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After seeing the local supply of SACD's virtually dry up overnight, and DVD-A's still being on the shelves; I'm kinda thinking about adding a DVD-a player into my downstairs system. So anyway I've got some questions to run by you as I know little about setting one up, so bear with me here.
* do you always have to have a TV hooked to it for setup?
* does anybody make something that automaticly defaults to two
channel without having to go thru the TV screen todo so?
* will the blue ray units play DVD-A?
any help and ideas will be a big help. Also I've kinda setup a budgit
of $600; if that helps.
gary
Follow Ups:
well I bought a Yamaha S1700 today, and it should be here in a week.
Fell right in the middle of my assumed budgit, so now all I need to do is round up all the cables.
gary
The player will be set at the factory to Multichannel, Audio preferred.
If using with a stereo setup you will need to change this setting to Stereo, and tell the player to ignore multichannel altogether.
The AUDIO setting should be left alone, otherwise the player will ignore the Audio_TS.IFO file.
A small LCD screen, as Kal points out, is invaluable. This is because most discs are set to go to a menu, and not autoplay the music and not all discs are authored the same way, so unless you know how to tell your player to go to the desired group with the stereo mix, odds are high it will default to multichannel.
Again, with stereo/multichannel in the High Rez section, there are 3 ways to go about this at authoring:
1 - PGC Blocks. This embeds a dedicated stereo mix in with the multichannel mix and playback is hardware dependant unless a specific link into each stream has been provided.
2 - Separate groups for each mix
3 - One group, multichannel mix with downmix set (This is the worst approach to use IMHO)Another good reason to get a small, dedicated screen is for updating firmware, changing default behaviour when setting up systems (I run here with Denon machines, and often experiment with various settings in the Pure Direct modes, as well as altering the Bass Management from the default) - Trouble is there is so much variation in authoring from disc to disc, depending on the clients wishes.
DVD-A is very versatile, and this can be a weakness as well as a strength. Having said all this, I was running the 3910 without any form of screen for some time, and did not really have any difficulty. It just made life awkward in certain circumstances is all.With your budget - and in general for the moment, avoid all Blu Ray & HD DVD players as there will be yet another new generation soon with the new DTS decoder chips installed giving you lossless & High Resolution DTS - High Resolution will be at up to double the current bitrate, and lossless is just that. Right now, no HD DVD player can use these streams (unsupported) but they will be mandatory in HD DVD, yet optional in Blu Ray.
With Blu Ray, none of the current set top players can play the latest BDi discs either. That requires a PS3.
> > The player will be set at the factory to Multichannel, Audio preferred. < <This is not a hard-and-fast rule. For instance, the Arcams come from the factory set to Video, not Audio.
And my Denon 2900 is selectable to Video or Audio but I am too lazy to look up the factory default.
I never knew that!
So far, out of all the universals/DVD-A capable players I have bought, every single one has defaulted to AUDIO.
Only exception is the Cambridge Audio 540D Azur, which isn't a universal but a DVD-A/V player, which has no way I can find to set VIDEO as dominant.
Well I think I'm ready for a shopping trip. I knew all alone that you all would at least get me headed in the right direction. What kind of monitors are you folks using with your setup? Would something small
(say 8") work?
gary
Look here (although I bought mine elsewhere):
http://www.mp3playerstore.com/stuff_you_need/special/
Well we now have an 8" LCD monitor, and powersupply to boot. All for free!! Anybody here ever listented to the Toshiba HD-A2 or the HD-XA1? These two fall right into my planned budgit.
gary
> > Anybody here ever listented to the Toshiba HD-A2 or the HD-XA1? < <
Which is odd, really, considering that the decoding of MLP streams is mandatory in HD DVD.
> > Which is odd, really, considering that the decoding of MLP streams is mandatory in HD DVD. < <I don't think it's odd. It would be odd to see it supported. Only 2-ch TrueHD (MLP) is mandatory on HD-DVD, and besides, TrueHD isn't DVD-Audio. A separate license, with resultant fees, is required to support DVD-Audio. These are video players are aimed at the mass market, and given the poor penetration of DVD-Audio into the mass market, maybe it's not worth it to Toshiba to spend the money to support a fringe audio format on a mass-market video player.
This is not the information we have been given!!
MLP decoding is mandatory up to 5.1 channels.
Dolby True HD is mandated for stereo.
However - and this is a biggie - MLP support is not, as you correctly point out - thesame as DVD-A support, although it would take but a firmware update to initialize this.(I will go & find the links to the references, and post back later)
> > * do you always have to have a TV hooked to it for setup? < <Nearly every player on the market requires a video screen for initial setup, as you will most likely need to change one or more player settings to integrate it into your system. For instance, most "universal" players come from the factory set to ignore DVD-Audio content. You have to change the player, which almost always requires access to the On-Screen Display (OSD).
> > * does anybody make something that automaticly defaults to two
channel without having to go thru the TV screen todo so? < <Unfortunately, this is not possible, because there's no consistent standard for DVD-Audio authoring. Access methods to get at two-channel content (assuming the disc even has two-channel content - some do not) are different depending on what disc you are playing.
What some people do is hook up a TV for the first playing of a new disc, and note the buttons/keypresses it takes to get at the preferred content, write that on a label, and affix the label to the disc box or sleeve. That way there is a "cheat sheet" for each disc, and the TV can then be removed.
> > * will the blue ray units play DVD-A? < <
The Panasonic DMP-BD10 does, according to the current specs, but its cost is approximately double your stated budget figure. At this time there are no other Blu-Ray players on the market that advertise this functionality.
1. Do not judge by your local B&M stores. The flow of new SACDs greatly exceeds that of DVD-A, if the program repertoire suits you.
2. You can just press play, instead of close, and the disc will play the track/format that you programmed into the player as default. 2channel if you so choose.
3. I have not seen any Blu-Ray players that will do DVD-A.
4. You can invest, as I did, in a sub-$100 small LCD screen for menu use. It makes things a lot simpler.
Kal,In the past I've had the choice of going to Best Buys or ordering them thru the Elusive Disc (sacd). Borders dosn't carry them, and Tower is history. I asked the sales people over at Best Buys a couple weeks ago why there were no SACD's in the racks, and they said they felt it was dead (I don't)and they were going to quit stocking SACD players altogether unless they played DVD-A.
Then to add insult to injury, there are many discs on DVD-A that I want to listen to. My kid's got a universal player, and after a couple sessions listening to DVD-A I know I need one.
Needless to say I'm not a happy camper when it comes to the above.
I consider digital a secondary medium to my turn table, but still is very important to me. As I see it right now the Elusive Disc is going to be making a lot of money off me over the next few years (I buy all my new LP's from them, as well as SACD's now).
gary
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