I checked out my local video stores and Ezy Dvd on line and found most older Blu Ray movies are only giving you the standard DD and DTS lossy soundtracks , very few had the HD audio tracks,it might be a good option to buy a cheaper player without HD audio decoding,just for the PQ and listen to the DD and DTS options until the Blu Ray DVD's have all the latest audio options,because the specs on the players change with each new model and also, I dont have to upgrade my AVR. Just a thought!
Cheers.
Thornton

I don't really think that's wise personally. There aren't that many players that can't decode them these days anyway.

Maybe the selection at your DVD store isn't the greatest, but certainly there are many titles with the HD tracks.

Most movies these days have either DTS HD-MA or Dolby TrueHD

The ezyDVD web site is only showing one sound format for each Blu Ray DVD,so obviously they are not bothering to show any others that are included.
I will have to find a better source to find out all of the included audio tracks.
Anyhow I think I will wait a few weeks and buy one of the new Panasonic players as they both have great reviews.
Cheers.
Thornton

I was in the same boat. Had a Sony BDOS300 but as an entry level player it left a lot to be desired as far as audio decoding went. Bit the bullet and bought a Panasonic BD30 Bly-ray player which will bitstream all the HD audio formats, does not have built in decoders. As luck would have it, Sony were having a sale at the time and I picked up a Sony AVR STR-DA5300ES for just on half price($1590) and haven't looked back..
PS it is all coupled to a Sony Bravia 46" X series LCD panel and the results a great, very happy with it all.

Worth thinking about and you won't have to do it twice.

This is true, but I need to buy a Blu Ray player AND a new AVR to get this result.
Cheers.
Thornton

If you don't have a player now then maybe look at a player that can decode internally and has analogue outputs to go into your AVR.

If not, just use the lossy tracks for the moment and when you get a new AVR you will have a capable player.

Thornton, here is a site that has some stats for blu-ray discs.

If you look at the bottom of the page you'll see that 71% of blu-ray's have a lossless track. One thing though is that they don't list all the audio tracks on the disc in their list, ie Close Encounters has DTS-HDMA, TrueHD and LPCM but they only list DTS-HDMA in the stats

cheers

Heres a supplement to Macca's list Thornton ;for a general time scale

http://www.blu-ray.com

Thanks Macca and CWT,I saved both links to favourites,both good info sites,much better than ezyDVD.
Cheers.
Thornton

Shonky this is exactly what I want to do!
Anyway,I have decided to wait a few weeks for the new Panasonic BD35 or even BD55 to be released,unless the BD30 drops in price dramatically on their release.
Cheers.
Thornton

That's what I did. However it only took me a couple of weeks to upgrade my AVR! Couldn't be happier!

Geoff

Hello, joined last year and this is my first post. I am now looking to buy a BR Player and noticed the TrueHD etc. Problem is that means a new AVR if I want TrueHD. Thing is I want to do audio via Optical Cable (to AVR) and picture to Plasma. I have been looking for an hour but need to know if anyone can tell me if TrueHD (etc) go through optic or JUST HDMI as I thought optic (well, was told) was better audio connection.

Unfortunately optical does not have enough bandwidth to carry any of the HD audio codecs.

If you AVR has a 6 channel input, you could get a blu-ray player with internal decoders and 6 channel out and connect this way to get HD Audio.

Does your AMP have external Inputs ?
My Rx-z1 did . I used it with a Samsung BD-P1400 which decoded TrueHD via its external outputs. Sounded great , but I decided to buy a new AMP to streamline my system, less cables when using the HDMI.

Also, for example, the Samsung BD-P1500 will downscale the audio to DTS5.1 if you so choose, to at least let you hear it and not have to bother hooking up 6 analogue cables (given it doesn't have this option anyway).

You need to be real careful with this. Many AVR's (well OK, mine ) will simply pass thru the analogue inputs without any DSP meaning you can't apply bass management or time alignment to these signals).

After a fair bit of "research" it seems to me that the uncompressed PCM on Blu Ray disks needs no decoding and can be sent directly to an AVR with a 5.1 or 7.1 multi channel input,that is as long as the Blu Ray player has the 5.1or 7.1 outputs. reports say this PCM track is very high quality audio,and worth a listen. If not the AVR will still process the other tracks as usual,you will just not get them in uncompressed form.
If all this just does not sound great,I will have to invest in a AVR with the uncompressed decoding on board.
If any of the above is incorrect,please let me know.
Cheers.
Thornton

Hi Preacher,you could apply Bass management directly at the sub amp controls.
I'll find out about my Onkyo when I get that far!
Cheers.
Thornton

That's only part of what bass management is all about. If an AVR cannot perform BM on an incoming signal you have lost virtually all the benefits of such processing. Most players can perform BM on their analogue outputs, but in almost all cases player BM is poor in either feature set or quality compared to AVR implementations.

cheers

Well, looks like a new Amp. I went through individual inputs when I got my first/2nd DVD player (and my current amp only has 5.1 in). Funny thing is my old PS2 (well old slimline) seems to output the PCM as that is what's displayed when the PS2 is going.