Video Asylum

Posted by oscar (A) on October 14, 2007 at 17:23:58

In the midst of 2-channel audio heaven, there were a number of Home theater demos.
Sound Hounds, LLC (never heard of them, looks like a Colorado-based custom HT design/installation shop) had two rooms side-by-side. At least one of which included Halcro gear. Both rooms were trying to demonstrate the virtues of high def video and lossless audio and I managed to get some "confusion" and "not-quite-facts" being spit out by the reps. One didn't seem to be aware DTS HD MA was about to become a reality and seemed ignorant of Halcro's plans for DTS HD MA support with their processor (or they don't have any yet....).

A guy in another room seemed to pretend to think he was giving a DTS HD MA demo. Awesome stuff featuring Peter Gabriel in high def (A definite buy when it shows up on Blu-ray). At first, I thought he had some bleeding edge hardware to get excited about but it turned out to be the new Sony $500 Blu-ray player which I'm pretty sure doesn't support DTS HD MA in any form. I got him to admit it is was more likely the very good DTS 1.5 mbs core track we were hearing, not the lossless DTS HD MA. [But some have claimed high bit rate (1.5 mbs) lossy compression is indistinguisable from lossless audio; a "favorite" (?) and much abused topic of discussion on the AVS forum]

Another little tidbit, they claim Dolby Digital is "aware" TrueHD is not quite "transparent" to the source and is actively investigating the issue. Evidently word has gotten around with too many people wondering why TrueHD doesn't sound the same as uncompressed PCM.

They had the LG BH100 dual format player on static display because they couldn't figure out why they weren't getting 5.1 lossless from the HDMI connection..... They didn't think to try to use the analog outputs. Shouldn't Professional Custom home installers know what they are doing ?

(Both rooms were using 1080p Front projectors with screen sizes similar to my own. Crap, I need to stay away from viewing these displays because of potential of serious damage to pocketbook.)

I didn't hang around too long though. I had to chase down the folks I came with who wanted to end the show with an extended (but non-serious) demo of Acapella Triolon Excalibers ($170K). One of my favorites, but a better "bargain" might have been the funky looking MBLs (only $47K/pair driven by $100,000+ worth of electronics). Ear candy heaven but waaaaaayyyyyyy out of my price range ...