blu ray player 5.1 analogue output
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Tazman1958
i have a stereo, and a cd player. I just bought my first flat screen tv and a blu ray player. Keep in mind the stereo is a Pioneer from the late 80's and the cd player is a generic five disc model (Fisher) from the mid 90's. The TV and the Blu Ray are both Samsung. I also have Direct TV hookup if this makes a difference.
Answer
It wont work.
Your stereo is 2-channel. This means 2 speakers worth of sound.
Your DirectTV box MIGHT have red/white RCA outputs if it is a standard def unit. But you are really going to need to upgrade the box to a HD unit which will have optical which contains Dolby Digital 5.1 (6 speakers) of sound.
There ARE devices that can down-mix the 5.1 sound from optical to left/right analog for headphones or stereo use. But only one company makes these and they seem to be out of stock on Amazon because .... it's a crappy idea.
You probably need to buy a SoundBar that accepts optical or a better choice would be a 5.1 system. Look at the Denon + Boston Acoustics package over at B&H photo.
Onkyo also sells some box systems on Amazon.
Hope this helps.
What is the best HD DVD player that will upgrade to 1080i and will accept Blue Ray as well?
Dolly
Also want the best sound quality as well. I went to consumers reports site and still cannot get the answer I want. I do know about the Denon reciever with the DVD in it that upgrades but never said anything about Blue Ray, I really don't want to buy a new reciever because I have the onyko. Thanks to all that answer.
Answer
All HD-DVD players currently support 1080i output. Some support 1080p, some do not... don't expect upgrades to change a 1080i player into a 1080p player.
No HD-DVD player will support Blu-Ray discs, now or in the future. What you want here is a combination player, or whatever you want to call it. To date, there have been three of these, all from traditional Blu-Ray companies.
The first was the LG BH100. This came out in early 2007, and it's basically a full featured Blu-Ray player that will also kinda-sorta play HD-DVDs, but won't support all of the HD-DVD features.
http://www.hometheatermag.com/discplayers/0307lgbdhd/
This has since been replaced by the LG "SuperBlu" BH200, which claims to be a fully functional HD-DVD player, as well as the usual Blu Ray stuff. This one does 1080p and has a 5.1 analog output, decoding for Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, and DTS-HD.... it better, it costs about $1000.
The third is the BD-UP5000 from Samsung. It's not quite out yet, and it should be similarly priced. See here
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9749669-7.html
As for sound quality.. well, ideally, you have a digital cable from the disc player to your receiver, and so the audio quality of the player itself is moot. Of course, as you're saying, the new audio formats in HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will require a new receiver, if you want this digital decoding in your receiver. The first BD and HD-DVD players have onboard decoding of at least some of the standard formats... you can run cables into your receiver's 5.1 or 7.1 input from these. At that point, the quality and the specific formats the BD/HD-DVD player decodes will matter.... I haven't even followed all that, since there's so much chaos out there.
One thing to note: all "plain" HD-DVD players currently come from Toshiba. Other than the cheap HD-DVDs coming Real Soon Now from China, they make all of the HD-DVD players. So if you're not happy with Toshiba's quality, you may be out of luck. On the Blu-Ray side, Samsung, LG, Sony, Panasonic, Philips, Denon, Pioneer, Sharp, Lite-On, Mitsubishi, Funai, JVC, Loewe, Daewoo, and others are making Blu-Ray players. So there's more variety.
I certainly hope that "Universal" players catch on.. that may be the only way out of this format war. You can expect Toshiba and Sony to be the last folks anywhere to make such players, and probably awhile for the Chinese, too, since this adds cost. So you need to watch the rest of the current "Blu-Ray" folks, to see if this catches on or not.
Software upgrades are nothing terribly new. The Denon DVD-3800 allows them, but it's clumsy.. you have to copy the upgrade files onto an SD card. All HD-DVD players supposedly have ethernet (it's a requirement), as will a class of Blu-Ray players, making updates easier. My own IOData AVeL Linkplayer2 (a high-def red laser player) has had an ethernet connection and update web function for over three years now. It's really crazy to make any digital device these days without some firmware update feature. But no software update is going to turn an HD-DVD player into a Blu-Ray combo player.. you need new drive electronics for that.
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