RE: Digital Out???

["Phillip Harris" <phil@xxxxxxx>]

> I finally had my new hifi system with full surround sound 
> yesterday and it sounds amazing with movies etc.  I'm now 
> really disappointed that there's no digital out for 
> Dolby/DTS, I take it no one has found any mods on this?
> 
> Has anyone here got Sky+ just wondering how it compares to 
> the tivo as im seriously thinking of trading mine in now for 
> it, as the deciding factor has to me surround sound now!

Remember Chris that just having a digital out on the back of the box
doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get AC-3 or DTS all the time ...
Most TV shows are recorded or mixed in stereo - at best you get dolby
surround - neither of which will be significantly improved by being fed
as a digital bitstream to an AV amp. Mixing an audio track in AC-3 or
DTS is just too expensive to do for "normal" TV programmes!

Surround sound can be carried by plain stereo audio connections whether
they're left/right analogue stereo or a PCM stereo bitstream.

Films on the other hand are slightly different as they are usually
supplied to $ky with their AC-3 or DTS soundtracks intact so $ky can
broadcast those at no extra "cost" to them...

...or can they?

You see $ky already have bandwidth problems ... They already restrict
the data rates for their channels to pack more in and unlike DVD
players
(which can downmix AC-3 or DTS into ProLogic) Sky boxes can't do
anything with an AC-3 or DTS bitstream other than ignore it so any film
that is broadcast with an AC-3 or DTS soundtrack *HAS* to have its
ProLogic (stereo) audio track broadcast too as well as the video ...

This increases the bandwidth required to transmit the film quite
significantly so although there's no direct "money" value
associated
with transmitting AC-3 or DTS there is a hidden money value in the
additional bandwidth required which can only get tighter and tighter as
time goes on.

T.B.H. I think you'll find that *LESS* films get transmitted in
anything
more than plain old stereo / ProLogic as time goes on and more channels
are added to the soup that's there already - unless of course they lob
up a few more satellites to increase the available bandwidth!

Phil



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