Audio Video News

The final specs for HDMI version 1.3 are nearing completion and it's been announced that the first products incorporating the new HDMI standard will be released late this year. In somewhat related news, Sony has pushed the release of its BDP-S1 Blu-ray player back from August to October 25th. There isn't currently indication that the BDP-S1 will incorporate HDMI 1.3, but speculation is rampant all over the web that PlayStation3, due in November, will indeed incorporate the new spec.

HDMI version 1.3 is significant, and not just because it pushes bandwidth limits of HDMI out farther, expanding color depth and allowing faster frame rates for video and graphics. The current HDMI specs are already far beyond the capabilities of our content in most respects as it is.

What's really significant about HDMI 1.3 in the short term is that it will allow the high- resolution audio formats from Dolby and DTS to be transmitted in their native, digital form from HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc players to AVRs and surround processors. Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD High Resolution Audio and Master Audio can all be used on HD DVD and Blu-ray.

As things stand now, HD DVD and Blu-ray players have limited capabilities for decoding these new formats, if they decode them at all. A few HD DVD titles have been mastered in 5.1-channel Dolby TrueHD, which is a lossless compression codec that on paper has the potential to offer better sound than we've had on DVD without taking up inordinate amounts of disc space. Although Dolby Digital Plus decoding is built into Toshiba's first generation HD DVD players, you can only hear a straight conversion of DD+ through the players' multichannel analog outputs. Via SPDIF, the Toshiba players transcode the DD+ signal to PCM, and then to DTS, of all things. And the Toshiba players simply can't do anything with 5.1-channel Dolby TrueHD tracks as the player can only decode Dolby TrueHD in two-channel, and there is currently no provision for transmitting the signal digitally to an outboard decoder.

Samsung's BD-P1000 Blu-ray Disc player has no decoding capability for any of the new formats, and that is reportedly going to be the case with the first generation BD players from Sony and Pioneer. As a result, Sony has mastered its first BD titles with uncompressed 16/44 multichannel PCM, which eats up a lot of the bit budget on a disc. Dolby TrueHD both claim data reduction as high as 4:1 with their lossless codecs. That leaves a lot more bit budget for high quality video and extras.

If it were announced that Sony and Pioneer were delaying their BD players until the end of this year (and Sony's already close at October 25th for the BDP-S1) in order to incorporate HDMI 1.3 I believe it would free content providers to author discs with more space for high quality video, more extras, and the promise of high-resolution sound when decoders become available in AVRs and surround processors next year. In the meantime, consumers would still get backward compatible Dolby Digital or DTS tracks, and would buy both HDMI 1.3 equipped BD and HD DVD players with more confidence in knowing that the player can do something with those new Dolby and DTS formats.