Video Asylum

Posted by Joe Murphy Jr (A) on February 03, 2008 at 20:39:40

In Reply to: RE: The PS3 has done wonders for audio in my HT system posted by Jazz Inmate on February 03, 2008 at 14:20:07

There are some people who believe that the HDMI 1.3 chip in the PS3 will some day be able to bitstream the advanced codecs: I'm not one of them. The design parameters of that chip (HDMI transmitter), which were released by Silicon Image, clearly do not include the bitstreaming of the advanced audio codecs: the later HDMI chip produced by Silicon Image, however, clearly spells out advanced audio codec bitstream capabilities.

DTS-HD Master Audio would be a firmware upgrade to the PS3, such that it would decode in software (the way the PS3 handles all audio) rather than a dedicated SoC (hardware) solution. The resulting multichannel PCM from the decode, up to 7.1 channels, would then be sent via HDMI to the receiver. I don't see DTS-HD Master Audio coming until after the PS3 is "officially" upgraded to Profile 2.0 status (probably Q2).

Since the PS3 is more-or-less Profile 2.0 right now, I don't see why SCEA can't include DTS-HD Master Audio in the next firmware update (provided the software decode version is available at that time).