Help with handling HD Audio

[Beefcake550]

I've read a couple of threads on making bluray backups playable on the extenders and I'm getting confused on the audio side.

What I'd like to do it this:
1) No messing with video side of things...I have no interest in reencoding for smaller/better/faster files.
2) I don't want to downsample the TruHD or DTS-MA tracks to DD or DTS.

I am looking for a way to keep the high-def goodness of the TruHD/DTS-MA/LPCM track on the bluray and have it play out the extenders HDMI port. I know bitstreaming doesn't work, I'd like to know what does. I wouldn't mind spending time reencoding it to some loss-less format if the fidelity could be kept in tact. I've read something about FLAC? maybe lossless WMA?

Please help/advise on how to proceed and where to obtain software to do this. Also, if there is already some post that explains how to do this, could you provide a direct link to that post? Thanks....

I'm trying to decommission my HTPC now that I have the HD200. It's an easy way for me to get my own PC again . If I can't do this, I will probably go out and get a bit-streaming card for the PC.

-Brian

[stanger89]

I don't think the HD200 supports any lossless audio (yet). Hopefully FLAC will be supported (and TrueHD/DTS-HD may be supported) at some point.

You might be able to convert it to just PCM.

[vexhold]

I play FLAC currently using the HD200.

[stanger89]

Yeah, but not mutlichannel FLAC in a video file probably.

[vexhold]

Point made.

**Goes back to corner**

[stanger89]

Hey, it could be a bad guess, but everything I've heard about audio (in video files) on the extenders is that FLAC doesn't work. I've never tried it though, so who knows...

[Beefcake550]

So is it safe to assume that everyone that is playing back mkvs through the HD200 is only using AC-3 or DTS?

It would seem like the HD200 could handle a PCM stream (not sure about lossless). Oh well, I'll just have to try feeding in an LPCM track in video and see what happens.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Beefcake550

So is it safe to assume that everyone that is playing back mkvs through the HD200 is only using AC-3 or DTS?

For the moment at least.

It would seem like the HD200 could handle a PCM stream (not sure about lossless). Oh well, I'll just have to try feeding in an LPCM track in video and see what happens.

The hardware is capable of 7.1 LPCM, I think Jeff confirmed that. But it can't do TrueHD or DTS-HD, and I don't think it can decode multichannel FLAC with video at the moment either.

[Beefcake550]

Ok, so I would really just need to test video + LPCM audio and see if that works as is now. If that works, I'll go and look for a way to decode TruHD and DTS-MA to LPCM.

Thanks for the input stanger89.

[stanger89]

Might as well try FLAC too, you're not out anything.

[Shield]

Originally Posted by stanger89

For the moment at least.



The hardware is capable of 7.1 LPCM, I think Jeff confirmed that. But it can't do TrueHD or DTS-HD, and I don't think it can decode multichannel FLAC with video at the moment either.

But it can pass through these things, right, if I have a receiver that will decode them?

[stanger89]

No, it can't bitstream TrueHD or DTS-HD. It's HDMI 1.2.

[Shield]

Originally Posted by stanger89

No, it can't bitstream TrueHD or DTS-HD. It's HDMI 1.2.

What if I'm not using HDMI, but TOSLINK?

[stanger89]

HDMI 1.3 is the only connection that supports DD+, TrueHD, or DTS-HD bitstreams.

[SWKerr]

Will it really make that much difference?

Now I went to my dad's over Thanksgiving and I could really tell a difference watching TV on his HDTV without a surround sound system. I have decent equipment on both HDTV but it is not high end by any means but I think it does sound pretty good.

My Onkyo receiver has so many different standards that it support that I've never even bothered to read all of them. One is DTS-HD. I currently have a ATI 3450 with the HDMI cord going directly into the receiver and everything sounds great. I have Center, Left, Right, Front, Rear and a subwoofer. Sound from Movies and most prime time HDTV shows sounds very directional and I am quite happy with it. I noticed a significant improvement when the HDPVR added 5.1 support so I know there can be a difference but are any of these new standard really going to make a big difference to my ears on mid range hardware.

[Beefcake550]

Ok, so I haven't ahd much time to do the testing I mentioned because I live in MA and we had an ice storm on last Friday which caused me to lose power until yesterday afternoon. Don't worry, we have a generator and had the SageTV server up and running on generator power within minutes .

I only had time to test two things
1) Ocean's 11 Bluray rip to m2ts file with AC3 soundtrack
2) Random Bluray rip to m2ts file with only TruHD soundtrack.

#1 worked perfectly.
#2 had no video, but there was intermittent audio coming out of the analog L/R jacks of the HD200. Nothing over HDMI

I will hopefully have to time to find a BluRay with only LPCM track tonight and test that out. If that doesn't work, I'll move onto trying a multichannel FLAC video (once I convert the soundtarck to that with eacto3 (or whatever that tool is called).

-B

[Beefcake550]

I found time last night to try out Cars bluray. I used tsmuxer to create a m2ts file with just the video and the lpcm track. Unfortunately, it didn't work on my analog out setup. I will try the HDMI out setup tonight.

Since then, I think I've almost given up on bluray playback with HD Audio (until that new firmware comes out which supports it).

I've installed MyMovies on the server and client (old HTPC). I'm running VMC to play movies now pretty easily. All movies show up in a single menu (whether DVD or BluRay) and MyMovies automates the process of mounting the image on the server and launching PowerDVD. When I close PowerDVD, it even bring up VMC again for me. It would be nice if I could get it to launch PowerDVD for DVDs as well, but oh well, I'm sure it's not hard.