Shades of Blu - October 2006

[JTK]

Wow, great write up!

Who do we send the check to?

[hmurchison]

Not too shabby Josh. I give this a 4 Paws up review!!

Hmmm by next summer if the PS3 is readily available I just may partake in the $499 model.

[zombie]

Very nice posts, Josh!

Luckily, there is a bright light in the distance, and we are soon going to find out if it is a candle or a chandelier.

LOL!

The last quarter of the year is going to be an exciting time, to say the least

It certainly is!

[Jazar]

Bravo I must say. Excellent summary. It's so frustrating to be on the edge of Blu-ray's initial launch stumble but the future is almost here. October will probably not yield much new info (so frustrations will raise higher still) aside from more titles announced and maybe the Samsung firmware update. November is definitely the month to watch like a hawk though with the Dual layer discs, the other CE's players and the PS3.

[Blue]

I would be adding some sort of by line and maybe a copywrite tag as I would not be suprised to see this pop in all sorts of strange places. You have put in the work (excellent indeed) you deserve the credit as there are plenty out there prepared to take it for you. Great work.

[Marwin]

Great stuff, looking forward to more issues

[4K display]

Well done Josh, Well done.

[Wendell R. Breland]

Great post Josh, easy to read and informative. And it is great to see readers recognize hard work and give thanks!!

[JimPullan]

Fantastic Josh !! A lot of hard work went into this, precise and accurate. Job well done. I look forward to future installments.

Jim

[iceman]

nice article indeed =)

[Longshot]

Great work. I'd say Blu-ray had a very good September!

[BTBuck1]

Nice recap!

[vick vega]

in reguard to Eight Below I have a Siberian Husky and I must say they are great dogs! Very loving. She used to pull my niece on a sled when my niece was younger.

[theknub]

huh?!?

i agree with you though

______________
yes they are. i have an almost 10 month old puppy. fantastic dogs, just very stubborn andlots of energy

[Bullseye]

This if very useful information. Thanks for posting this.

[Treknology]

All titles will feature 1080p MPEG-2 video encoding and DTS-HD Master Audio lossless audio track (with a secondary Dolby Digital 5.1 track).

Does lossless audio mean it will be up to SA-CD standard?

[Josh]

Originally Posted by Treknology

All titles will feature 1080p MPEG-2 video encoding and DTS-HD Master Audio lossless audio track (with a secondary Dolby Digital 5.1 track).

Does lossless audio mean it will be up to SA-CD standard?

No. SACD has a massive sample rate. Lossless means that no audio quality is lost during the encoding process.

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by joshd2012

No. SACD has a massive sample rate. Lossless means that no audio quality is lost during the encoding process.

For audio the most common form of digital audio is PCM, there are others PWM, PAM, PDM, pulse count, etc.

SACD in turn uses delta-sigma modulation in the raw therefore it must use a high sample rate (≈ 2.8MHz). It is difficult to mix, eq., edit, etc. in this format. For those that remember the Sony PCM-1 and the PCM-F1 they used two pulse count converters for each channel. Using just one converter would have required a sample rate into the GHz range.

Now back to the question , DTS-HD Master Audio is lossless. There should be no loss in audio quality as in it can do 24/96 (this should please most dogs ).

[GoldenRedux]

Originally Posted by Wendell R. Breland

Now back to the question , DTS-HD Master Audio is lossless. There should be no loss in audio quality as in it can do 24/96 (this should please most dogs ).

Doesn't DTS-HD MA do all the way up to 192/24 in 7.1?

[Deciazulado]

I think so.

Here's one recent article:

http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback145.html

The DTS version of lossless surround is called DTS-HD Master Audio. It runs at a variable data rate of up to 24.5Mbps or a constant data rate starting at 1.5Mbps. I’m told the variable data rate kicks in when a soundtrack peak—like an explosion, or the roar of a crowd—exceeds the limits imposed by the bit bucket itself. By way of comparison, the existing DTS 5.1 and DTS-ES formats run from 768kbps-1.5Mbps, so Master encodes significantly more data. Master encodes 7.1 discrete channels (with room for expansion, I suspect) at resolution of up to 24 bits and 192kHz, compared to 16 bits and 44.1kHz for the CD.

DTS is also unveiling a new lossy format that falls somewhere, in quality, between DTS-HD Master Audio and old-style DTS 5.1 and DTS-ES. This is DTS-HD High Resolution Audio. It runs between 1.5 to 6Mbps.

Remember when we said DTS-HD Master Audio runs at up to a variable data rate of 24.5Mbps? In Blu-ray, it actually runs that high—hooray!—at least for soundtrack peaks. In HD DVD it runs at a still pretty impressive 18Mbps. DTS-HD High Resolution Audio, capable of a maximum of 6Mbps, runs exactly that high in Blu-ray, and at 1.5-3Mbps in HD DVD.