high def format questions

[indcrimdefense]

i finally purchased a pioneer elite 1140 in july & have started looking for a new dvd player, as my dvd6 only will output 480p. was going to buy a cary audio dvd7 or a 3930ci to use as a dvd player until the high def formats have a little age on them & the new release of the next gen players settles down a bit. have read about all that i can about the high def formats, & still a bit confused on the audio capabilities of the various players. will any player, either on the market or being released later this year, fully decode dolby HD & DTS master audio & output over the analog connections? from what i have read there is no player currently available which will do this. in the last stereophile issue there was a review of one of the pioneer elite bd players, & if i recall correctly the player would play but not fully decode at the full bandwidth at least some of the newer audio formats. from what i have read, only the denon 3800 will both fully decode both dolby hd & dts/master & will also send them via hdmi w/o conversion to pcm. is this accurate? the improved sound quality for movies, & the current players inability to decode at all or to fully decode the new audio formats has been my main reason for delaying in purchasing a high def player.

additionally i have not seen rave reviews for the upconversion of standard dvds from that many of the hd or bluray players, with the exception of the 2nd gen top of line toshiba.

my pre-pro (cary cinema 11) lacks hdmi inputs, although the new cinema 11v video processor was displayed at cedia, which apparently will accept hdmi 1.3 & appears to decode dolby hd & dts/master & send to the cinema 11 via this weird connector specific to the cary cinema 11. for anyone who attended cedia, do you have any more information on the new cinema 11v, as i have only seen brief blurbs about it elsewhere on the web, & there is not even a product listing on cary's website for the 11v.

 

[j_garcia]

I believe all players with multichannel analog outs will decode the new formats, in some cases it is the only way to hear them. If not, many discs include a lossless PCM track that can also be sent via analog. For Dolby True HD and DTS-HD, both can pass their "core" in 5.1 via optical or coaxial digital from any player, essentially a downmixed version, but it still sounds very good.

Actually, the lowest model, the Toshiba A2 is often praised as a very good upscaling DVD player.

 

[fmw]

additionally i have not seen rave reviews for the upconversion of standard dvds from that many of the hd or bluray players, with the exception of the 2nd gen top of line toshiba.
.

I've gone through the trouble of testing this to some degree. I won't bother you with the details but here's my basic response.

TV upscaling. In other words, no upscaling until the SD signal reaches the TV set. Poor on my TV (LG LCD.) Your TV may upscale better than mine but mine doesn't do an adequate job.

Receiver upscaling. Output 480 from the player and let the receiver upscale to 1080p. On my receiver (Onkyo 605) this is execellent and very effective. The difference between it and the TV doing the upscaling is obvious. Any difference between it and the players handling the job is not obvious.

Player upscaling. I tested the following units that I own or have owned - JVC 480 player without upscaling, Pioneer Elite DV46 with 1080p upscaling and HDMI, Oppo Digital 980, Toshiba A2 HD-DVD and Sony BD-S300 Blu-Ray player. I tested these by connecting them around the receiver directly to the TV. The Pioneer was the weakest of the lot but not by much. The Oppo, Toshiba and Sony all performed about the same to my eyes. The Toshiba, of course, outputs 1080i so the TV still has some work to do but the results from these players are so similar that I would call it a tie. I suppose it is possible that the higher end Toshibas do a slightly better job but I would bet it is subtle and would require you to view closer to the TV than you should be in order to distinguish the differences.

I still have the Oppo, Toshiba and Sony units. I can't see any difference between them on SD DVD's. I view their performance with SD DVD's to be in the area 90% or a little better when compared to HD discs. I use the Oppo most of the time for SD DVD's only because it boots so much faster than the HD players.

My advice would be not to invest too much concern on upscaling when choosing a good quality player. My suggestion is the differences in performance are subtle enough to be unimportant.

 

[indcrimdefense]

thanks for the responses & advice