You didn't jump in too early, you just picked up the wrong player.
Good Lord, at this point I wish someone would just tell me which player to buy -- I am at wits end as to what to do.
Upside: Magnolia A/V loves me (when I walk through the door they come running as if I was at Les Schwab Tire Center
); they let me take home the Denon BD 2500 BCTI to play with until Friday no questions asked.
Downside: I am basically a beta tester in regards to the feature set of this product they are selling.
I would much prefer a straight answer about $1000.00 equipment.
Good news -- the Denon unit is very well built and beefy weighing in at a good 5.5 lbs heavier than the Pioneer Elite unit:
Bad news -- this unit does not bitstream DTS-MA in 7.1 either.
In fact, no matter
what I did in the set up menu I could not get the Denon to shake hands with my Samsung display and I could "only" get it to output 1080p/60f unlike the Pioneer Elite unit which quickly and accurately detected both the 24f source material and the tv's ability to display at that refresh rate.
In addition, I could not get the Denon to output the entire DTS-MA bitstream either. Here is a pic of the 3808 receiving a 7.1 DTS-MA input during the New Line Teaser when the disc (both
Pan's Labyrinth and
Shoot 'em Up) is first booted up (sorry so blurry):
However, when the
actual movie is playing, the 3808 is clearly only being input a 5.1 signal (again, sorry so blurry):
I don't know what else to do except ask the advice of the only ones I trust:
you.
What player should I be interested in?
I am lucky enough to be dealing with Magnolia A/V here in Seattle; they have offered to do whatever it takes to keep my business -- even if that means swapping out my current player no questions asked 2 months down the road. The Pioneer tech I spoke to on the phone today reassured me that their new player out later this month can bitstream 7.1 DTS-MA, but I just don't trust these @$$holes anymore.
I don't give a rats @$$ about PIP director commentary or any other of the BS feature sets that profile 1.1 or 2.0 have to offer, I just want a functional BD player that supports all of the lossless audio codecs the way these @$$holes promised when they came up with this technology in the first place.
Is that too much to ask?
A footnote -- I just received an email from Pioneer customer support directing me to a thread concerning this issue:
http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=25776
If I have wrongly accused Pioneer and Denon I stand corrected; perhaps my vehement disdain should be directed at the disc authors, or the studios -- who knows? All I know is that I have blown $32 USD + tax per disc each on Pan's Labyrinth and Shoot 'em Up; the primary purchase impetus being the DTS-MA 7.1 soundtrack. As I look at it, they are all in bed together and should get together to resolve this or at least
be aware of the problem -- it's not like the consumer needs any more confusion to add to this BS format war/HDMI connectivity problem.
