I lifted it from the winter 2005 issue of The Perfect Vision, on the "From the editor" column.
I was shocked to read that DD5.1 has a tenth of the bit rate of CD's, which can be pretty lousy themselves.
This clears up an issue that was bugging me. I often felt that the shows I was able to watch using Pro logic II sounded better then DD5.1 on some DVD's and especailly on broadcast DD. Now I know why. My processor does a better job "artificialy" routing (and maybe cleaning up?) information to the various speakers. It would be nice if I could do a direct A/B comparison, but my processor locks me into DD when it's available.
For an IN DEPTH look at Blu-ray versus HD DVD check out the readers letters in the 8/04 issue and "Battle of the Formats" 9/04 issue of Widescreen Review. This magazine is, by far and away, the leading edge in what's going on in the surround world. Both audio and video.
I don't know if this is true or not, just read it on another forum by someone who had read the HDMI specs closely. He stated when audio is passed through the HDMI along with video, there is a restriction to limit audio quality to no better than the CD spec to external analog outputs including the speakers. This is another version of plugging the analog hole, so super quality audio cannot be redigitized . Hmmm!. This might come into play when the HD DVD gets here. OR HDMI switching receivers, OR maybe it is just wrong too.
Well, if it is true then all those new DVD players and pricey receivers with HDMI will be DOA real soon. No way the Dolby and DTS folks go through all that trouble only to have their new creations compressed back to the old way. I wonder if they will even allow DVD manufacturers to make the new HD players backward compatible with the audio?
I would imagine that you would need a DVI for the picture and a seperate 8.1 pass through for the sound, like they have now for SACD & DVDA. I could deal with those two connections as long as it isn't the six interconnects I need now for hi- rez sound. Then again, maybe they will come up with some new super connect that has enough juice to carry both the video and audio.
I was unable to find that discussion again about HDMI restricting analog audio outputs to CD audio quality, so this is just a "heads up" to watch for info.
It may pertain to restricting analog audio output connections in any device using HDMI input like on the back of a TV monitor or receiver/amp, AFTER the digital sound has been decoded from the new DD and DTS digital formats carried on the HDMI , but NOT the speaker quality you listen to.
I agree that it would be self defeating to keep people from listening to the High def audio while watching the picture. However since the whole idea of HDMI is copy protection by keeping the HD video in a "closed box", I suspect there may be a "pony in this pile" somewhere to block the user from making a high def recording of high def versions of the sound tracks, by restricting connecting to other non-HDMI devices.
