LG GGW-H20L - No DTS or DD 5.1

[phil-uk]

Hi,

I'm having a problem with this drive and getting DTS or DD 5.1 from the PC into my Onkyo SR605. When I play ripped DVDs from the HDD the amp show DolbyD on the amp but when I play a Blu-ray or HD-DVD from this drive it just has PCM and DSP displayed.

What am I missing?

[Marc]

how are you outputting the sound from your PC? And which software are you using?

[phil-uk]

Originally Posted by Marc

how are you outputting the sound from your PC? And which software are you using?

Sorry, I should have said.

Outputting via SPDIF to Optical 1 on the Onkyo and using Cyberlink Power DVD suite which came with the drive and have applied the latest updates to it. I do get DD5.1 and DTS when playing ripped DVDs from the HDD but they were ripped on my other PC and then copied to the HTPC so the HTPC is outputting the signal OK but not from this drive, actually I haven't tried a normal DVD in this drive to see if that works or not, is the soundtrack sent over the SATA cable or does it use a CD audio cable from the drive to the mobo, is that still required ? I dont recall getting one with the drive.

[Marc]

i believe there's a limitation with the bundled software that it will only decode to 2.0 stereo when you use HD DVD/Blu Ray - you need the retail version in order to get the full sound options, but when you do, you can get all the HD sound formats over analog, however over SPDIF you can only get core 5.1 DD and DTS, not any of the HD formats. If you use analog out though, you can get all the HD formats even if you don't have a HD receiver (downsampled to 16 bit/48khz if they are originally higher than that though) i am using Power DVD 8 myself, and it works a treat (need to hack it a bit to play HD DVD though)

[phil-uk]

Originally Posted by Marc

i believe there's a limitation with the bundled software that it will only decode to 2.0 stereo when you use HD DVD/Blu Ray - you need the retail version in order to get the full sound options, but when you do, you can get all the HD sound formats over analog, however over SPDIF you can only get core 5.1 DD and DTS, not any of the HD formats. If you use analog out though, you can get all the HD formats even if you don't have a HD receiver (downsampled to 16 bit/48khz if they are originally higher than that though) i am using Power DVD 8 myself, and it works a treat (need to hack it a bit to play HD DVD though)

Thanks for the reply Marc, I did look in the option of Cyberlink and didn't see any options for DTS, DD, etc only 2 speaker to 8 speaker options, so I guess you are right and I'll need the retail version, bummer! So no HD options over any digital connection only analog, are you saying I need to run 6 phono leads from the PC to the amp to get this ?

[Marc]

there's no digital method of enjoying HD sound on the pc yet (as far as i know) but Auzentech are releasing a board this year which connects to their own top end sound card, and allows you to loop your HDMI graphics card into the sound card and output both picture and sound over HDMI - there's not enough bandwidth on a SPDIF or Coax output to do anything more than DD and DTS core though unfortunately. Still, combined this is going to set you back another £200 which is crazy when you could probably get away with using all your current equipment and achieve more or less the same effect

how you connect via analog depends very much on the outputs on your soundcard as not all will have 6 analog outs. I have an Audigy X-fi and it has 3x 3mm outputs, which i have connected to my 5.1 analog inputs on my receiver using the Creative Home Theater cable which splits 3x 3mm outputs into 8x rca inputs (for 7.1 surround) so if you have 7.1 inputs on your receiver you could then enjoy the (almost) full range of DD+ all the way through to DTS-MA 7.1. It's not amazingly long (about 3m) so if you have a long distance between pc and av receiver, you can pick up some 3mm extension cables for pennies each..

Another decent bit of software by the way, is AnyDVD HD which will bypass HDCP if you need to, and also bypass Blu Ray region codes - unfortunately it's not cheap if you want to buy it.

[phil-uk]

Thanks again marc, a bit help

[Ian_S]

Actually you can get HD audio now from HDMI. IF you have an ATI based card then it uses a Realtek Sound device to allow you to get sound over HDMI. I have a Toshiba laptop and this seems to work OK. Again, you will need a full copy of PowerDVD Ultra to decode multi-channel, but I believe the latest version 8 supports both TrueHD and DTS-HD MA and will output those as PCM over HDMI.

I'm not yet aware of any HDMI 1.3 compatible video cards that would allow HD bitstream to a suitable amp, but I'm sure some will arrive. With standalone ATI cards you may need to purshase a special adapter to get the HDMI sound element as the cards have DVI ports.