torris
Senior Member
Deep within Mila's anus
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|  Posted - Aug 28 2000 : 6:45PMBeen browing around today looking to get rid of my piece of (To)Shit(ba) player for one that actually works with today's gen of porn dvds. If I have a receiver encoded with Dolby Digital do I need to get the higher end Sony560? Or can I get away with the next model down. (360?) And do all of these come with DTS now? What's the significance of DTS over DD?  [Link] |
Darkmage
Member
State of Denial
328 Posts
11/99
| Posted - Aug 28 2000 : 7:20PM
Okay, I'm guessing that all of Sony's 560s have onboard Dolby Digital decoding, like mine does. To answer your questions:
1) No. If your receiver had a DD decoder in it, you do not need the decoder to be in the DVD player.
1a) The exception (natch) is if you do not have a DTS decoder in your receiver. DD and DTS use two different codecs, so they each need a decoder somewhere down the line. If you want to watch DTS movies, you will need a DTS compatible DVD player. You will also need to decode that DTS signal somewhere, either in your receiver, or in the DVD player. The advantage of doing it in the DVD player is that you can just pass the 6 channels of signal to your receiver, and away you go. Otherwise, you need a DVD player capable of reading the DTS signal, and passing it to the receiver, which must be capable of decoding the DTS encoding. Sound complex?
2) DTS uses a different compression algorithm, or codec, to store the audio portion of the DVD signal. DTS does not compress the signal as much as DD, so more information is stored per second on a DTS signal than a DD signal. Theoretically, this will provide you with better sound since you aren't losing as much information with the DTS encoding.
The drawback is that less compression means that it takes up more space on the DVD, which leaves less room for extra features when compared to their DD counterparts.
One other thing: The Dolby Digital compression technology is used on ALL DVDs. It's part of the DVD standard, so every DVD is required to have a DD track. This is NOT true of DTS. So, every DVD will play in a regular DVD player, but the DD track may just be stereo while the DTS track will have the full 5.1 (I'm a little sketchy on this part, somebody check me)
Now, you have to realize that DTS audio tracks are mixed separately that DD audio tracks, and the sound engineers have their way with the sound in their own special way. I've seen graphs, A/B comparisons and other evil things comparing DTS and DD to each other. I've sat through live comparisons of the same source material, and there is a difference between the two. However, it appears that the difference in how they sound is due to two different sets of engineers monkeying with the signal. The difference is not inherent in the technology.
In my personal opinion, while DTS would be nice to have, it's not worth the money, to me, to upgrade my equipment so I can watch it. If you must upgrade due to technical reasons, or you're going to upgrade anyway, go ahead and get the DTS capability. The with/without difference is down to a few bucks.------------------
"There's a sucker born every minute, but swallowers are hard to find."
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Pat-Chloe-Fan
Member
189 Posts
2/00
| Posted - Aug 28 2000 : 9:15PM
If your receiver is equipped with a 5.1 decoder, you can use the DVPS360 as well, it has digital output for DD and DTS.
Pat-Chloe-Fan
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torris
Senior Member
Deep within Mila's anus
1827 Posts
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| Posted - Aug 29 2000 : 5:20PM
Will either Sony model I buy take care of the Mpeg problem I've had with the Toshitba: lack of sound on several Private disks?[Link] |
Darkmage
Member
State of Denial
328 Posts
11/99
| Posted - Aug 30 2000 : 6:57AM
Probably. But to be sure, try those disks out on a friend's DVD player to make sure it's not the disks themselves that are bad.
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"There's a sucker born every minute, but swallowers are hard to find."
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Brad639
Member
17 Posts
4/00
| Posted - Aug 30 2000 : 11:24AM
I have the sony S7700 DVD Player. Not sure it was worth the money but it was the only Sony player at the time that had DTS. But I am very happy with it. I would advise getting a player with DTS just so you have it. But remember most DVDs are not encoded in DTS. The only dvd I have had trouble playing is Vivids interactive body parts (It won't let me pick the second round of ladies scroling by the screen but everything else on the disc works). I think it's the disc not the player. Good luck![Link] |
Bill 
All-Star Member
5334 Posts
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| Posted - Aug 30 2000 : 4:09PM
Torris,
I have owned two Sony's (3000 & 300) and loved them both. I have upgraded to a Toshiba 5109 (to take advantage of the progressive scan outputs with a HD-ready TV), and the Pioneer 727 300 disc changer.
However, unless you have special needs which the Sony's don't provide, you can't go wrong with one of the Sony players. Personally, I think that they do the best job of all the DVD players that I have seen in downconverting anamorphic DVD's on 4:3 TV's.
I also agree with the information that other people have given you, however I will go one step further about Dolby Digital. Unless you already own a Dolby Digital-READY receiver, buying the 560 instead of the lower model is a COMPLETE waste of money.
If you already have a receiver with a DD decoder, the receiver will take care of the decoding. If you don't have a receiver that can handle Dolby Digital at all, the next receiver that you will buy will. Dolby Digital-ready receivers were made when DD was very expensive. By putting 6 input jacks into the receiver, people could buy the receiver with the knowledge that they could add a decoder later when they became less expensive.
Well, now they are less expensive. I don't know if it is even possible to buy a DD-ready receiver nowadays (except for receivers that already have DD & DTS as well as jacks to support future formats).
As far as DTS is concerned, both the 560 and 360 have the same capabilities. Neither one of them has a built in DTS decoder. The both pass a digital bit-stream that needs to be decoded in hte receiver.
There have been many arguments regarding DTS vs DD. Usually it is between "DTS sounds better" and "I can't hear a difference" (I haven't heard any arguements that DD sounds better". I'm in the second category.
Early on, DTS DVD's usually cost more, and sometimes had fewer features (because DTS takes up more space than DD, and because DTS DVD also must have at least one DD track, usually 2.0, because DD is the DVD standard and therefore required on all discs).
The general rul of thumb that I have followed is that if everything else is the identical (features and price), I will buy a DTS version of a disc. If I will lose anything on the disc, or if I will pay more for DTS, I will buy the Dolby Digital version.
That same rule applied when I bought my receiver. The only reason that I have a DTS receiver is that it came on the receiver that I wanted. It was not a feature that I was willing to pay extra for.[Link] |
torris
Senior Member
Deep within Mila's anus
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| Posted - Aug 30 2000 : 5:20PM
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Bill Broderick:
Bill thanks for taking the time to reply. I did upgrade my receiver a couple years back already with DD in mind. I think I can now decide to buy the Sony without DD in it. I'm pretty much sixes on DTS. If it sounds better then DD, I can't imagine how upgrading yet again is worth the extra money considering my ears are usually full of wax most of the time anyway :-)[Link] |
sonic
Deactivated User
1178 Posts
12/99
|  Posted - Aug 31 2000 : 10:51AM
Torris
It's worth having DTS. DTS kicks ass...T2..and Dreamworks and Universal's DTS titles sound so much richer and fuller than it's Dolby Digital cousins. It's like flooding your apartment with so much sound..your speakers if they're cheap brand will sound like a high quality brand speaker![Link] |
Oneloa
Member
848 Posts
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| Posted - Aug 31 2000 : 1:55PM
Moving to [url=467124]World News & Nonsense </A[Link] |
