Ask questions to BD authoring and compression insider "2themax"

[2themax]

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

welcome!

I'm wondering if you can point to why studios like Disney, Fox, Sony, and MGM provide lossless-quality audio (in whatever form) on BD but studios like WB fail to provide it even for the majority of their titles.

Those of us who enjoyed laserdisc know that lossless audio improves fidelity even when the source material is generally what folks would consider "limited quality", such as optical mono soundtracks or old mag stems from the B&W era. I'm astonished at how much more open and natural the PCM of It's A Wonderful Life sounds, for instance, on laserdisc versus the lossy Dolby on DVD. When I see Warner continue the practice of lossy audio on BD, it does not bode well for the HT community.

Can WB be "taught" that lossy really does matter and that it's a feature that should be considered standard regardless of how well or poorly their techs deem the quality of the source-material to be encoded?

While I don't know for sure, I would assume that it was (is) related to them being neutral and trying to keep titles equal on both sides of the fence. Going forward from May though, that obviously is no longer an excuse. The only other possibility I can think of would be that the majority of their authoring is done in-house so there isn't anyone saying "hey, our other customers do lossless, why don't you?"