How can I get lossless?

[BIslander]

Originally Posted by CraigW

I am not going to get sucked into a DD v. dts debate.

Many DVDs are in fact encoded at with DD@448kbps. It was WHV that was fixated on the 384kbps rate for many years.

As far as the maxrate lossy tracks on Blu, I guess I have never cared to compare them. They just exist as a stop gap for those that haven't upgraded yet. They probably are a little better than the lower rates found on DVD, but I doubt with with complex audio designs that they are much better than the standard DVD tracks.

At least with lossless you know that it is probably the closest you will ever get to the master audio stems at home.

You haven't listened. Yet, you know with certainty that lossless is clearly better. How? (I'm going to assume you also haven't done any research on the subject or read the opinions of audio professionals about this specific comparison.)

Not a DD-DTS debate, btw. This is a specific subset of that discussion limited to the quality of the outputs at the maximum legacy bitrates on HD media - rates that are outside the DVD spec for Dolby.

I also believe you are mistaken about the prevalence of DD 5.1 @ 448 on DVD. But, it's not relevant either way since this is about 640, which is not supported on DVD.