Difference between Dolby Digital 5.1 & Dolby Digital Plus 5.1?

[XanderAE]

Hey people,

Just a quick question. For those who have noticed, Smallville Season 6 is coming to Blu-ray and HD DVD... the former gets Dolby Digital 5.1 and the latter (urgh!) gets Dolby Digital Plus 5.1...

I'm just wondering what the difference is, if any?

Surely they wouldnt put something that's better on a disc that holds 20GB less?

[goodstuff]

The tracks are exactly the same 640k quality wise so don't be fooled with the "Plus" moniker. It's a technical limitation with Dolby Digital that the HD-DVD spec can't handle where Blu-Ray can, so Dolby had to devise a new system for them hence the "Plus".

[XanderAE]

aaaaah good stuff, goodstuff... very glad to hear this!

thanks for clearing that up for me!

[shock_terminal]

Originally Posted by XanderAE

Hey people,

Just a quick question. For those who have noticed, Smallville Season 6 is coming to Blu-ray and HD DVD... the former gets Dolby Digital 5.1 and the latter (urgh!) gets Dolby Digital Plus 5.1...

I'm just wondering what the difference is, if any?

Surely they wouldnt put something that's better on a disc that holds 20GB less?

Where did you see this info?
Season 5 was HD DVD only.

--Edit--
Doh! Only on the main page of this site.

[Chad Varnadore]

I wouldn't assume Smallville's audio will be 640kbps. That's the limit DD can do and the limit that Warner has supported with DD+, but Smallville Season 5 didn't sound anything like 640kbps DD+. If it was 448kbps, it was one of the harshest, most stressed 448kbps encodings I've ever heard. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was actually 384kbps. The AQ was not very good even by DVD standards. It lacked body, spaciousness, and detail. And was literally, almost painful to listen to at times.

[XanderAE]

Originally Posted by Chad Varnadore

I wouldn't assume Smallville's audio will be 640kbps. That's the limit DD can do and the limit that Warner has supported with DD+, but Smallville Season 5 didn't sound anything like 640kbps DD+. If it was 448kbps, it was one of the harshest, most stressed 448kbps encodings I've ever heard. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was actually 384kbps. The AQ was not very good even by DVD standards. It lacked body, spaciousness, and detail. And was literally, almost painful to listen to at times.

I really hope season 6 wont suffer from this on Blu... it shouldnt do, what with the spascious room on each disc. If they follow a ratio of episodes to disc, i believe it will go something like 6/6/5/5, totalling 22. That means about 8GB allocation per episode for image and sound... plenty of space for top notch PQ & AQ!

As we know from the season 5 HD DVD set, each disc was 30GB with 5 episodes at most, so that is only 6GB allocated to each episode, and from what i saw of the transfers and audio (which was all of it, seeing as I had it for a short while!) that really had an aweful effect on the transfer and audio... thus the previous post!

Seeing as Smallville season 6 HD DVD version is following the same configuration as season 5 did, I can't see how they can avoid reducing the quality of image and sound again to fit the episodes on... I hope they don't give US this drivel and poorly encoded crap!

OUR FORMAT CAN HANDLE IT! GIVE US THE GOOD STUFF!