Bimmer32

Should I spend the extra $150 or so for TrueHD sound or not? I'm looking at the Sony s300 vs. the s500? Is it worth it from your experience?

Russ1974

It depends what you want ... it's like saying is it worth paying the extra money to upgrade the stereo in your BMW, to get the larger engine, to get the 60" plasma instead of 50", etc etc.

It really depends what audio system you are connecting this in to. If you have a mid-high end good audio setup then you might notice a difference. If not, you probably won't hear any difference at all.

ImolaRedM

If your receiver wont decode TrueHD then I would say maybe. I went with the S300 simply because I anticipate buying a newer Blu-Ray player in about 12 months. By then profile 2.0 will be out -- not that I really even care for profile 1.1 features now. Movies that have LPCM are amazing on the S300. LPCM will be as good or better than TrueHD unless the studio recorded the LPCM track at a lower bit rate. Right now, my movie library contains mostly LPCM titles and only a couple of TrueHD titles.

If you plan on keeping this player as your primary player for a long time then I would spend the extra $150 and get the S500. But if you think you might retire it to the bedroom in the future, then you may want to get the S300 now and see what's available down the road.

C's Bimmer

I love it, but again, make sure your receiver decodes it, otherwise you're wasting your money. I recently watched Troy in Dolby TrueHD and the sound was just amazing. My wife couldn't believe the detail and she's not one to notice things like that.

What's even better is DTS-HD MA. First, seeing your AV receiver decode and display it is just awesome, but more importantly the sound is unreal. It's too bad not enough discs come this way.

Personally, I say go for it. I would also suggest the Panasonic BD30 over the Sony. More reliable, same picture and outputs these HD audio formats. And it's a great price too. I paid $350, but I think it's even cheaper now.

Check out some of the reviews on www.avsforum.com. You can compare all the models you're looking at.

UUronL

Official "Help a guy pick a BluRay player" thread:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=969206



The Panny DMP-BD-30K is a current favorite... ~$400 or so. As others have said, bitstreaming is the least problematic and also necessary for the new sound formats, meaning you need a receiver that decodes the new formats.



I'm a little pissed about the receiver situation - I don't think the HD-DVD and Bluray players retained the functionality they could have to help bridge the gap between the new breed of players and older home theater components. They could be engineered to decode all sound formats on the player, and output PCM via multi-channel analog RCA connectors. I know the first HD-DVD players did this, but I don't know about BluRay. This was deprecated in later generations as the connectors and decoding ICs are costly relative to an HDMI and Toslink, so chalk it up to greed and a desire to "force evolution" (force you to replace perfectly good shit). At a minimum they could have provided decoding for -all- formats to PCM to be passed via HDMI so that folks who foolishly bought an HDMI receiver thinking they were all set wouldn't be fucked... but that isn't even supported across all formats. Like so many fizzled advances in sound technology, the manufacturers are counting on the customer to be oblivious and incapable of telling the difference. Kind of like the fools who haven't hooked the HDTV up correctly...

UUronL

I just ordered a Bluray player!!!

This thread caused me to really look - I found one... ONE player, the only one that will output the PCM 7.1 via analog outputs -now-, and apparently has a firmware update coming this quarter that will add DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD transcoded to PCM and output via analog... Now I won't have to replace the receiver - not for a good long time.


I ordered the Panasonic DMP-BD10A. Now to grab "3:10 to Yuma" which has an uncompressed PCM track. The player appears to be in its final days in retail channels.

Bimmer32

Thanks for the info guys.

UUronL

After a bit more research, some of the people over at AVS think that the DMP-BD10A won't get DTS-HD MA with a firmware update, stating that the hardware won't do it. I'm reserving judgement since there seems to be a lot of bad info and poorly informed folks out there.

The player does however do TrueHD -now-, but there aren't a lot of BluRay titles out that have TrueHD. There are a lot with uncompressed PCM, in both 5.1 and 7.1. The trend that I hope doesn't continue is that some newer titles are replacing the uncompressed PCM with DTS-HD MA.

At least I have all of the formats except one - and even DTS core with DTS-HD MA tracks are 1.5Mbits/sec which is twice the bit rate you get with DVD.



Not bad for an ancient receiver...

C's Bimmer

Fantastic Four - Rise of the Silver Surfer is one of the only Blu-Ray titles I know that outputs DTS-HD MA. Although the movie sucks (LOL!), I do own it for the the video quality and sound quality. It's also a great film to show friends and family when they want to check out my theater room.

The Panny BD30 does output this in DTS-HD MA. Again, I paid $350 US for this player from PC Richards. Both, my HD DVD player (Tosh A35) and my Blu-Ray player (Panny BD30) output both audio formats. However, more often than none, I'm seeing that most films I buy or rent these days in both formats are TrueHD over DTS-HD.

Last night, I threw in Top Gun in HD DVD. Hahahahaha! Audio was TrueHD 5.1. I skipped through most of the movie, only to watch the flight scenes. All I can say is wow!

"I feel the need...the need for speed!" LOL!!!!!

ImolaRedM

Take a look at some of the Disney titles like Pirates of the Caribbean, Prestige, or Pixar's Cars. They have uncompressed 24 bit LPCM tracks. Personally I love LPCM but there are rumors out there that Disney may dump LPCM for TrueHD.