I presume that we would also have to provide audio. I find in trying to purchase a Blu-Ray player that things are not simple. After some research, I find that these formats exist:
http://forum.ecoustics.com/bbs/messages/34579/464956.html Linear PCM (LPCM) - up to 8 channels of uncompressed audio. (mandatory) Dolby Digital (DD) - format used for DVDs, 5.1-channel surround sound. (mandatory) Dolby Digital Plus (DD+) - extension of Dolby Digital, 7.1-channel surround sound. (optional) Dolby TrueHD - lossless encoding of up to 8 channels of audio. (optional) DTS Digital Surround - format used for DVDs, 5.1-channel surround sound. (mandatory) DTS-HD High Resolution Audio - extension of DTS, 7.1-channel surround sound. (optional) DTS-HD Master Audio - lossless encoding of up to 8 channels of audio. (optional) It appears that Dolby TrueHD is the most popular optional format. And, there are three possible types of audio output: Analog line out. Yes, that is 6 or 8 RCA phono jacks and the cables to connect them. Decoded digital output. This uses any of the digital audio output connections that will support the bit rate and will work with any amp that has that for input. It appears that there is both 48K and 96K digital audio output so this is another issue. Bitstream ditigal output. This uses the same digital output formats but the amp has to have the needed decoder. With my setup, I think that I can use the standard coax or fiberoptic PCM digital output. Can I use TOSLINK if 6 channel output is selected? The Sony player I was looking at appears to down convert the 8 channel encoded to 6 channel encoded for the TOSLINK. So, the High bit rate 8 channel types only work over HDMI. This means that I would have to connect my player to my decoder. Then we have audio only Blu-Ray discs. First, I note that most Blu-Ray players do not play anything but basic CD and DVD audio. The status of Blu-Ray audio disks doesn't appear to be very certain. There is a format (LPCM) to simply record multi-track audio on a Blu-Ray disk. There was an article in Sound & Vision: http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/realitybytes/2873/singing-the-blus.html Note that it says that plain PCM should be used for audio. This is obvious to all of us engineers. :-) I fear that Blu-Ray audio disks are going to use Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio because then there is a brand name on the disk. The other issue is that some people will need a decoder (as I do) because they use standard audio components for their audio. Could the device also act as a decoder? And there are the ever popular legal issues. 96K digital audio output from copy protected disks is not allowed. -- JRT _______________________________________________ Open-hardware-ethervideo mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-hardware-ethervideo
