Universal shifts to DTS-HD MA on Blu-ray!

[Sehnzeleid]

Via Man Room:

Exclusive: Universal Talks Blu-ray Audio Plans

In the waning months of Universal Studios Home Entertainment's HD DVD era, the studio had standardized the use of Dolby TrueHD audio on almost all newly announced titles. This was in stark contrast to the early Universal HD DVD days when the appearance of Dolby TrueHD was overshadowed by the heavy use of Dolby Digital Plus lossy audio.

Times has certainly changed, and now Universal is gearing up to enter the Blu-ray Disc arena for the first time on July 22. With this move from HD DVD to Blu-ray support comes many questions, including how Universal will approach audio with the expanded room a BD-50 disc offers over a 30GD dual-layered HD DVD disc.

Although Universal is remaining tight-lipped on a lot of details surrounding their Blu-ray presence that wasn't included in the press release, they were kind enough to entertain our questions about their audio approach on Blu-ray. The simple answer may surprise you. At the least, it should delight you.

The first wave of Universal Blu-ray Disc titles on July 22 are all from the Mummy franchise and were all previously released on HD DVD: The Mummy, The Mummy Returns and The Scorpion King. All of these titles were published with Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 audio tracks, but not Dolby TrueHD tracks.

Per Universal, all three Mummy films will include DTS-HD Master Lossless Audio. That's right, folks. Instead of lazily porting over what was already completed for HD DVD, Universal has heard your cries for lossless audio and is taking action.

Universal went on to tell us that the game plan moving forward is for DTS-HD Master Lossless to become the Blu-ray standard at the studio. Obviously there will be exceptions, but it looks like the majority of titles, and probably all new theatrical titles, will include DTS-HD.

[zepherman]

AWESOME!!!!!! Now if they will release the Extended version of Peter Jackson's King Kong with a 7.1 DTS-HD MA soundtrack, that would be sweet!!

Thanks for sharing that really cool news.

[DVD-NUTTA]

I have officially CREAMED MYSELF

[Derb]

Can anyone spare $3,750??????

[Ruined]

I'm not too surprised considering that Universal owns significant financial stake in DTS. Now that there is bandwidth & space to spare, they are going to the lossless codec that makes the most financial sense to them.

(And in honor of this day, I just made my DTC-9.8 DTS-bomb proof for whenever Panasonic decides to push out a BD50 or two )

[dugpa]

Originally Posted by Ruined

I'm not too surprised considering that Universal owns significant financial stake in DTS.

Actually after they went public in 2003, Universal only owns about 7% of the company. Spielberg has about the same and the other original investment firm has about 16%. 7% isn't what I'd call significant. Oh, and I own about .0000001% of the company.

[SilentBob]

*sniff goes over and hugs PS3*

Oh this is beautiful. Sadly i wont update my Mummy HD-DVD for the sound but i knew there was a reason why i held off on buying Serenity. . . You think they will port over the newer dvd edition instead of the HD-DVD regular edition

[ganthc]

This is excellent news! Finally, with the death of hd-dvd, we have a move to lossless audio that matches the excellent 1080p picture. I will say there are quite a few movies that I won't rebuy in blu because they have lossless. But I will consider Serenity for sure in blu if they do it. The other candidates for rebuying would be the first 2 Bourne movies. Anyone that says that the 3rd movie doesn't sound loads better than the first two is kidding themselves.

Edit: Somewhere, Ruined is cursing the marketing machine that is taking away his precious DD+ audio track as the preferred Universal/Paramount audio choice.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by ganthc

Edit: Somewhere, Ruined is cursing the marketing machine that is taking away his precious DD+ audio track as the preferred Universal/Paramount audio choice.

Somewhere, ganthc still has not gotten over the format war!

[ganthc]

Originally Posted by Ruined

Somewhere, ganthc still has not gotten over the format war!

Sorry, my placebo-induced ears couldn't hear what you were saying.

[Derb]

IMHO AUDIO is just as important as VIDEO. Unless your deaf.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by ganthc

Sorry, my placebo-induced ears couldn't hear what you were saying.

And they probably can't tell the difference between 1.5mbps 5.1 lossy and lossless 5.1, for that matter, just like other people - format war aside, just using plain scientific studies

On Blu-ray, though, there is no need to be efficient so audio with bloated bandwidth/space doesn't concern me here. You have the space & bandwidth, might as well use it, even if the sonic gains are minimal. The only downside is that if you rip to a media server you will have to transcode the huge DTS-HDMA track to standard DTS 1.5mbps if you don't want these discs eating up all of the storage space & network bandwidth - but that is no big deal with programs like eac3to and Surcode available. Plus since the track is lossless, a transcode to lossy will be just as good as if it were done from the master originally. Heck, maybe at some point someone will write a utility to delete the lossless extension of DTS-HDMA, which would make transitioning the track to a media server take a lot less time.

Anyway, I look forward to Universal's tracks, want to see how the DSP upgrade worked on my DTC-9.8... Though the BD50 needs to come out first

[ganthc]

Originally Posted by Ruined

Anyway, I look forward to Universal's tracks, want to see how the DSP upgrade worked on my DTC-9.8... Though the BD50 needs to come out first

You and me both.

Like I said, the first two Bourne movies, and Serenity are top on my list for rebuying. I think that they could do well with lossless soundtracks. When Paramount gets around to it, I might rebuy Transformers as well if it has a lossless track just to see if there is an audible difference.

[Derb]

Originally Posted by ganthc

When Paramount gets around to it, I might rebuy Transformers as well if it has a lossless track just to see if there is an audible difference.

I think Paramount messed up what the display on the HD DVD player reads. That track definitely sounds lossless. If there is 1 title out there where placebo-effect takes place, Transformers is it. Heck it bests other TrueHD tracks I've heard on the format.

[plissken99]

Originally Posted by ganthc

You and me both.

Like I said, the first two Bourne movies, and Serenity are top on my list for rebuying. I think that they could do well with lossless soundtracks. When Paramount gets around to it, I might rebuy Transformers as well if it has a lossless track just to see if there is an audible difference.

+1 here. Serenity is an absolute must. I'll upgrade King Kong and American Gangster also, but only if their uncut(or directors cuts, I don't know which) version.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by ganthc

You and me both.

Like I said, the first two Bourne movies, and Serenity are top on my list for rebuying. I think that they could do well with lossless soundtracks. When Paramount gets around to it, I might rebuy Transformers as well if it has a lossless track just to see if there is an audible difference.

I'll be honest, I pretty much sold all of my Universal discs on eBay the week of the Warner announcement. And since I bought them for 40% off, I only ended up getting around $2 less than what I paid for them as a large percentage of people did not know about, were in denial of, or did not understand the scope of the announcement. I knew all of them would be available on the winning format.

What I did keep, though, were more rare movies like The Jerk which might not see a Blu-ray for a long time since the HD gain is minimal (but still significant IMO - lack of DVD MPEG2 artifacts is a big plus).

Re: lossless vs. lossy, IMO a movie like transformers is not the type of movie that would gain the most from the encoding differences. Music is where the biggest gains would be (and even then its rather minimal), not sound effects. And the demo scenes of Transformers are pretty much all sound effects.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by Derb

I think Paramount messed up what the display on the HD DVD player reads. That track definitely sounds lossless. If there is 1 title out there where placebo-effect takes place, Transformers is it. Heck it bests other TrueHD tracks I've heard on the format.

Transformers is 1.5mbps DD+, I checked the files

When your lossy rate is as high as 1.5mbps, the master condition and mixing are far, far, far, far, far, farx100 times more important than lossless encoding. Basically with that high of a bitrate and a multichannel bitpool to boot the perceptual codecs don't have to throw away virtually any of the audible frequencies and hence the results are excellent. Remember, most masters are 48khz, translating to 24khz top end response. By throwing away the 20khz - 24khz range you save tons of space without impacting audible fidelity since humans can only reliably hear up to 20khz. That is where the biggest savings comes with 1.5mbps lossy codecs.

Heck, when I do lossy encoding for myself or others the very first thing I do is run the material through a 20khz lowpass filter. Those frequencies above 20khz will only distort the signal as they are inaudible but become very difficulty to encode and hence can create artifacts in the audible spectrum if the bitrate is near-starved during a certain passage. By dumping them you much lower the chance of audible artifacting while similarly not harming the audible frequencies of 20khz and below.

[sambow87]

I don't care about what the track name actually is. As long as it sounds great. Why have we switched that? I just don't understand. Oh.....it's not lossless but it sounds awesome....i'm so disappointed.

Just like bit-rates. Who the hell cares?

[Sehnzeleid]

Originally Posted by plissken99

+1 here. Serenity is an absolute must. I'll upgrade King Kong and American Gangster also, but only if their uncut(or directors cuts, I don't know which) version.

The theatrical version of American Gangster on HD DVD is more than likely Scott's preferred version.

[zepherman]

Originally Posted by plissken99

+1 here. Serenity is an absolute must. I'll upgrade King Kong and American Gangster also, but only if their uncut(or directors cuts, I don't know which) version.

Definitely hope American Ganster is released on Blu-ray with an Extended Version option. I loved that movie on DVD and really wanted to buy the HD DVD, but I really want the extended version of the film. Hopefully Blu-ray will give it to us. And King Kong on Blu-ray in an Extended Edition would be sweet. A lot of good stuff coming our way!


Seth

[ganthc]

I do need to rewatch/relisten to Transformers again, now that I have my hd-a35. I wonder if the lack of bass will better on this machine than on the hd-a2. All I know is that the sound was great, but no the best I've ever heard. I made the changes suggested by Ruined about the bit stream/PCM setting, but I still wasn't totally impressed. The laser sounds from the helicopter guy when he's attacking the air force base sounded hollow for some reason, moreso than what I heard in the theater. I will relisten to that part and see if the hd-a35 improves that.

At any rate, I would like to see it as a test to see how great the lossy track was for Transformers, should they release a lossless version on blu-ray. It could make an interesting comparison.

[biglyle]

Why anyone wants an extended edition of King Kong is beyond me. I would like the reduced version starting at the island. That I would buy.

[ganthc]

Originally Posted by biglyle

Why anyone wants an extended edition of King Kong is beyond me. I would like the reduced version starting at the island. That I would buy.

Hear, hear!!!

Shorten the dinosaur stampede and the bug fighting scene. Pointless eye candy that was just tiresome after 2 minutes.

[bembol]

Originally Posted by Derb

IMHO AUDIO is just as important as VIDEO. Unless your deaf.

This is great news and kudos to Universal!

Honesty, I didn't think it was (70/30) until I finally upgraded to High-Def & Denon AVR-2808CI. dts Master Audio

[Derb]

Originally Posted by ganthc

I do need to rewatch/relisten to Transformers again, now that I have my hd-a35. I wonder if the lack of bass will better on this machine than on the hd-a2. All I know is that the sound was great, but no the best I've ever heard. I made the changes suggested by Ruined about the bit stream/PCM setting, but I still wasn't totally impressed.

I changed my settings & even bumped up my rating after viewing a second time. The first time, there was lots of distortion with dialog as well as the center sounding poorly mixed, low LFE. Just overall not that impressive until I made the changes which were,

Dialog Enhancement On > Dialog Enhancement Off
Dynamic Range On > Dynamic Range Off
HDMI Auto > HDMI PCM

Transformers does sound awesome even if it is at 1.5mbps though I can't say the same for most 1.5 HD DVD discs.