What hair I have is so short at the moment that I am unable to get any purchase on it whatsoever. Which is just as well, otherwise after the last couple of hours I would have none left.<\/p>\n
I start this period with a Pioneer Blu-ray player plugged into an Onkyo home theatre receiver, but I need to put a Sony Blu-ray player through its paces. So I pull out the Pioneer player and put the Sony in its place. All works fine.<\/p>\n
I need to check out the audio decoding capabilities of the Sony, and the Onkyo doesn’t offer much information in this regard, so I plug in a Yamaha receiver. All works fine. I check out part of what I need to check on the Sony player. One of the weirdnesses of Sony Blu-ray players is that, Sony alleges, they will decode DTS-HD Master Audio, but I’ve never been able to get one to do so. Apparently they will only do this if set to ‘Direct’ output. With a receiver which does the decoding, they supply the bitstream instead. Consequently I’ve never been able to confirm that they really will decode DTS-HD Master Audio.<\/p>\n
But I also have here an inexpensive Sony receiver which has HDMI input, but no decoders, and it provides signal information. So I pull out the Yamaha, and replace it with the Sony. The HDMI cable from the Sony Blu-ray goes into the ‘BD’ input on the Sony. I switch it on and it shows ‘HDMI’ on its front panel display, but no picture is coming through. I switch off the Blu-ray player and restart it. Likewise for the receiver, for the TV for everything. I change settings. I change inputs.<\/p>\n
I walk away for five minutes and engage in a bit of cursing.<\/p>\n
I go through the whole process again. Nothing.<\/p>\n
Remember, everything was the same except that now I had a Sony receiver instead of a Yamaha one in place.<\/p>\n
As a real longshot, I switched to a different Blu-ray player — the Oppo BDP-83 — with its own HDMI cable into a different input on the Sony receiver. Instantly I have a picture up on the display (a glorious 65 inch Panasonic plasma at the moment).<\/p>\n
Initial diagnosis: Sony Blu-ray player won’t work with Sony receiver! But that seemed somewhat unlikely. Perhaps I’d wrecked the cable I had been using between the two Sony units. It’s an excellent cable from Kordz, but goodness knows it gets a fair old workout and has for some years. So I pulled the Oppo’s HDMI cable off and used it with the Sony player. It worked!<\/p>\n
So I tried a different cable: another Kordz one identical to the first one, but five metres instead of two. It worked!<\/p>\n
So I tried a third cable: my very first HDMI cable which is thin and nasty and cost $50 back when they were very hard to obtain. It worked!<\/p>\n
So I put the original cable back into play. It worked!<\/p>\n
So I have no idea what went on there. But, in the end, I can confirm that the Blu-ray player really does decode DTS-HD MA!<\/p>\n
UPDATE<\/strong> (Thursday, 10 September 2009, 9:38 am)<\/span>: I think I’ve worked it out. Sony players seem to be a touch sensitive as to the precise angle at which some HDMI cables are inserted, presumably well-used ones such as my Kordz. I seem to recall a slight touchiness from Panasonic players too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What hair I have is so short at the moment that I am unable to get any purchase on it whatsoever. Which is just as well, otherwise after the last couple of hours I would have none left. I start … Continue reading