Quick question regarding streaming media player + avr

[tirthankar]

Hi all,

I am going to purchase a home theater (speakers + avr) which I had initially thought of pairing with a htpc. But because of my lack of foresight the space for the htpc I had made is too small at around 5.5 inch height which is too narrow for fitting any htpc cabinet. So I guess I will need to turn to a media player like WD tv or Xtreamer.

Now my question is that the avr is going to have dolby/dts decoding capabilities and so will the player. And as I understand only extreme high end players like dune allow pass-through for audio. Does that mean that the audio decoders for my avr are being wasted? How much quality loss am I looking at?

 

[ashishkesarwani]

These days all New Media players like Xtreamer Pro / Side Winder or Asus bitstream HD Audio so you have nothing to worry on that front. Also if you still want a HTPC solution with small footprint then take a look at Xtreamer Ultra which will be available May onwards.

 

[jatinmalhotra]

Well I am also looking for a HD player that bitstreams DD tru HD or DTS HD MA.

Xtreamer pro Says Firmware update will enable HD audio Bitstream , Can any one confirm that it does that. I am skeptical. Same with Asus.

Xtreamer Prodigy is only player that is confirming pass though. but there is no launch date. Dune is way to expensive and will get oppo over dune anyday.

Xtreamder ultra is also silent in specs for Passthough of HD audio.

Quality loss is substantial if you have an AVR capable to decode HD audio. It is Far better than DD and DTS only.

 

[tirthankar]

Seems like Xtreamer pro does DTS passthrough as present in the Xtreamer India site:

Audio Down Mix : DTS, DTS-HD MA, DTS-HD HR
Audio Passthrough 5.1 CH : DTS, DTS-HD MA, DTS-HD HR 5.1 CH -
Audio Passthrough 7.1CH - Dolby TrueHD

Link to Specs

 

[no1lives4ever]

I have a Asus O!Play Mini. It can bitstream Dolby Digital, Dolby True HD & DTS Core. I downloaded demo files from here. With the DTS HD MA demo, the player could only pass the DTS core portion. This is using the current firmware. With older firmware, with DTS HD MA demo, the player did not pass any audio to the AVR.

Overall, this is quite a nice player for its price. It can play 1080p files w/o any problems. The music playback is not gapless, so that tends to be a bit irritating. But overall, this player supports a huge number of file formats and codecs.

-- no1lives4ever

 

[ashishkesarwani]

Yes Xtreamer Pro bitstreams HD Audio to a compatable AVR

 

[jatinmalhotra]

With Xtreamer pro I understand that DD Tru HD is bitstreamed , what about DTS HD MA ?
Is'nt it the defacto standard now and pushed DD Tru HD back.

 

[tirthankar]

^^ seems like dts hd ma is passthrough too. or did I miss something?

Audio Passthrough 5.1 CH : DTS, DTS-HD MA, DTS-HD HR 5.1 CH -

xtreamer pro def looks good. Only its a bit too expensive for me.

 

[chirag007]

yes, it passes through DTS-HD MA and DTS-HD-HR.

do you have media files having those Audio. Unless you are planning to rip BR or thinking to download 8GB+ movies, you may not require those.

 

[tirthankar]

yes, it passes through DTS-HD MA and DTS-HD-HR.

do you have media files having those Audio. Unless you are planning to rip BR or thinking to download 8GB+ movies, you may not require those.

I do have some movies with dts-ma soundtrack.. downloaded them using the 7 mbps bandwidth when I was onsite.. man those were some good times for heavy downloading.

sadly, the 1 TB I had stored most of those downloads in crashed, and the files lost forever . It took me a long time to recover from that loss.

any ways, back on track.. what about the AC Ryan Playon HD. it says it has dolby-tru hd and dts-ma passthrough, but do those work?

 

[haisaikat]

I use a ASUS O Play Air and its OTA streaming capability is superior than my Sony PS3 (since it is 802.11 g). The PS3 do not have the capability to convert 16:9 videos to 4:3 fullscreen modes but the ASUS playback has one issue, the image seems to be slightly shifted to left with a half inch black bar on the right of the screen. Not sure if anyone else has faced this issue. The balck bar comes both in 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratio and only on right side of the screen.