Been away from the Salon for a few months, but now am on the verge of jumping into a new flat panel and Blu-ray player. While shopping for TV & player I realized I needed to bone-up on how the audio will be handled considering that I, like Gonk have a collection of SACD's & DVA's played through my Pioneer DV-45A using the 5.1 analog output direct into the 990. Gonk, your web site was very helpful in trying to understand my options for handling the DD+ and TrueHD based on your BD30 setup.

My questions focus on if there are any choices in new BD players, (Sep 08) that I should consider that would make my new setup work optimally? I won't be able to afford a HDMI capable processor upgrade any time soon once the panel and player are purchased (leaning toward 50" Pioneer Elite Plasma), so will need to make do with the 990's HDMI shortcomings.

I must admit, I get lost in the, "...For Digital Audio Output, I changed each option from PCM to Bitstream. This means that Dolby Digital and DTS signals are not decoded internally. It also means that Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, and DTS-HD bitstreams (up to and including DTS-HD Master Audio) would be passed as bitstreams via HDMI if I were using the HDMI connection for audio. Since I'm not doing that, each of those cases ends up passing a core bitstream of basic Dolby Digital or DTS via the optical output. If I were to leave these set to the default of PCM, the BD30 would decode the Dolby Digital and DTS signals and output as multichannel PCM, but it would only output PCM stereo from the optical connection. It would also decode only the core DD or DTS bitstream to prodice the multichannel PCM delivered to the HDMI output...." jargon, (quote from Gonk's BD30 review)

But through all this techno stuff, I'm thinking I should be looking for a particular BD player(s) that will give me processing/audio output without being able to use the HDMI audio feature. I assume some sacrifices will be inevitable.

Any suggestions in this regard would be appreciated.

With the 990 (or any other non-HDMI processor) in the center of things, supporting DVD-A/SACD and Blu-ray currently requires a compromise of some sort. (The issues that I'm going to describe now assume no HDMI audio support.) DVD-Audio and SACD both require analog output to work at all - DVD-Audio will usually offer a stereo down-mix via coaxial or optical, but SACD doesn't even give you that. Blu-ray, on the other hand, adds four new formats that all are too big to fit across coax or optical, which once again requires the use of a multichannel analog connection. Fortunately, these new formats also contain a legacy DD or DTS track (also called a "core" track) that can run across optical or coaxial.

What I'm doing is using the 7.1 analog input on the 990 with my DVD-A/SACD player (currently the OPPO 983H) while my Blu-ray player (currently the BD30) uses optical. This allows me to at least use all of the formats in some capacity, although I am unable to use any of the newer generation audio formats on Blu-ray.

If you are buying into Blu-ray today, you can make two choices. First, do what I'm doing and settle for core DD/DTS for now (using optical or coaxial out from the player) and let your DV-45A keep supporting DVD-A/SACD via multichannel analog. This approach will deprive you of multichannel PCM, DD+, TrueHD, DTS-HD, and DTS-HD Master Audio, but it lets you keep using SACD and DVD-A. In this scenario, there are plenty of Blu-ray players that will suffice, including my BD30 or the upcoming BD35 that's due later this month (the BD35 should be Profile 2.0 instead of just Profile 1.1). Or, you can get a Blu-ray player with decoding of all the new formats (like the BD55 that's due out this month or the Sony S550) and connect it with multichannel analog, at which point you'll have to quit listening to DVD-Audio and SACD.

Looking farther down the road, we've actually seen some pictures this week of the player that OPPO Digital has in development. (See this thread ...) It will offer Profile 2.0 Blu-ray, decoding of all the new formats, 7.1 analog output, and it appears to have DVD-A/SACD to boot. That would allow someone with a non-HDMI processor to use DVD-A, SACD, Blu-ray (including multichannel PCM, DD+, TrueHD, DTS-HD HR, and DTS-HD MA), standard DVD, and CD all with a single player. There's no official release date yet, but it's likely to be after the first of the year (call it January to March 2009).

This post has taken me half the day to write (had to pause to take our daughter to the playground, bring her back, and feed her some lunch), so I don't know if others have already covered this effectively along the way...

Gonk, thanks SO much for your response, I do appreciate it. I was telling my wife this morning, I don't know how you do this hobby, family, work and whatever else comes your way! Sounds to me that waiting to see what OPPO does is time well spent. A "do-all" player would sure be a winner! And you were the first to respond, thanks again.

Does anyone want to weigh-in on the Pioneer Elite KURO Pro-111FD? Looks REAL tempting from here.