Help with Sony Blu-ray Disc Player - BDP-S350

Hello,
one of my relative is using sony BDP-S350 with sony HT-DDW5000 muteki 6.2 system. Now This sony muteki system doesn't have dolby true hd and dolby digital plus. He has connected the blu ray player with the receiver using a optical cable. The bluray player specification in the website says
it is capable of " 7.1ch HD Decoding via HDMI (Dolby TrueHD/Dolby Digital Plus) ". My question is if we want to use the dolby true hd decoding capacity
of the player can it be achieved with optical cable? Or since it is a 6.2 system a 7.1 decoding cannot be achieved.

Another strange thing he reported that it is marked with region 5 for dvds.It plays region 5 dvds very well and other regions not so well. As per my knowledge goes a player is either region locked or it is region free. Is there any particular technology using which a player shows fondness over a particular region.

Thanks in advance,
Mahiruha.

The answer is NO.

The Blu Ray player will not send a decoded signal over optical or coaxial digital outputs. When connected in this manner it is the receivers job to decode the signal. In this case it does not have the capability. I am not familiar with this Blu Ray player but if it does have 7.1 channel analog outputs use this to hook it up to the receiver. This will allow you to hear the decoded signals of Dolby True HD or DTS Master. Then again the receiver needs to have 7.1 channel ananlog input

The region thing is werid. On a player that has its region lock removed there should be no playback issues.

Optical or coax will give you atmost 5.1 channels in dolby digital or DTS formats. In this case the BDP is decoding the high definition audio to the 5.1 DD. This can be verified by what appears on the receiver display (its shoudl read dolby digital or one of it variations DSP mode)

To get the 7.1 channel without HDMI is to use analogue audio connections from the BDP to the receiver. This will require 8 audio cables for connections.


Region 5 is for standard DVDs. I believe there is a hack via a Nokia phone to make this player region free. Main thing is you need a IR transmitter and hence the Nokia phone. Google to find this on the net.

To get HD sound over Optical, BDp must downsample/scale from 192/24bit to 96/24bit or lower.In PC,sw like powerDVD does that.

Any BDp capable of doing that can output downscaled HD-aud over opt out.

DD or DTS 96/24 is not considered high definition audio format. Its the same as the DVD or DVD-A rate.

Hello,
after reading the suggestions I looked at the manual of the bluray player to check the rear panel . To my surprize I saw there is no 7.1 audio out. Only digital, coaxial and optical out. another funny thing is it has stereo out. I am bit confused about this stereo out and not sure about its intended use. Hence it can be logically concluded that this bluray player's onboard dolby true HD decoder might have some capacity of doing it but there is no way to take that decoded signal out of the player. Unless it is connected to a receiver capable of true HD decoding it is not of any use.
Thanks,
Mahiruha.

First of all BDP 350 doesn't have analogue output so this is out of the question. Now to enjoy lossless codecs like dolby true hd or dts hd master audio I would suggest you to connect your player with your amp using hdmi cable (if your amp has one) then there would be an option in the players where you have to select the HDMI option Under the Audio Settings Menu select it as Auto and Turn off the 2Ch PCM option this would enable the player to decode all the HD audio within itself and send as 5.1/6.1/7.1 LPCM to your amp.

Yes,I agree,I m giving option if no other way is present.Atleast this way he can enjoy 5.1surr instead of stereo downmixed.
So at96/24 ,he can hardly get any difference with Htib.

Hello Ashish,
your answer is bang on target. Thanks a lot. I have read the manual in detail and it confirms what you say. This LPCM concept is really useful in the absence of analogue connections. To achieve this the audio output priority should be set to HDMI and Audio (HDMI) should be selected as auto. One portion in the manual says,
"When the A/V receiver does not support HD audio but supports multi channel LPCM , upto LPCM 7.1 channel is output. "
Hence I am guessing this 7.1 channel LPCM will get output wherever it finds a speaker and kind of accomodates itself.
Thanks,
Mahiruha.

You are welcome my friend and yes thats the way. I am doing same kind of thing with my ps3 whereas in my setup my amp i.e NR905 of Onkyo is capable of decoding HD audio. But PS3 is not capable of outputing HD Audio in bitstream format.