Quickie A1 audio question

[williamkmurphy]

Is the toshiba player capable of decoding all of the different audio formats that are supported to LPCM5.1 internally for transport over the HDMI port?

Also if I am using HDMI for audio can I make the player send DD5.1 and DTS (supported by receiver) in their compressed format and have the unsupported formats decoded in the HD-A1 to LPCM?

Basically use the HDMI port the same way that many of you use the discrete analog 5.1 outputs. LPCM has the same quality as the analog output, correct? Basically is it lossless?

Toshiba's specs seem to verify this, but I was hoping someone has done it.

I have triple BB reward zone points this week and I am thinking about pulling the trigger.

 

[Ilya]

I don't have an AV Receiver capable of extracting LPCM signal out of HDMI to confirm that, but according to the manual, the player can convert DD Plus to 5.1 LPCM over HDMI. And if I remember correctly it's 96KHz LPCM.
For Dolby True-HD, however, it can only decode two channels.

And yes, you can also send DD, DTS or even DD+ (but not True-HD) in bitstream form over HDMI, in case your AV receiver is capable of decoding these formats.

 

[jgantert]

DD+ over HDMI in bitstream form? Sure about that? That would be cool if true, then I could just upgrade the receiver whenever they come out and still have full DD+ sound.

-John

 

[Ilya]

DD+ over HDMI in bitstream form? Sure about that?

Ok, let me clarify that. Here is my present understanding. The HD-A1 manual does say (on page 59) that DD plus can be passed as a bitstream over HDMI. And HDMI 1.1 specification, as far as I know, indeed supports DD+ bitstream. (HDMI 1.3 specification adds support for Dolby TrueHD and and DTS-HD).

However, there is a catch: DD+ can only be passed as a bitstream if the source is true DD+. What we have with most titles today is so-called "Advanced content", where DD+ is intermixed with sound effects produced by the player itself (e.g. sounds when navigating through the menus). And this "Advanced content" can only be passed as DTS bitstream (or as 96kHzMulti PCM), according to the same page 59.

So, the more accurate answer is, yes, it is possible to output DD+ stream over HDMI from this player in theory, but most (if not all) titles available today would not allow that. At least that's how I understand it.

 

[jgantert]

Ah, I C. Thanks for the clarification.

-John