Letter (email) to Meridian...

[DaViD Boulet]

I am disappointed that Meridian has plans to produce an HD DVD player, but not a Blu-ray Disc player or combo player.

Blu-ray Disc is a more forward-oriented format better aligned with your company’s values: with more bit-space and higher bandwidth, the improved audio fidelity over HD DVD is not a theory: virtually all Blu-ray Discs offered by Disney, Sony, Fox, and MGM (those studios committed to authoring the very best quality on Blur-ray Disc) carry a lossless-compressed or PCM soundtrack, whereas only a small fraction of HD DVDs do the same (to maintain parity, Warner Brothers omits lossless audio from BD when it isn’t provided on HD DVD).

Bob Stuart was helpful in getting the 24/96 PCM provision on red-book DVD, and your company developed the MLP algorithm upon which Dolby TrueHD is based; it seems ironic that you would align with a format that can’t consistently deliver lossless audio quality. Why work to improve the fidelity of perceptually-compressed soundtracks on HD DVD when you could be delivering full-fidelity from audio on Blu-ray Disc titles? I would seem more consistent with your company’s mission for audio excellence and transparency to support the Blu-ray Disc format which does not require sonic compromises based on bandwidth and bit-space limitations seen with HD DVD.

One more thing: you might want to encourage Warner and other studios using Dolby TrueHD (based on MLP) to avoid applying Dialog Normalization processing settings. Such “features” of Dolby negate bit-for-bit accuracy to the master and run contrary to the purpose of MLP (Sony does not apply Dialog Normalization to any of its Dolby TrueHD tracks on Blu-ray Disc, a policy they have implemented based on audiophile requests). If you could influence Dolby to allow user-disabling of Dialog Normalization processing, this would also assist audiophiles seeking transparency with Dolby TrueHD soundtracks.

Thank you for considering my requests. I’m hopeful that your company will support the Blu-ray Disc format and the lossless-quality audio it delivers.

Sincerely,

David Boulet