Hi folks,

I've noticed that many of you wish that the RIAA/movie industry would stop stalwarting and allow receiver/DVD/CD manufacturers to use a digital interface for the transferring audio and video signals. Well, it seems Pioneer, which bridged the gap between SACD and DVD-A earlier this year by releasing the Pioneer Elite DV-47a, has decided to produce the first receiver and DVD player that will accept audio/video digital transfers via the 1394 interface. This is exciting news, and I hope other receiver manufacturers (hint, hint Outlaw) will being producing receivers with FireWire/DVI interfaces. Just thought I throw it out there. Here's the link to the story:

http://gear.ign.com/articles/371/371993p1.html

Sorry everybody, I went to Pioneer's website, and the receiver can only accept digital audio signals, not video. It sounds similar to the setup that Denon's introducing. But I don't believe Denon's using FireWire, but rather a proprietary interface. Also, Denon's CD player does not have SACD/DVD-A.

I think Pioneer's is also a proprietary interface. The "standard" is still being worked out.

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Matthew J. Hill
matt@idsi.net

I bought a 1050 since I was tired of waiting to upgrade to a preamp/processor that would do all the things I wanted. A couple of years ago I thought the IEEE1394 or Firewire was the ticket to solve the HD audio and video problems, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

My understanding of Firewire is that it would work fine for such things as SACD or DVD-A, but is not capable of handling HD video or HD-DVD.

The latest I've heard is that yet another technology might be used: HDMI. HDMI is like a DVI connector, but can handle the higher throughput requirement that HDTV needs without compression.

There is more information at http://www.hdmi.org/.

Then again, who the heck knows what will happen. I want the issues regarding a standardized connector to be resolved before I purchase my universal player, new preamp, and a TV.

I also want a winning lotto ticket.

I could see getting down to two connection types: firewire for audio, and DVI for video. I wouldn't mind having two cables that do a really good job instead of one that does a pretty good job. I haven't heard of HDMI before. Will have to look into this.

I had also assumed that DVI was going to become the next HDTV connection standard. It seems like a perfectly fine interface to me, and has the added benefit of a head start in the computer industry. I don't know about this HDMI, though.

I've heard rumors of DVI actually being used to carry digitl audio, as well, but I think that Firewire would be more convenient for this. Only time will tell!

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Matthew J. Hill
matt@idsi.net

According to the link below, so far, nobody but Pioneer has a DVD-A player or receiver that uses the new secure firewire standard interface that, so far, only Pioneer uses.

Here's the link: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=201258&pagenumber=5

But by now, we know Sony and hopefuly some of the other major brands will introduce new players and new receivers with firewire later this year. Sony's first SACD player with firewire will not handle DVD-A, of course.

I would like to see some company come out with a circuit board that fits inside a SACD or DVD-A player. It would receive the digital bitstream data, process it to output to the secure firewire format via the firewire jack that would be installed in the player.

Paul

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the 1derful1

My understanding is that circuit is so complex it's more complex by far than any other circuit in a DVD player and so a company would be better off selling a whole new DVD player, rather than try to jury-rig such a circuit into an existing DVD player.