DTS-HD Master and Dolby TrueHD are still a problem as 2012?

Hello. Is out there any current incarnation of WDTV players capable of:

Decode  and/or Passthrough , DTS-HD Master and Dolby TrueHD audio tracks?

I know this audio issues had been around from the very beginning, but I don’t know how this story have ended, I don’t know if WD finally solved this or what.

I’d really like to know this before buying one of these players (again), and I’m not finding any valuable information in the official specs. That’s why I’m here.

For further information: I already have a WDTV player that I can barely use since it can’t even decode a simply DTS audio track. And certainly, I don’t want to be caught on that again (in an High definition level this time).

So…What do you think about? any advice? Thanks in advance.

If I recall, ALL of the WDTV Lives (Live G1, Live Plus, Live Hub, Live SMP) can stream Dolby True HD without issue over HDMI.   I know for certain that the Hub and SMP can.  S/PDIF isn’t reliable for HD audio because of the bandwidth limit of the original standard for that interface.

NONE of the WDs will bitstream DTS-MA, but all of them WILL bitstream the DTS CORE of MA/HD tracks.

Which means that if my TV can’t process Dolby TrueHD I need to get an amplifier that does cause the SMP can’t downmix it to stereo, right?

Correct. Or you can extract the core AC3 from the TrueHD stream, that’s what I usually do, e.g. tsMuxR can do that.

While the DTS core must always be present in the DTS-MA stream AC3 core is not mandatory in the TrueHD stream. Out of ca. 150 BDs I did not find any with TrueHD stream without AC3 core so in practice this does not seem to be an issue.

Techflaws wrote:

Which means that if my TV can’t process Dolby TrueHD I need to get an amplifier that does cause the SMP can’t downmix it to stereo, right?

I’ve not tried that in a while, but the SMP should not have any problems downmixing it to stereo, nor does it have any problems downmixing DTS (HD or Core) to stereo.

But both of my AVRs (my Hub and SMP) support True HD and DTS, so I don’t know with any certainty that it does downmix it…

Actually it does not, I’ve tried it again yesterday. When set to stereo there’s no sound at all when playing back Dolby TrueHD.

Techflaws wrote:

Actually it does not, I’ve tried it again yesterday. When set to stereo there’s no sound at all when playing back Dolby TrueHD.

… via HDMI or analog?

Dolby TrueHD doesn’t downmix in any way

Correct. Set to stereo I don’t get any sound via composite or HDMI.

Agreed.  I just tried it last night myself.

DTS- Fine.

Dolby DIgital- Fine.

PCM- Fine.

DTS-HD- Fine.

Dolby True HD - Nope…

Tony,

Sorry to revisit an old thread, but do you know if the WD is playing only the core when it plays the DTS HD MA track?

(For the uninitiated – DTS HD contains both the lossy DTS track as well as the lossless “difference” between it and the master material.  For blu-ray players that don’t support DTS HD MA they play only the lossy core, unlike Dolby Digital, where they must include both the lossy and lossless if they want to include a lossless track).

I’m not sure if there’s any way to tell – I don’t know offhand if my receiver (new this year) will report this (I’m in the process of ripping a disc that has DTS-HD MA to see) but I wondered if you had made a determination (or if WD had announced it one way or ther other).

If not – then there really isn’t any point in me ripping the DTS-HD MA track (I might as well save disc space and just do the DTS track).

(Oh, and I missed you and everyone else here – but life has a way of being VERY busy.  I’m well but just over my head in projects).

AFAIK, it is indeed the DTS Core.  Both of my AVRs indicate simply DTS.   But when playing the original BD, one AVR indicates DTS-HD MSTR, the other indicates DTS-HD MASTER AUDIO.

Thanks, Tony.  I had kind of suspected as much.

It’s a bit of a shame, though.  I’m not sure what all is involved in decoding the full track, but supposedly the sound has as much difference between it and the lossy track as blu-ray has over DVD.  Then again, I’m not aware of any media player that supports it.

There are MANY that support it these days …  Boxee, Pivos, XStreamer, and many, many more.  WD is missing the boat.

Well, that’s a shame, then.

One last thing – I do note that Handbrake now passes through the DTS-MA track (at least in the nightlies) which is kind of what got me thinking about this whole thing.  However, 7.1 channels only work on that DTS-MA passthrough (which is to say, you can’t pass more than 5.1 channels using the normal DTS passthrough) even though it displays improperly during before encoding (afterwards it’s just fine).

So this begs the question – does the WD unit play 7.1 channels from the DTS-MA track core?  If it does, then the fallback position of encoding with the DTS-MA track is probably worth it (both for future possibilities like a player that DOES support it) as well as getting those extra two channels.  I’ll have to test this later this afternoon (off for morning tennis).

(Also – I’m going to check out the Boxee.  At one point I actually had it ordered but then backed off.  That was back when it was bleeding edge, though, so perhaps it’s had enough time to shake out all the bugs and problems).

 does the WD unit play 7.1 channels from the DTS-MA track core?

No, the DTS Core is only 5.1 channels.

I’ve not tried putting my own DTS-HD MA tracks into MKVs – I’ve just been keeping the original M2TS / TS files – larger, yeah…

Well, that’s disappointing.

So much that I went ahead and ordered something called the Micca Media Player – gets great reviews around the web and on Amazon, and spec for spec is really much better than the Live for the money (we’ll see how it performs, but it is supposed to play the full 7.1 channel output of DTS-MA).

I’m amazed that I go away for so many many months and the Live is STILL stuck with the same audio it had from the very beginning.  Really a shame that so many other companies are surpassing WD.