Can I play Dolby TrueHD titles in Dolby Digital 5.1 over fiber/coax?

[roberth]

3/2.1 is just another way of saying 5.1. It basically means a 3 front + 2 surround + 1 LFE channel configuration; 3/2.1. And, yes, it always lists it that way.

I was wondering if you could answer another BD80 audio question for me. My processor is only able to use 48Khz DD 5.1. I listend to a blu-ray title last night that had Dolby TrueHD 5.1 only (no DD 5.1). The BD80 was able to downconvert it to my processor. Even though it didn't sound that bad, the movie was a dynamic one so I was wondering if downconverting Dolby TrueHD 5.1 to my processor was equal to a movie sending out the DD 5.1 as used on other blu-ray or standard def titles. I would think so but not sure. The BD80 lists the audio as Dolby TrueHD and my processor is locked with DD. I have HD DVD titles with Dolby TrueHD but they all also have DD 5.1 as well. I can't hear a difference on those titles when I select TrueHD or DD 5.1 so I'm sure the donwconversion is the same either way.

I have a new sealed movie, Fifth Element Remastered that is only in Dolby TrueHD 5.1. I was wondering if it will sound just as good as my SD DVD copy of this movie with DD 5.1.

Thanks,
Robert

[MrBoylan]

I was wondering if you could answer another BD80 audio question for me. My processor is only able to use 48Khz DD 5.1. I listend to a blu-ray title last night that had Dolby TrueHD 5.1 only (no DD 5.1). The BD80 was able to downconvert it to my processor. Even though it didn't sound that bad, the movie was a dynamic one so I was wondering if downconverting Dolby TrueHD 5.1 to my processor was equal to a movie sending out the DD 5.1 as used on other blu-ray or standard def titles. I would think so but not sure. The BD80 lists the audio as Dolby TrueHD and my processor is locked with DD. I have HD DVD titles with Dolby TrueHD but they all also have DD 5.1 as well. I can't hear a difference on those titles when I select TrueHD or DD 5.1 so I'm sure the donwconversion is the same either way.

I have a new sealed movie, Fifth Element Remastered that is only in Dolby TrueHD 5.1. I was wondering if it will sound just as good as my SD DVD copy of this movie with DD 5.1.

Thanks,
Robert

Hi, Robert,

I moved this post to a new thread as it's not related to the BD80 but is applicable to any Blu-ray player. Dolby TrueHD is built to be backwards-compatible with Dolby Digital. As such every Dolby TrueHD track on Blu-ray Disc comes with a standard Dolby Digital "companion track." This standard Dolby Digital track is delivered over the fiberoptic or coax S/PDIF digital outputs because S/PDIF digital outputs do not support the bandwidth of Dolby TrueHD.

So the answer is that *ANY* disc with Dolby TrueHD also includes an embedded Dolby Digital track that will work over fiberoptic or coax outputs with older non-HDMI receivers. It is at least equal, and in most cases superior to what you would get on DVD due to the increased bandwidth capacity of Blu-ray.

The only caveat to this is that some early receivers that included Dolby Digital could not handle 640 KBPS Dolby Digital soundtracks. Although 640 KBPS was always part of the Dolby Digital spec, DVDs were capped at 448 KBPS so there wasn't really any test material to test 640 KBPS Dolby Digital. It's only recently, with the increased limits of Blu-ray Disc, that we've started to see Dolby Digital tracks which are 640 KBPS in bandwidth. Most Dolby TrueHD titles on Blu-ray Disc come with a 640 KBPS Dolby Digital companion track. So it's *possible* that Fifth Element won't work with your receiver, if your receiver has one of these early faulty Dolby Digital decoders.

So far, we've seen evidence that some early Dolby Digital receivers and processors from Sony, JVC, KEF and B&K are effected by this, but there may be others.

But if you've already tried another Dolby TrueHD title on your player, and your receiver had no problem locking to the Dolby Digital companion track, then you shouldn't have a problem with Fifth Element.

Honestly though, you should consider upgrading the receiver at some point to one that supports Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD over HDMI so you can really take advantage of the full sound quality of which Blu-ray is capable.

-CB

[roberth]

Hi, Robert,

I moved this post to a new thread as it's not related to the BD80 but is applicable to any Blu-ray player. Dolby TrueHD is built to be backwards-compatible with Dolby Digital. As such every Dolby TrueHD track on Blu-ray Disc comes with a standard Dolby Digital "companion track." This standard Dolby Digital track is delivered over the fiberoptic or coax S/PDIF digital outputs because S/PDIF digital outputs do not support the bandwidth of Dolby TrueHD.

So the answer is that *ANY* disc with Dolby TrueHD also includes an embedded Dolby Digital track that will work over fiberoptic or coax outputs with older non-HDMI receivers. It is at least equal, and in most cases superior to what you would get on DVD due to the increased bandwidth capacity of Blu-ray.

The only caveat to this is that some early receivers that included Dolby Digital could not handle 640 KBPS Dolby Digital soundtracks. Although 640 KBPS was always part of the Dolby Digital spec, DVDs were capped at 448 KBPS so there wasn't really any test material to test 640 KBPS Dolby Digital. It's only recently, with the increased limits of Blu-ray Disc, that we've started to see Dolby Digital tracks which are 640 KBPS in bandwidth. Most Dolby TrueHD titles on Blu-ray Disc come with a 640 KBPS Dolby Digital companion track. So it's *possible* that Fifth Element won't work with your receiver, if your receiver has one of these early faulty Dolby Digital decoders.

So far, we've seen evidence that some early Dolby Digital receivers and processors from Sony, JVC, KEF and B&K are effected by this, but there may be others.

But if you've already tried another Dolby TrueHD title on your player, and your receiver had no problem locking to the Dolby Digital companion track, then you shouldn't have a problem with Fifth Element.

Honestly though, you should consider upgrading the receiver at some point to one that supports Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD over HDMI so you can really take advantage of the full sound quality of which Blu-ray is capable.

-CB

Thanks CB,

I have intentions of upgrading next year but taking it slow since I just now have a BD80. Blu-ray now seems to be firmly taking off to me with prices finally falling for normal folks wanting to buy into the new format.

My processor has locked on to other Dolby TrueHD signals so like you mentioned, I don't believe it will have a problem. My processor is an upper end unit so plain old DD sounds pretty darn awesome to me. I hear the better codecs have a slightly fuller sound with more ambient surround information. I guess not sure what I'm missing since my sound has always been full and rich sounding with extreme dynamics to it. I wonder if the new codecs really improve things that much for movies (not talking music) since I read a post where they did an experiment with some golden ears by playing various parts of movies with plain old lossy DD and DTS compared to lossless and none of them could really tell the difference on a $50k plus system. Maybe they didn't do it right or something but seems that I've read where it definitely isn't a night and day difference.

I did find out something interesting on my BD80. I was playing Dark Knight last night when I realized pretty far into the movie that my subwoofer wasn't working. I then stopped the movie and decided to change the one bitstream setting for downconverting any bitstream of Dolby TrueHD or DD+ to DD or DTS MA to DTS from ON to OFF then my subwoofer worked. I guess it was causing only 5.0 to be sent. I figured this bitstream setting needed to be ON since my processor can't decode Dolby TrueHD or DTS MA but obviously it still knew to take the core DD 5.1 track and use it. I've never experience this on other Dolby TrueHD movies such as Monsters vs Aliens. It has only been Dark Knight that did this for some reason. I'm leaving the bitstream setting OFF for now and should work with DD 5.1 always being embedded. I guess it is some processors like you mentioned that the BD80 needs this bitstream setting turned to ON to even be able to hear anything.

Robert

[MrBoylan]

I wonder if the new codecs really improve things that much for movies (not talking music) since I read a post where they did an experiment with some golden ears by playing various parts of movies with plain old lossy DD and DTS compared to lossless and none of them could really tell the difference on a $50k plus system. Maybe they didn't do it right or something but seems that I've read where it definitely isn't a night and day difference.

Yeah, actually my friends Geoff Morrison and David Birch-Jones were the ones who did those experiments for Home Entertainment Magazine. Fascinating stuff. Here's the article:

Signal to Noise - Dolby TrueHD & DTS-HD MA vs. Uncompressed PCM | Home Entertainment

I did find out something interesting on my BD80. I was playing Dark Knight last night when I realized pretty far into the movie that my subwoofer wasn't working. I then stopped the movie and decided to change the one bitstream setting for downconverting any bitstream of Dolby TrueHD or DD+ to DD or DTS MA to DTS from ON to OFF then my subwoofer worked.

That's weird and I'm not really sure what setting you're talking about. If you have the BD80 set to "bitstream" for Dolby in the Digital Audio Output settings, then you automatically get Dolby Digital out of the coax and fiberoptic outputs. Many Warner titles (I think Dark Kinight included) actually default to a standard Dolby Digital soundtrack even though they have a Dolby TrueHD soundtrack on the disc as well. You have to go into the menu or hit the audio button the remote to get the TrueHD soundtrack.

But I can't think of any setting that would do what you're talking about, nor any good reason why you would not get a subwoofer track before setting this. Might be something odd with the title or with some of your player settings? If you can document exactly which setting you're talkint about it would help debig the problem.

I guess it was causing only 5.0 to be sent. I figured this bitstream setting needed to be ON since my processor can't decode Dolby TrueHD or DTS MA but obviously it still knew to take the core DD 5.1 track and use it. I've never experience this on other Dolby TrueHD movies such as Monsters vs Aliens. It has only been Dark Knight that did this for some reason. I'm leaving the bitstream setting OFF for now and should work with DD 5.1 always being embedded. I guess it is some processors like you mentioned that the BD80 needs this bitstream setting turned to ON to even be able to hear anything.

Robert

Yeah, I'm really curious to know what setting you're talking about because there is no setting to output Dolby Digital or DTS over the S/PDIF outputs other than "DTS: bitstream/PCM" and "Dolby: bitstream/PCM." Since your receiver does not support DTS, you should have Dolby set to bitstream and DTS set to PCM and you should have Downmix set to "Surround encoded" so your DTS and PCM soundtracks will be output with matrixed surround encoding in the 2-channel mix.

There's also a "BD Secondary Audio: ON/OFF" setting but this should not apply here. This is only to guarantee that lossless surround tracks are sent over HDMI instead of mixing in menu sound effects or BonusView secondary audio into the main mix.

-CB

[roberth]

There's also a "BD Secondary Audio: ON/OFF" setting but this should not apply here. This is only to guarantee that lossless surround tracks are sent over HDMI instead of mixing in menu sound effects or BonusView secondary audio into the main mix.

-CB

The first line of the Audio menu is the one for setting bitstream/pcm for both DD and DTS. It is the second line of this menu that indicates that if set ON then DTS MA will be sent as DTS and DD+, Dolby TrueHD and another Dolby codec will be sent as DD. I have had this set ON since owning the BD80. I thought if my processor could not accept Dolby TrueHD or DD+ then I should keep it ON. This might be the BD Secondary Audio: ON/OFF that you mentioned, I can't remember without being home to look at the audio menu again but definitely know it is the second line as I described. I really never had an issue until playing Dark Knight. Once I stopped the movie and turned this to OFF then .1 for my subwoofer started working and all was good again in the world. I didn't know this second line had anything to do with HDMI since it specifically mentions the ON/OFF pertaining to the bitstream of DD or DTS being set.

Robert

[roberth]

Yeah, actually my friends Geoff Morrison and David Birch-Jones were the ones who did those experiments for Home Entertainment Magazine. Fascinating stuff. Here's the article:

Signal to Noise - Dolby TrueHD & DTS-HD MA vs. Uncompressed PCM | Home Entertainment
-CB

That's interesting that your friends were involved in this. So what are your thoughts on this test? I can't remember but thought the test involved using the upper end of lossy with lossless for them not to really hear a difference. I thought one of them actually could hear a difference when listening to the bottom end (older) DD and DTS lossy even though the others still couldn't. I find this whole test pretty interesting and will definitely use your link so thanks for that. If they couldn't really hear much difference on a surround system more expensive than most of us own then not sure what all the fuss is about. It makes sense for someone new to buying a processor or receiver to get one that is able to do lossless but not sure if I'm totally convined that lossless is worth the money at least for me that uses separates as compared to lower priced receivers. Obviously I need to get DTS and struggling right now if I should just upgrade my processor with all the latest lossy formats and call it good enough since getting lossless would be a lot more expensive of an upgrade.

I don't really see the differences discussed much on this forum or AVS but just that folks using lossless feel it is much better so hard to quantify for me when I just don't know what they were using before compared to what they are using now. That might be a bigger difference than using the same piece of equipment and upgrading it from lossy to lossless. It seems the highend companies are just now getting into lossless pieces since they were reluctant to design equipment with Blu-ray and HD DVD still competing and HDMI changing so many times. Things now have finally settled enough that highend companies are starting to offer lossless even though very expensive at this point in time.

Robert

[MrBoylan]

That's interesting that your friends were involved in this. So what are your thoughts on this test?

Well Geoff said he could hear differences between the highest bandwidth lossy codecs (e.g., DTS @ 1.5 MBPS, Dolby Digital @ 640 KBPS) and lossless codecs (DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD), but these differences were fairly subtle. But this isn't the full story when considering upgrading an older receiver to one that supports HDMI audio decoding. More on that below.

Obviously I need to get DTS and struggling right now if I should just upgrade my processor with all the latest lossy formats and call it good enough since getting lossless would be a lot more expensive of an upgrade.

What preamp/processor do you have? My friend is a little stuck as he has a super high-end Bryston pre/pro that only supports the lossy formats (no HDMI decoding). It's got a great analog stage and nice sounding DACs, but "upgrading" it to support HDMI audio decoding basically just means trading his in toward a newer model and that privilege will set him back several thousand $$$. So for him, he's going with the OPPO BDP-83 because it supports SACD, DVD-A, on-board DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD decoding, has pretty decent bass management and speaker calibration options and allows you to boost subwoofer levels in the player (unlike most of the competition). So it will work well with his current preamp processor using the external line inputs of the pre/pro.

I don't really see the differences discussed much on this forum or AVS but just that folks using lossless feel it is much better so hard to quantify for me when I just don't know what they were using before compared to what they are using now. That might be a bigger difference than using the same piece of equipment and upgrading it from lossy to lossless. It seems the highend companies are just now getting into lossless pieces since they were reluctant to design equipment with Blu-ray and HD DVD still competing and HDMI changing so many times. Things now have finally settled enough that highend companies are starting to offer lossless even though very expensive at this point in time.

Robert

What kept the smaller high-end companies from getting into HDMI audio decoding wasn't so much the format war (both HD DVD and Blu-ray used the same Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD codecs) but the cost of admission during the early days of HDMI audio processing. When you're Sony or Onkyo or Panasonic, you can afford to buy a few tens of thousands of decoder chips in order to get the volume discounts. For the smaller esoteric high-end companies to get into HDMI decoding and switching would have been a much more expensive proposition because it would have cost them much more per unit. Also, with the first several batches in high demand, the larger volume vendors got priority of supply.

Now DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD decoder chips are coming down in price and up in quantity so smaller companies have fewer barriers to getting into that market.

But as for lossless vs. lossy, yes they can both sound excellent, but what people forget is that with Blu-ray you've now got this whole new animal - multi-channel uncompressed PCM - which cannot be passed over fiber or coax connections so it gets down-mixed to 2-channel output. Oh it may have some pseudo surround rear-channel info mixed in there so you can extract that with Dolby Pro Logic. But this is not discrete surround and that *IS* immediately obviously different from discrete multi-channel surround.

In your case, you're even worse off because your processor doesn't support DTS either, so you have to output multi-channel PCM, DTS, DTS-HD MA and DTS-HD HR all as down-mixed two-channel PCM and rely on your processor to derive some matrixed mono rear channel information out of that two-channel signal. Also, all 7.1-channel soundtracks on Blu-ray get down-mixed to 5.1 when output over S/PDIF digital.

Does your preamp/processor have multi-channel analog inputs? If so, why not experiment with that so you can get real multi-channel surround out of Blu-ray Discs with multi-channel PCM soundtracks and from DVDs and Blu-rays that use DTS or DTS-HD? Yes, it's trickier than connecting via S/PDIF digital but the results can definitely be worthwhile.

Later,

-Chris

[roberth]

Well Geoff said he could hear differences between the highest bandwidth lossy codecs (e.g., DTS @ 1.5 MBPS, Dolby Digital @ 640 KBPS) and lossless codecs (DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD), but these differences were fairly subtle. But this isn't the full story when considering upgrading an older receiver to one that supports HDMI audio decoding. More on that below.


What preamp/processor do you have? My friend is a little stuck as he has a super high-end Bryston pre/pro that only supports the lossy formats (no HDMI decoding). It's got a great analog stage and nice sounding DACs, but "upgrading" it to support HDMI audio decoding basically just means trading his in toward a newer model and that privilege will set him back several thousand $$$. So for him, he's going with the OPPO BDP-83 because it supports SACD, DVD-A, on-board DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD decoding, has pretty decent bass management and speaker calibration options and allows you to boost subwoofer levels in the player (unlike most of the competition). So it will work well with his current preamp processor using the external line inputs of the pre/pro.


What kept the smaller high-end companies from getting into HDMI audio decoding wasn't so much the format war (both HD DVD and Blu-ray used the same Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD codecs) but the cost of admission during the early days of HDMI audio processing. When you're Sony or Onkyo or Panasonic, you can afford to buy a few tens of thousands of decoder chips in order to get the volume discounts. For the smaller esoteric high-end companies to get into HDMI decoding and switching would have been a much more expensive proposition because it would have cost them much more per unit. Also, with the first several batches in high demand, the larger volume vendors got priority of supply.

Now DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD decoder chips are coming down in price and up in quantity so smaller companies have fewer barriers to getting into that market.

But as for lossless vs. lossy, yes they can both sound excellent, but what people forget is that with Blu-ray you've now got this whole new animal - multi-channel uncompressed PCM - which cannot be passed over fiber or coax connections so it gets down-mixed to 2-channel output. Oh it may have some pseudo surround rear-channel info mixed in there so you can extract that with Dolby Pro Logic. But this is not discrete surround and that *IS* immediately obviously different from discrete multi-channel surround.

In your case, you're even worse off because your processor doesn't support DTS either, so you have to output multi-channel PCM, DTS, DTS-HD MA and DTS-HD HR all as down-mixed two-channel PCM and rely on your processor to derive some matrixed mono rear channel information out of that two-channel signal. Also, all 7.1-channel soundtracks on Blu-ray get down-mixed to 5.1 when output over S/PDIF digital.

Does your preamp/processor have multi-channel analog inputs? If so, why not experiment with that so you can get real multi-channel surround out of Blu-ray Discs with multi-channel PCM soundtracks and from DVDs and Blu-rays that use DTS or DTS-HD? Yes, it's trickier than connecting via S/PDIF digital but the results can definitely be worthwhile.

Later,

-Chris

Well, my processor is a Theta Casablanca I. They now have version III available. It would be a minimum of $3,500 just to upgrade my I to a III and that doesn't even include lossless or newer DACs to support it. It will be a lot of money to get everything current to say the least. From what my dealer tells me, Theta doesn't support the older boards on my processor such as being able to buy only the DTS board so I would need to upgrade my entire unit. My processor also doesn't have the ability to add the analog connections for 5.1 or 7.1 sound.

From what I've heard from Theta owners over at AVS, most have bought the Intregra processor since it is suppose to be a great digital piece for all technology. The only problem is that the preamp (analog for 2 channel CD listening) is not very good even compared to my much older CBI dated 1997. The Integra goes for $2k I believe. This could hold me over until I could buy a used preamp or something.

Beside this, I have 5.1 with absolutely no intentions of upgrading to 7.1. I have my surround speakers setup in a way that gives awesome surround sound so 5.1 is good enough for me.

This is the way I'm looking at this hobby at this point or at least until I decide if and when I upgrade. I will get Netflix or buy any Blu-ray titles that has some form of DD 5.1. If a blu-ray movie has DTS only, I will rent or possibly buy the standard version so I can still get DD 5.1. I seldom buy movies unless very good and when I do buy, they are new releases for the most part with pretty good transfers. I'm not saying that Blu-ray isn't clearly better but SD DVDs can still look quite good for my Toshiba XA2 to upconvert. I did a demo between my BD80 and XA2 and to me, the XA2 will be easily serving the duty of upconverting SD DVDs. I've read quite a few folks feedback that the DB80 is pretty good at upconverting. To me, it wasn't bad but still kind of has a look that too much digital emphasis has been added at times compared to my XA2 that looks quite film like. My daughter and I had a hard time telling the differences between the SD DVD and Blu-ray title of Live Free or Die Hard. I had to start really looking closer to start seeing the differences.

Anyway this is how I'm approaching it right now. The hard part like I mention is trying to get a processor for maybe a couple thousand or so with an okay preamp. One probably doesn't exist since most are in the $5-6k range or higher. I'm not sure what your friend is going to do but sure there are quite a few like me that aren't really willing to throw big bucks towards the upgrade like the cost is no object folks over at AVS on the $20k and higher thread. These folks have theater rooms designed from the ground up and only want the best whether they really could hear the difference or not.

Robert

[MrBoylan]

The first line of the Audio menu is the one for setting bitstream/pcm for both DD and DTS. It is the second line of this menu that indicates that if set ON then DTS MA will be sent as DTS and DD+, Dolby TrueHD and another Dolby codec will be sent as DD. I have had this set ON since owning the BD80. I thought if my processor could not accept Dolby TrueHD or DD+ then I should keep it ON.

I think you're talking about BD-Secondary Audio. The Digital Audio Output screen has three settings, two at the top:

Dolby: PCM/bitstream
DTS: PCM/bitstream

then, at the bottom:
BD-Secondary Audio: On/Off

BD-Secondary Audio=OFF is to prevent menu sound effects or Bonus View commentary audio from being mixed into the main audio stream. When mixing is necessary, the player has to extract the lossless surround track (DTS-HD or Dolby TrueHD) in order to mix in the secondary sounds. This drops the sound down to the lossy Dolby Digital or DTS counterpart. But it shouldn't cause your subwoofer channel to be removed. That doesn't make any sense.

I really never had an issue until playing Dark Knight. Once I stopped the movie and turned this to OFF then .1 for my subwoofer started working and all was good again in the world. I didn't know this second line had anything to do with HDMI since it specifically mentions the ON/OFF pertaining to the bitstream of DD or DTS being set.

Robert

The setting is primarily for purists who want to make sure that the player doesn't drop down the lossless audio to lossy quality over HDMI or multi-channel analog outputs. It really shouldn't matter to those who use fiberoptic or coax outputs as you'll be stuck with a lossy track anyway, might as well have the commentary track and menu sound effects in there.

You should contact Panasonic as this might be a title-specific problem that only affects the fiber/coax outputs. But they'd need to do some testing to be sure. Otherwise just leave BD Secondary Audio off and don't worry about it.

-CB

[MrBoylan]

Well, my processor is a Theta Casablanca I. They now have version III available. It would be a minimum of $3,500 just to upgrade my I to a III and that doesn't even include lossless or newer DACs to support it.

Zoinks! But yeah, the Theta stuff is nice. Hard to justify $3500 and not get lossless audio though, IMHO.

...From what I've heard from Theta owners over at AVS, most have bought the Intregra processor since it is suppose to be a great digital piece for all technology. The only problem is that the preamp (analog for 2 channel CD listening) is not very good even compared to my much older CBI dated 1997. The Integra goes for $2k I believe. This could hold me over until I could buy a used preamp or something.

Have you actually listened to one? I replaced a 2-channel Music Reference RM-5 Mk. III tube preamp with an Integra DTC-9.8 pre/pro and haven't missed it at all.

For 2-channel, I'm running the Integra into a Conrad-Johnson Premiere 11a stereo tube power amp amp into MartinLogan Aerius electrostatic speakers. I used to play around with outboard DACs and tweaky cables during my stereo days, but now I'm pretty much all digital on the front end, using the DACs in the Integra and I find the sound very satisfying for both 2-channel and surround sound use. You should definitely consider it. I think the gains you'll get from being able to use lossless surround and even high quality lossless 2-channel sound will outweigh any loss in the 2-channel analog department. The current piece is the DHC-9.9 and I believe it is nearly identical in audio performance plus it fixes a color space issue in the DTC-9.8 related to SD upconversion.

Beside this, I have 5.1 with absolutely no intentions of upgrading to 7.1. I have my surround speakers setup in a way that gives awesome surround sound so 5.1 is good enough for me.

5.1 is fine for most rooms. I only recommend 7.1 for large rooms or odd room layouts.

This is the way I'm looking at this hobby at this point or at least until I decide if and when I upgrade. I will get Netflix or buy any Blu-ray titles that has some form of DD 5.1. If a blu-ray movie has DTS only, I will rent or possibly buy the standard version so I can still get DD 5.1. I seldom buy movies unless very good and when I do buy, they are new releases for the most part with pretty good transfers. I'm not saying that Blu-ray isn't clearly better but SD DVDs can still look quite good for my Toshiba XA2 to upconvert. I did a demo between my BD80 and XA2 and to me, the XA2 will be easily serving the duty of upconverting SD DVDs. I've read quite a few folks feedback that the DB80 is pretty good at upconverting. To me, it wasn't bad but still kind of has a look that too much digital emphasis has been added at times compared to my XA2 that looks quite film like. My daughter and I had a hard time telling the differences between the SD DVD and Blu-ray title of Live Free or Die Hard. I had to start really looking closer to start seeing the differences.

My HD-XA2 is sitting unplugged awaiting eBay. A great piece but the load times kill it. I can't wait that long to watch a movie! I find the BD80, Samsung BD-P2500, OPPO BDP-83 and LG BD 390 all offer excellent upconversion but really, I rarely watch DVDs any more so it's not a priority for me to own the absolute best upconverter if it comes at a cost of convenience. When I do actually sit down to watch a movie, it's almost always on Blu-ray. And the kids aren't too picky how their Thomas the Tank Engine DVD looks (well, not YET anyway...).

Anyway this is how I'm approaching it right now. The hard part like I mention is trying to get a processor for maybe a couple thousand or so with an okay preamp. One probably doesn't exist since most are in the $5-6k range or higher. I'm not sure what your friend is going to do but sure there are quite a few like me that aren't really willing to throw big bucks towards the upgrade like the cost is no object folks over at AVS on the $20k and higher thread. These folks have theater rooms designed from the ground up and only want the best whether they really could hear the difference or not.

Robert

I think you should give the DHC-9.9 a try. Find a friendly local dealer who will let you try it at home and return it within 30 days if you are not happy. See how you like it in 2-channel mode, because it will blow you away in surround.

Integra is not available online otherwise I'd send you a link.

-CB