DTS on BluRay

[surroundophile]

Has anybody noticed in the Bluray camp that DTS seems to be winning the format war, in comparison to the DD win in the DVD camp?
I've had a BluRay player now for six months, and I've seen only 2 Dolby True HD and 1 DD Bluray, 2 HD PCM, and the rest were all DTS HD [rental] discs.

 

[wanners]

There was an earlier post about that here. Somehow DTS worked out a deal that makes it required on blu-ray discs. Maybe somehere here in the know could elaborate on how that happened. Time to buy stock in DTS?

 

[arnold_layne]

DTS is not required on blu-ray discs, only blu-ray players.

I have sevral blu-ray discs that have either DD, DD-trueHD, or PCM 5.1 with no DTS tracks.

 

[wanners]

You're right, I guess it's the the decoder has to be built into the players, but it doesn't guarantee a dts stream on a disc. really doesn't matter i guess as long as you get dolby trueHD on a disc.

 

[timbre4]

DTS was definitely in on the new HD formats from day 1 as opposed to missing the 1st gen DVD players. There's so much disc real estate (space) now that there won't be any need for DTS versions and DD versions (separate releases and SKUs), which made for a wobbly start on DVD and made it hard to escape that also-ran status.

Dolby TruHD is great but I'm usually a little more confident about the purchase when I see DTS-MA on the back.

 

[wanners]

Dolby TruHD is great but I'm usually a little more confident about the purchase when I see DTS-MA on the back.

I thought that Dolby TruHD was a non compressed format, so psychologically seems better than a compression algorithm like DTSMA. Maybe someone who knows more could comment on that. I'm sure it would be impossible to tell the difference anyway.

 

[timbre4]

DTS Master Audio is lossless as well.

 

[wanners]

Post Deleted

 

[wanners]

DTS Master Audio is lossless as well.

I know, but I believe there is some compression and then an extension that decompresses to get to the lossles in DTS-MA, where as DolbyTruHD is never compressed.

I believe that is the case. I don't want to spread any misinformation, maybe someone could clarify the differences better than me.

 

[timbre4]

Until other sources appear, this Wikipedia entry is a start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTS-HD_Master_Audio

 

[wanners]

So Dolby TruHD uses MLP, so it is compressed. That's about the extent to which I'll attempt to understand the technology for now@:

 

[Chris Gerhard]

I don't believe player handling of DTS-HD MA is required contractually. The situation now with so many titles using DTS-HD MA is any player without ability to either bitstream or decode DTS-HD MA would be DOA as inexpensive players from many manufacturers do handle DTS-HD MA. Early players couldn't do anything with it and until decoding was added by firmware to the PS3, I believe late 2007, almost nobody could play it. I believe that Dolby TrueHD is more efficient and takes up less space and audibly I can't tell any difference so that seems to me to be the better choice but more titles now are using DTS-HD MA so there may be some reason DTS-HD MA has become so popular. My guess is it is nothing more than a response to the perception that DTS is better than Dolby Digital. Product attributes the market believes are better don't actually have to be better for sellers to offer it.

Chris

 

[MC Maniac]

So Dolby TruHD uses MLP, so it is compressed. That's about the extent to which I'll attempt to understand the technology for now@:

Both Dolby TrueHD and DTS-MA are lossless and uncompressed - in theory there's no difference in sound quality as both simply encode the 24/48 or 24/96 studio masters..

You are confusing compression with packing - MLP is packed and think of it like Winzip - when you 'unpack' the MLP the audio is lossless and uncompressed..

 

[Chris Gerhard]

Both Dolby TrueHD and DTS-MA are lossless and uncompressed - in theory there's no difference in sound quality as both simply encode the 24/48 or 24/96 studio masters..

You are confusing compression with packing - MLP is packed and think of it like Winzip - when you 'unpack' the MLP the audio is lossless and uncompressed..

I believe technically MLP is a compression technique, compressing the file size and when unpacked or uncompressed is restored to the original lossless audio for playback. It is not compression in the typical sense of removing data.

Chris

 

[phydo]

So Dolby TruHD uses MLP, so it is compressed. That's about the extent to which I'll attempt to understand the technology for now@:

When I do not understand the various permutations of DTS available with BD players I often refer to the attached link that Chris Gerhard posted a while back: http://www.dts.com/DTS_Audio_Formats/DTS_Audio_Formats.aspx

I hope this helps.

Justin

 

[timbre4]

I'll offer this qualifier; DolbyTrueHD and DTS-MasterAudio could be identical.

The inclusion of DTS-MA telegraphs to me that someone cares enough about audio quality and considered the options and intends to offer both for listeners. In the music & concert DVD days, when I saw Dolby Digital only, to me it represented fulfilling a requirement and nothing beyond that.

 

[wanners]

I'll offer this qualifier; DolbyTrueHD and DTS-MasterAudio could be identical.

The inclusion of DTS-MA telegraphs to me that someone cares enough about audio quality and considered the options and intends to offer both for listeners. In the music & concert DVD days, when I saw Dolby Digital only, to me it represented fulfilling a requirement and nothing beyond that.

I agree for "back then"

But on Blu-ray today, lossless is lossless. I'm going to attempt to "not care" anymore as long as we get one of the two lossless options. I think anything past that is only satisfying a psychological need or comfort level, which is fine.

 

[Guy Robinson]

Yes, very few discs I buy now are lacking a DTS MA track. Older ones seemed to generally have either PCM or Dolby TrueHD. The odd new release still has Dolby TrueHD instead of DTS MA but these are few and far between.

 

[wanners]

I believe technically MLP is a compression technique, compressing the file size and when unpacked or uncompressed is restored to the original lossless audio for playback. It is not compression in the typical sense of removing data.

Chris

That's correct, If you read the wikis carefully, you'll see they explain that the term compression does not necessarily mean lossy. There is lossless compression and lossy compression.

 

[timbre4]

Agreed for lossless of either kind, just watch out for a lazy porting of a mere Dolby Digital track which some early BD titles did.