BD-P1400 Purchased late December 2007 DECODER capabilities

[Collectors Set]

Note that I am running the latest firmware update. On the box itself, it does say that the BD-P1400 is HDMI v1.3 compatible and also ADVANCED AUDIO: Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD.

I have gone through every page of my hardcopy instruction manual and its a bit "generic" in terms of nailing down and explicitly stating the exact type of specific internal decoding capabilities the BD-P1400 has. It does go into scenarios where if the receiver is not capable of a particular codec, that the BD-P1400 will either kick in bitstream or PCM mode. Since the player has never been hooked up to a real modern receiver, I have yet to discover this first hand.

Now if you go to the Samsung website at this very moment and pull up the specifications there or look up current reviews from CNET or Yahoo, according to all the information, the BD-P1400 can internally decode on its own pretty much anything including DTS-HD HR, but not DTS HD MA.

Taken from SAMSUNG website specifications

A/V Quality Dolby Dital Decoder Y
DTS Decoder Y
Dolby Digital Plus Decoder Y
DTS HD Decoder Y
Dolby True HD Decoder Y

So I am wondering if this only applies to the latest version of the BD-P1400 that was purchased say in the last month or whatever, or does it hold true for my model. If anyone out there is running the BD-P1400 with HDMI v1.3 especially purchased around the time frame as mine, please drop a word.

[sptrout]

The P1400 will bitstream all Blu-ray audio formats via a 1.3 HDMI connection, even DTS HD-MA, which was added with the first or second firmware release last fall. The P1400 will decode all audio formats to its 5.1 analog outout except DTS HD-MA.

I do not believe that Samsung ever updated their documentation (manual, box, etc.) when they added DTS HD-MA last year, which does make things a little confusing.

[Collectors Set]

Thanks sptrout - Also had one of the site gurus look into this and he said that the 1400 can only bitstream DTS-HD MA, so the analog 5.1 connection would not work for that format. It does appear to have internal Dolby TrueHD decoding along with Uncompressed PCM.

[sptrout]

I have had a P1400 connected via its 5.1 analog output to a Denon 3300 since September, so I am very familiar with the P1400's analog capability. Sure wish they could add HD-MA (analog out) with a firmware upgrade......

[Collectors Set]

Originally Posted by sptrout

I have had a P1400 connected via its 5.1 analog output to a Denon 3300 since September, so I am very familiar with the P1400's analog capability. Sure wish they could add HD-MA (analog out) with a firmware upgrade......

That would be really nice. How has that been working for you movie wise selection that is?? And what happens to your movie experience if you get a movie in DTS-HD MA? I just never paid attention to the audio codecs or the audio options portion of the movies menu because it never has pertained to me really for my setup until now.

[Collectors Set]

OK - now this is interesting. I dug this up in a thread from last year:

Originally Posted by dupong

I have a BD-P1400 player and an Onkyo SR-805 receiver and I have tested several movies with True-HD and a movie with DTS-HD MA, in PCM and Bitstream mode.

* The player can decode True-HD and transmit it in via PCM and Bitstream.
* The player can decode DTS HD-MA and transmit it via Bitstream but it won't transmit it via PCM mode

[sptrout]

Originally Posted by Collectors Set

That would be really nice. How has that been working for you movie wise selection that is?? And what happens to your movie experience if you get a movie in DTS-HD MA? I just never paid attention to the audio codecs or the audio options portion of the movies menu because it never has pertained to me really for my setup until now.

When a movie has DTS HD-MA the player decodes the "core," which is very good so I may not be missing much. I just watched "The Master and the Commander" last night and the "core" rocked the house (and I loss a couple more dB of hearing). This is one of the few movies that I have collected (DVD) for demos and I am trying to decide if it is worth buying the Blu-ray version now; probably not.

The main issues I have with using analog to my Denon 3300 is that there is very little bass management. The 5.1 analog input on the 3300 completely by-passes the bass management system so it is up to the player to duplicate all BMS functions, which it does not. A couple things missing are; 1) no speaker distance setting capability, and 2) no 10dB LFE boost that is applied in normal BMS. I have no choice but to live without the speaker distance settings, and the 3300 does allow me to adjust the audio levels on a per input basis so I was able to fix the missing 10 dB in the LFE channel.