sound difference in HD DVD/ Blu Ray/ Regular DVD's

[tommyboy]

How big is the sound difference in the HD DVD's/ and regular DVD's?

[tommyboy]

I guess no one knows??

[damonrpayne]

I haven't heard it for myself yet, but some things to consider:

1) Many BD and HD-DVD releases have uncompressed PCM soundtracks. In reviews these are given very high marks.

2) Many people think DTS sounds universally better than Dolby Digital on standard DVDs, and attribut this to a bitrate much higher than the .641mb/s that Dolby Digital supports. In contrast, Dolby Digital Plus has a bitrate of 6.144 mb/s and DTS-HD has 5.76 mb/s on BD and 3.018 mb/s on HD-DVD. Considering that the total bitrate is shared among all channels the potential for far more detailed sound is there.

The new codecs are passed only via HDMI as far as I know, but many players will decode the signal in the player and then direct-pass the proper signal for each channel out via 5.1 direct analog out, so this is an option if your pre processor supports this. I can't wait to finish my HT and score a player to hear the difference for myself, I'm more excited about this than the higher bitrate video.

[damonrpayne]

Also: some bitrate numbers:

http://www.klipschcorner.com/Articles.aspx?guid=05aa7c70-5f11-4760-90f8-c1cf27507897

[BobbyT]

HD DVD and Blu Ray have the capability of far superior sound. But at the moment I don't believe there are any processors/receivers that decode the new DD and DTS formats. As said some of the players decode the formats and pass them via analog connection just like DVD Audio and SACD.

[Jay481985]

blu ray and hd dvd are supposedly supportinh true 7.1 and not upconverted 7.1

[oldbuckster]

Hate to sound like a broken record, but just another way to sell more product.Believe what you want,HD DVD and Blue Ray are not about better sound or picture for us consumers, it's all about copying rights, and stopping the general public from making copies of their over priced products. Don't be fooled for one minute thinking it is about better quality for the consumer............just spend your money on new product, even though you just bought the BEST 6 months ago.............it never stops.........check into it if you think I'm wrong.............it's about copy rights protection for the studio's..................

[el jopez]

And its because of copyright that I support HD-DVD, and never Blu-Ray. As a format HD-DVD was to lax for Hollywood as Microsoft, a major architect of the format, wanted the consumer to have some flexibility with backups etc. After all, what good is Windows Media Center without having your movies on your computer ready to stream to the HD set?

Hollywood of course balked at it and supported Blu-Ray since it had all the restrictions you would come to expect from a conglomerate entity that doesn't care half the time about the product they ship to the theaters and or on DVD.

For now though I would say that the bait and switch is the flashier content. For now Hollywood isn't flagging their discs with HDCP, not yet at least. As soon as more sales of HD Tv's take off, and HDMI gets into high gear as the cable in the land, kiss your old HD sets goodbye for the next round of HD content wont work on that high tech gear from 6 months ago.