Question:
Dear Big Picture Big Sound,
My Sony STR-DE635 receiver does not have HDMI inputs and when I connected a Samsung BD-P1600 Bluray player to it using a fiber optic cable, I did not get my blue light or Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. Shouldn't the bluray players be backward compatible and play in Doby Digital even if the receiver only decodes Dolby Digital and not the newer formats?
Are there blu-ray players that will, or should I just look for certain Bluray movies with Dolby Digital only or just upgrade my receiver at more expense?
NOTE: During the movie ("Terminator Salvation"), in the information, the English version showed something like HD multichannel and played the simulated surround sound...BUT...when I changed to the Spanish language, it was in another multichannel version that played the Dolby Digital I was expecting!
-Kerry in Alabama
Answer:
Dear Kerry,
Welcome to the wonderful and confusing world of Blu-ray Disc! Blu-ray players are designed to be backwards compatible with older equipment but there is only so far they can go in that department. The Blu-ray Disc you are trying to play (Terminator Salvation) is encoded in DTS-HD Master Audio - a new lossless surround format available on Blu-ray. This can only be carried over HDMI cables to an HDMI-enabled receiver.
However, when you connect older non-HDMI gear to a new player using a fiberoptic or coax digital output, you will get a standard DTS soundtrack. This is a lossy (but still very high quality) 1.5 MBPS DTS soundtrack which is identical to DTS soundtracks on standard DVDs. Your problem, however, is that your receiver was made in 1999 and it does not have on-board DTS decoding. You would have this same problem on DVDs with DTS soundtracks. The difference is that DVDs were required to have a dolby Digital track on them as well but Blu-ray Discs are not. If your receiver included a DTS decoder, then you would get sound from this disc, even over fiberoptic.
You have a couple of options, though. You can set the BD-P1600's S/PDIF digital output to PCM in the player's set-up menu. Then you should also set "Downmixing Mode" to "Surround Compatible." This will output a 2-channel PCM signal embedded with matrixed surround channels. It's not as good as discrete surround but it should still sound pretty good with some center and rear channel information in the mix. Set your receiver to Auto Format Decode or to Dolby Pro Logic when playing back discs.
A better option that would still allow you to keep your current receiver would be to use multi-channel analog cables. Your receiver does have a 5.1-channel multi-channel analog input. Using this, you could get a Blu-ray player with built-in Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD decoding with multi-channel analog outputs. These players decode the new lossless surround formats internally and send the full quality audio signal over 6 or 8 cables to a compatible receiver (in your case, 6 RCA cables for 5.1 channel sound).
Unfortunately the Samsung BD-P1600 does not include multi-channel analog outputs but the BD-P3600 does. The BD-P3600 also adds WiFi compatibility with an included WiFi USB dongle. Other players with multi-channel outputs include the Panasonic BDP-BD80, LG BD390, OPPO BDP-83, Sony BDP-560 and Pioneer BDP-320. Your can read more about these (including links to full reviews) in our Blu-ray Player Buyer's Guide.
The best option would be to upgrade your receiver to one that accepts HDMI and does internal HDMI audio decoding. This would give you the highest quality sound and the simplest one-cable connection and would allow you to keep your current Blu-ray player. There are receivers like this starting at about $300 from Denon, Onkyo, Sony and others.
I hope that helps, and if you have additional questions about configuration or player settings, please post them over in our forum for a response.
Regards,
-Chris
