Blu Ray Voice over

[ging]

Hi,

I'm playing Quantum of Solace on my new HD200 and its plays great but I cannot turn off the voice over, so I have a great picture, great sound and some guy explaining everything that's going on as well, I've tried every option I can see to stop this, turning off subtitles and subtitle language to none. I cannot see anything cover this other option I seem to have, any thoughts?

Thanks in advance

[ojosch]

Are you using the analog outputs? If so, it could be defaulting to playing the first AC3 track in the movie, which could be the last one that has the director's narration. If the default track of the movie is recorded in DTS-HD or Dolby True-HD audio formats, you must have a capable receiver with optical input, and a DTS / Dolby Digital decoder onboard to decode the 2 types of soundtrack formats. I just figured this out the other day. I even have an old 13 year old Sony 5.1 receiver that only advertises 'Dolby Digital', and 'DTS' (says nothing about HD) yet it still plays the True-HD and DTS-HD audio formats just fine. The optical output of the HD Theater should contain these tracks on them, for your audio receiver to decode. If you push the 'options' button on your remote, and then navigate to 'audio' in that menu it shows another list that contains all of the available tracks in that movie you are watching. If the track shows DTS-HD or True-HD then it goes out the optical only, and must be decoded using the capable receiver. Any other format should work on the standard L + R analog outputs. This is what I learned anyway


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[ging]

I think you're correct, my old Marantz SR580 just doesn't understand DTS, there are 6 audio language option 5 DTS English + four other and another English AC3 which is the one that works and as you suggest its the one with the voice over. I guess its time to dicth my trusty Marantz

[Clift]

Originally Posted by ojosch

Are you using the analog outputs? If so, it could be defaulting to playing the first AC3 track in the movie, which could be the last one that has the director's narration. If the default track of the movie is recorded in DTS-HD or Dolby True-HD audio formats, you must have a capable receiver with optical input, and a DTS / Dolby Digital decoder onboard to decode the 2 types of soundtrack formats. I just figured this out the other day. I even have an old 13 year old Sony 5.1 receiver that only advertises 'Dolby Digital', and 'DTS' (says nothing about HD) yet it still plays the True-HD and DTS-HD audio formats just fine. The optical output of the HD Theater should contain these tracks on them, for your audio receiver to decode. If you push the 'options' button on your remote, and then navigate to 'audio' in that menu it shows another list that contains all of the available tracks in that movie you are watching. If the track shows DTS-HD or True-HD then it goes out the optical only, and must be decoded using the capable receiver. Any other format should work on the standard L + R analog outputs. This is what I learned anyway


.

Not quite. Your 13 year old 5.1 receiver is simply decoding the 'core' DTS stream and not the DTS-HD Master Audio. Read the following excerpt from Wikipedia for more information:

DTS-HD Master Audio is a lossless audio codec created by Digital Theater System. It was previously known as DTS++.[1] It is an extension of DTS which, when played back on devices which do not support the Master Audio or High Resolution extension, degrades to a "core" track which is lossy. DTS-HD Master Audio is an optional audio format for both Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD.

One goal of the DTS-HD Master Audio format was to allow a bit-to-bit representation of the original movie's studio master soundtrack. To accomplish this, DTS-HD MA supports variable bit rates up to 24.5 Mbit/s on a Blu-ray Disc and up to 18.0 Mbit/s for HD DVD. The format supports a maximum of 192 kHz sampling frequency and 24-bit depth samples in 2 channels stereo mode, and 96 kHz/24bit resolution in multichannel mode with up to 8 channels.

According to DTS-HD White Paper[2], the DTS-HD Master Audio contains 2 data streams, the original DTS core stream and the additional "residual" stream, which contains the "difference" between the original signal and the lossy compression DTS core stream. The audio signal is split into two paths at the input to the encoder. One path goes to the core encoder for backwards compatibility and is then decoded. The other path compares the original audio to the decoded core signal and generates residuals, which are data over and above what the core contains that is needed to restore the original audio as bit-for-bit identical to the original. The residual data is then encoded by a lossless encoder and packed together with the core. The decoding process is simply the reverse.

[ging]

Originally Posted by Clift

Not quite. Your 13 year old 5.1 receiver is simply decoding the 'core' DTS stream and not the DTS-HD Master Audio. Read the following excerpt from Wikipedia for more information:

Wow 13 years, I remember buying it new with some Bose cube speakers, so now I feel really old

I guess I still need to buy a DTS capable Receiver though, at least I got my moneys worth out of the Marantz and the Bose speakers are still awesome

[doc]

I just bought myself a usb blu-ray player, ripped a movie using AnyDVD HD and when I play it on the HD200 I too get the commentary.

I can switch between about 8 different audio tracks. There's what appears to be a directors commentory and some critics chatting, but I can't get just the normal audio.

The movie is Sunshine - I bought it because it was the cheapest I could find. Ideal for testing

I'm not overly bothered about watching it so will see how things pan out over the next few beta's.

[cat6man]

just before you play it, the additional info option (or something like that) will give you a list of the video and audio formats that can be selected.........what do those say?

[doc]

If I'd read the preceding 3 or 4 posts properly before I posted yesterday I'd know what I should have been shopping for this weekend.

I pick up the new glasses next weekend!

[ging]

The Dark Knight works fine as its only got AC3 soundtracks, so I'm happy with buying a new DTS receiver to support other discs, do you think the HD200 will eventually get a DTS decoder inbuilt so I can get audio on my TV speakers as well, I don't want to buy a DTS receiver for every room

Also you don't need to rip a blu ray disk to play them just install AnyDVD HD, map your disc drive to a folder, then map that folder into SageTV's media directory structure. The only issue with this is that it does not perform a library rescan when you put in a new disc so you have to force it to make the film appear so we just need a force rescan button somewhere I like this as I've purchased this material and all I want to do is play it over my network, I have no interest in building a blu ray HD library on my server as I don't want to eat up so many hard disks with stuff I already own on Blu Ray.

[doc]

Originally Posted by ging

Also you don't need to rip a blu ray disk to play them just install AnyDVD HD, map your disc drive to a folder, then map that folder into SageTV's media directory structure.

I tried this first but it stuttered like mad. It's a USB Bluray drive - I don't know if this is the cause. I could take it out the caddy and test, but the rip process only took about an hour so I don't mind too much.

Like you I have no interest in building up a collection on the hard drive.

I only plan on getting one receiver and putting it at the main TV.... once I win the lottery....