Something Must Be Wrong Here...

[DJ Scotty]

Hello Everyone!

Wanted to introduce myself as a new member of the board, as well as a recently drafted soldier over the fence from standard definition optical media to high definition....it took some pondering between HD DVD and Blu ray, but due to, as you all know, a (what appears to be) potent collection of titles available now and to be in the future, my heart seems True Blu -- at least for now....

Unfortunately, my first experiences with this new technology have not been so exciting. I recently relocated with my significant other into a new apartment, and we jumped into Blu ray, as I mentioned, acquiring the Panasonic player and a new Onkyo TX-SR605 with onboard decoding of the new HD audio formats...along for the ride was also a new Sony 50" SXRD rear projection display. Being an absolute home theater hobbyist fanatic, I am thoroughly familiar with the ins and outs of standard DVD and its relating equipment (coaxial/optical connections, bitstream signals for Dolby Digital and DTS soundtracks, etc.)...however, I enlisted some help from a private recommended installer to assist me with the setup of the blu ray deck and receiver (and TV). Before I get into the issues I have been having with the software and what I find I don't care for so far, let me explain how everything is connected so perhaps someone could better understand the workings of the system and attempt to figure out if it happens to be anything in the "handshaking" behavior of the HDMI connections....

The Panasonic player is running HDMI OUT to the Onkyo's HDMI INPUT 1, and then there is an HDMI cable running from the receiver's HDMI OUT to the Sony display's HDMI input, so the audio and video can flow simultaneously. I SPECIFICALLY purchased this new receiver because I understand it has all the onboard decoding for the new formats, including Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS HD and DTS HD Master Audio, and I prefer to have the amplifier/receiver decode and process the audio via a bitstream signal rather than have a player do it -- and, as I will explain later, and of course you all know, these second generation players just wont pass the HD soundtracks via bitstream, so I feel like that was a waste of money. At any rate, here are most of the issues I am having, along with their corresponding connection attributes:

I believe the display I purchased can accept 1080p signals, and the Panasonic's HDMI RESOLUTION control in the setup menu is set to 1080p -- so this should be giving me full 1080p resolution; however, I find that most of the discs that came in the box with the player, such as Pirates of the Caribbean and Fantastic 4 -- not to mention the two titles I have purchased on my own, Spider Man 3 and John Carpenter's Halloween -- just don't....well....look all that great. I was expecting jaw-dropping detail and resolution from 1080p material, and dont get me wrong -- the colors are rich and fantastic for the most part, and the black levels are spot-on and dark....it's just that the amount of grain and background noise these discs -- or player -- are exhibiting is quite dissapointing. Is there supposed to be this much fine grain running in the background of the films? The whispy, fog-ladened scenes in films like Pirates gets rather "blocky" looking on my Sony, not really exhibiting a jaw-dropping appearance....it seems only the really bright, colorful, outdoor sequences in HD films exhibit the clarity and detail which approaches what I expected of Blu ray; is this normal? Now, I KNOW for a fact that the player is set for 1080p video, so it should be sending the video 1080p to the TV....AND, the Panasonic's picture setting modes (which you owners would know) are set like this:

PICTURE is set to SOFT, which seems to eliminate SOME of the noise and grain from certain scenes....other modes like NORMAL, CINEMA or FINE look much worse in comparison...

The DNR setting is ON (I believe this is for digital video noise reduction), and I can actually see a difference in the background noise of a scene when I freeze it, leaving the setting ON....

I've tried the other settings, like USER, which lets you fine tune things like GAMMA, 3D NOISE REDUCTION and COLOR, but these settings, no matter how many times I play with them, just seem to make the picture worse....should I mess with these?

Now, on my Sony display, I have the picture settings on STANDARD, not VIVID, which is just too sharp and oversaturated, especially for my viewing distance (which I believe MAY be contributing to the grain problem from my sweet spot), and everything else is on factory defaults, like color, sharpness, hue, Picture Contrast (which is all the way up to MAX) and Automatic Iris (setting "2")....I read another thread on here where someone posted the "ideal" settings for a Sony rear projection set, and the numbers were different from this, so perhaps it's my set's levels; they haven't been calibrated. Could this be adding to the problem?

The installer who worked with me set all the Panasonic's audio outputs to BITSTREAM, unaware and uninformed that this player does not pass bitstream audio for the new codecs via HDMI -- more on that in a minute. Standard Dolby Digital and DTS tracks from DVD pass just fine via HDMI through the Onkyo, coming up on the display as "Dolby D" or "DTS" with the HDMI logo lit, as well. So I know that's correct. The problem comes into play with the new HD audio tracks -- I simply do not understand how this all works. It took me weeks of reading the manual and playing with the unit to figure out that the settings made in the DIGITAL AUDIO OUTPUT menu of the Panny's player actually affect the COAXIAL and OPTICAL jacks -- NOT the HDMI output. But this confused me even more, because under these DIGITAL AUDIO OUTPUT setting choices are, along with Dolby Digital and DTS, the new codecs -- Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS HD (but not Master Audio; this unit does not support it at all)....so, my question becomes if these new formats can only be passed via HDMI, which I thought is how they worked, then why on Earth are they listed under the standard DIGITAL audio output that goes through coax and optical???

Alas, all settings were made to BITSTREAM here, and of course, I have DVD audio soundtracks being decoded by the receiver, but not the new HD tracks....when I switch the high definition soundtrack settings to PCM in the player, then it sends the PCM track of the soundtrack (Dolby TrueHD, etc.) through a multichannel signal to the receiver, whose front display then reads "HDMI/PCM/MULTICHANNEL"....the tracks actually sound louder and punchier this way, as I am assuming the player is decoding the track and sending it to the receiver over HDMI via PCM (hearing the actual "lossless" audio), HOWEVER, this is not how I wanted the system to run....I was looking forward to the "DTS MASTER" and "DOLBY TRUEHD" logos to illuminate on the Onkyo, like it does with DTS and Dolby Digital....thus, I keep everything on BITSTREAM now, and choose the UNCOMPRESSED PCM track on a Blu ray disc when given the option.

Case in point: When I watched Spider Man 3 last night, there was a choice for Dolby TrueHD as an English surround audio track -- I tried selecting it, watched my receiver do the flashing HDMI thing as it tried to handshake with the player, and then....just as I thought, the receiver dropped into regular Dolby Digital mode....not Dolby TrueHD. I switched to the Uncompressed PCM track instead. What is the deal with these "lossless" codecs? Are they really worth all this trouble? I know all about the firmware and software updates for these second generation machines, but it just seems so exhausting to go through; would a firmware update correct the issue with the player passing the signals via bitstream? Now, another question I have is regarding these "Uncompressed PCM" tracks...based on the way I have the system set up, with everything running through HDMI, am I hearing the "correct" audio stream when selecting these tracks off the discs? Like I said, I select the uncompressed track from the menu, press play, and my receiver reads "MULTICHANNEL" in the middle of the display, as a listening mode, and above it are the small lights which read "PCM", "HDMI" and "MULTICH"....I assumed this meant the receiver was actually receiving the PCM track and playing it back in a multichannel mode, but I want to make sure because usually "MULTICHANNEL" means you have the ANALOG inputs running to a decoding player, and mine is connected via HDMI. So am I actually hearing these uncompressed PCM tracks correctly like this?

Please see next post for the continuation of this thread...