SPDIF support

[Thomas Charron]

On 4/6/07, Jarod Wilson <jarod at wilsonet.com> wrote:
> On Friday 06 April 2007 12:46:43 Thomas Charron wrote:
> > On 4/6/07, Jarod Wilson <jarod at wilsonet.com> wrote:
> > > On Friday 06 April 2007 12:05:39 brk wrote:
> >   That OTA HDTV?
> In my case, no, not at the moment, but that doesn't matter one lick. In the
> case of the major networks, its the exact same mpeg2 program stream that
> winds up being viewed for both cable and over the air HDTV.

  I haven't hooked up an OTA tuner to our home system, so I wasn't
actually sure if OTA broadcasts where being done at a higher
resolution/sound quality then DirecTV's HDTV offerings.  Although
DirecTV is starting to stream with MPEG4.

> > Many HDTV content providers gimp the quality of the
> > audio down to 5.1 over the SPDIF
> Erm, "gimp it down to 5.1"? That *is* dolby digital, and its the form of dolby
> digital I've seen in all HDTV recordings I've ever captured...
> > and will only provide 1080p/Dolby
> > 7.1 over HDMI.  Just a note.
> I've never seen an HDTV show broadcast in 1080p, or with DD7.1 sound. Where
> are you getting this data from? And I fail to see how 7.1 audio would only be
> allowed on HDMI. There's no copy protection bits here. These are just mpeg2
> files. You can prod the files directly with ffmpeg, mencoder, mplayer, etc.
> directly to see what audio streams are present.

  Mostly Blu-Ray / HD-DVD content.  Although DirecTV does in some
cases provide 1080p/Dolby 7.1 for PPV movies.  Both PPV and Blu-Ray
content must be played over a 'secured medium', or else it downgrades
as I stated.  For instance, the PS3 will only do 1080i and Dolby 5.1
when utilizing a component video / SPDIF combo.

-- 
-- Thomas