual decoding elsewhere.