KnightRid wrote:
Only other thing is that most of the low cost receivers only do pass-through video and no audio, but as long as the optical or coax can do the true HD sound, I should be fine.
Mike
Til the money tree gets some fertilizer, i might have to just run the hdmi to the tv and the optical to the receiver - I know the receiver wont do hd audio, but if I do this soon at least it would work till I can get another receiver.
SPDIF, the TOS/LINK and COAX standard of transmitting audio doesn't support the HD formats. This is for two reasons, one being a microprocessor limitation in the transmission equipment. The other being a lack of HDCP or HD Copy Protection, a digital flag on the signal to allow a compatable device to decode the audio.
To do true HD audio you have to use a HDMI cable. Anything greater than HDMI 1.1 sould suffice as long as your player (in this case a PC I assume) can transcode the Dolby HD, TrueHD, and DTS-MA into a format known as LPCM. The receiver doesn't need to have the ability to decode the audio internally (a proces known as BitStreaming) if it has HDMI 1.1 or greater. It will simply take the LPCM/PCM signal and output it to the appropriate channel. This is a common work around for early receivers as well as the PS3 (which cannout output in BitStream).
I'm not going to go into the whole BitStream vs PCM argument here as it's a moot point. If you do enough reading on the topic you'll find people who are insistant that there is an audio diffrence between decoding on the player, and decoding on the reciever. This is false. It's like saying that a zip file opened on one computer will be diffrent than the same file opened on another computer then copied over a network. The data's the same. It's just who's unpacking it. There's a great article on it on Home Theater Mag's website as well as on AVS Forum.
On the subject of players, the PS3 is still the overall BEST BluRay player on the market. It supports BluRay Live, is constantly firmware updated to fix the BluRay Java glitches, and has by far the fastest load times. The only downside is Sony's moronic decision to use Bluetooth only as thier input signal. That means people with Harmony and other high end universal remotes cannot control the PS3 without either buying an BlueTooth to IR adapter or using the PS3's controller. If you're wanting a stand alone player, wait for the new Oppo Digital BluRay player that's rumored to be out before the end of the year. I know I am.
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