Star Trek: The Next Generation Blu-ray Audio Issues

[Asbo Zaprudder]

That's it I am going to call play.com before 5 pm on Mon so I can speak to their head office. If they don't give me the answer I want to hear I will refund my set and wil rebuy it from Amazon since I know that they have the replacements.

I can be patient to a point but play are not saying anything and their customer service is not giving me a reliable answer.

Customers who bought of play.com, are you getting a bad vibe about this?

Not really, I can wait. Mind you, I don't have a surround sound system anyway, and I didn't notice the FX cock-ups.

 

[Dream]

Amazon just put this up on their TNG season one Blu-ray page. I wouldn't expect the product to be back up to order until a few weeks from now.

Item Under Review

While this item is available from other marketplace sellers on this page, it is not currently offered by Amazon.com because customers have told us there may be something wrong with our inventory of the item, the way we are shipping it, or the way it's described here. (Thanks for the tip!)

We're working to fix the problem as quickly as possible.

 

[Dac]

FWIW, Tesco in the UK just shipped me a free complete replacement set today out of the blue. I emailed them about the issue about a month ago and got a standard "If your item is defective please send it in and we will issue a replacement" email so I just didn't bother and expected nothing. Lo and behold, this morning I woke up to a parcel through the mailbox with a complete set (with the red delta on the spine) for free!

So, Tesco in the UK are also honoring the replacement scheme.

 

[USS KG5]

FWIW, Tesco in the UK just shipped me a free complete replacement set today out of the blue. I emailed them about the issue about a month ago and got a standard "If your item is defective please send it in and we will issue a replacement" email so I just didn't bother and expected nothing. Lo and behold, this morning I woke up to a parcel through the mailbox with a complete set (with the red delta on the spine) for free!

So, Tesco in the UK are also honoring the replacement scheme.

Exactly the same happened to me from the same retailer, only took me ten phone calls to lots of different people!

Now about the lip sync... anyone else think it is a bit off on the replacement discs?

 

[Dac]

I guess I have you to thank then, USS KG5!

As for my replacements, I had a quick run through on 11001001, Heart of Glory and The Neutral Zone. Audio was fixed on 11001001, the phaser shot was fixed on Heart of Glory but the cryosleep station shot from the opening of The Neutral Zone is still about 20 pixels up from the bottom of the screen, so it cuts off short of the bottom and you can see stars below it.

 

[Mott the barber]

This may be a dumb question, but if I only have two speakers and I set to the 7.1 instead of the stereo, will I be loosing so much of the sound on the 7.1 that it's worth it for me to just keep it on the overall lower quality stereo mix?

 

[csewell]

Anyone in Canada received replacements yet?

Received mine today in Vancouver, BC.

 

[Maxwell Everett]

This may be a dumb question, but if I only have two speakers and I set to the 7.1 instead of the stereo, will I be loosing so much of the sound on the 7.1 that it's worth it for me to just keep it on the overall lower quality stereo mix?

In my opinion, no. The bitrate of the DD 2.0 track is only 192kbps. The HDMI handshake with your TV (I'm assuming you're connected via HDMI to a TV with two speakers) tells the Blu-ray player's decoder to take the 7.1 DTS-HD MA track and output stereo LPCM (i.e. uncompressed) when the TV's EDID (Extended display identification data) shows it to have a 2-channel audio sink profile.

So, to boil it down... it's best to choose the highest quality audio available and let the player decide how to handle it based on what it's connected to.

 

[trekker670]

the cryosleep station shot from the opening of The Neutral Zone is still about 20 pixels up from the bottom of the screen, so it cuts off short of the bottom and you can see stars below it.

I find this ironic, since this is the exact shot they used when mentioning why they couldn't make the models work in widescreen due to the cut off edges of the models

 

[Captain Fine]

Anyone in Canada received replacements yet?

Received mine today in Vancouver, BC.

Thanks for responding to my query

 

[Mott the barber]

This may be a dumb question, but if I only have two speakers and I set to the 7.1 instead of the stereo, will I be loosing so much of the sound on the 7.1 that it's worth it for me to just keep it on the overall lower quality stereo mix?

In my opinion, no. The bitrate of the DD 2.0 track is only 192kbps. The HDMI handshake with your TV (I'm assuming you're connected via HDMI to a TV with two speakers) tells the Blu-ray player's decoder to take the 7.1 DTS-HD MA track and output stereo LPCM (i.e. uncompressed) when the TV's EDID (Extended display identification data) shows it to have a 2-channel audio sink profile.

So, to boil it down... it's best to choose the highest quality audio available and let the player decide how to handle it based on what it's connected to.

Thanks Max. I didn't realize the hdmi would automatically decode what speaker setup I have. I have exactly what you described.

 

[BritishSeaPower]

I was just about to ask if anyone had gotten their discs yet. I did mine fairly early, but didn't hear a thing back from them. So I guess I should expect them soonish.

I also sent the same e-mail address an additional e-mail telling them about audio problems I encountered on discs 6 and 7. Have not heard a word about that. I wish they were a bit better about telling us when to expect this stuff. This is like the time I ordered a whole bunch of comics off e-bay, forgot about them, then 6 months later they arrived on a rainsoaked night with no indication of why they had taken 6 months!

 

[FrontierTrek]

I was just about to ask if anyone had gotten their discs yet. I did mine fairly early, but didn't hear a thing back from them. So I guess I should expect them soonish.

I also sent the same e-mail address an additional e-mail telling them about audio problems I encountered on discs 6 and 7. Have not heard a word about that. I wish they were a bit better about telling us when to expect this stuff. This is like the time I ordered a whole bunch of comics off e-bay, forgot about them, then 6 months later they arrived on a rainsoaked night with no indication of why they had taken 6 months!

There was no Disc 7...

 

[Scotty]

Finally received my replacement Blu Ray set from Amazon UK. It took them awhile, but with this kind of service I'm not complaining.

 

[tomswift2002]

This may be a dumb question, but if I only have two speakers and I set to the 7.1 instead of the stereo, will I be loosing so much of the sound on the 7.1 that it's worth it for me to just keep it on the overall lower quality stereo mix?

In my opinion, no. The bitrate of the DD 2.0 track is only 192kbps. The HDMI handshake with your TV (I'm assuming you're connected via HDMI to a TV with two speakers) tells the Blu-ray player's decoder to take the 7.1 DTS-HD MA track and output stereo LPCM (i.e. uncompressed) when the TV's EDID (Extended display identification data) shows it to have a 2-channel audio sink profile.

So, to boil it down... it's best to choose the highest quality audio available and let the player decide how to handle it based on what it's connected to.

Thanks Max. I didn't realize the hdmi would automatically decode what speaker setup I have. I have exactly what you described.

Actually you will have audio problems because, and it doesn't matter what the bit rate is, the audio in a 7.1 mix has not been mixed properly for a 2.0 stereo playback. One thing too remember with 5.1 or 7.1 or higher is that each channel is a mono channel (even stereo is 2 synchronized mono channels), so unlike a 2.0 mix, when your Blu-ray/DVD player is downconverting to 2.0 you will loose any pans and sweeps across the sound field, unless they are on the original front left and front right channel. Even voices may appear to be not fully there because the player is trying to do its own mix into the two front channels from the other 3 or 5 channels.

 

[BritishSeaPower]

I was just about to ask if anyone had gotten their discs yet. I did mine fairly early, but didn't hear a thing back from them. So I guess I should expect them soonish.

I also sent the same e-mail address an additional e-mail telling them about audio problems I encountered on discs 6 and 7. Have not heard a word about that. I wish they were a bit better about telling us when to expect this stuff. This is like the time I ordered a whole bunch of comics off e-bay, forgot about them, then 6 months later they arrived on a rainsoaked night with no indication of why they had taken 6 months!

There was no Disc 7...

Whoops.... I meant 5 and 6. Confusing my SD TNG DVDs with HD TNG BRDs.

 

[Maxwell Everett]

In my opinion, no. The bitrate of the DD 2.0 track is only 192kbps. The HDMI handshake with your TV (I'm assuming you're connected via HDMI to a TV with two speakers) tells the Blu-ray player's decoder to take the 7.1 DTS-HD MA track and output stereo LPCM (i.e. uncompressed) when the TV's EDID (Extended display identification data) shows it to have a 2-channel audio sink profile.

So, to boil it down... it's best to choose the highest quality audio available and let the player decide how to handle it based on what it's connected to.

Thanks Max. I didn't realize the hdmi would automatically decode what speaker setup I have. I have exactly what you described.

Actually you will have audio problems because, and it doesn't matter what the bit rate is, the audio in a 7.1 mix has not been mixed properly for a 2.0 stereo playback.

I've not heard any problems thus far (now that the 7.1 audio channel mapping has been corrected). I sometimes watch an episode in my kitchen in PCM 2.0 via an HDMI switcher connected to my Blu-ray player in my main viewing room which splits the signal.

In fact, the exact parameters for the downmix are set by the person encoding the audio in the DTS-HD Master Audio Suite software -- so it has been mixed properly for 2.0. The Blu-ray player just blindly follows those parameters. You can read more about it in the manual here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17630423/43/Downmix-to-2-0

 

[tomswift2002]

I've not heard any problems thus far (now that the 7.1 audio channel mapping has been corrected). I sometimes watch an episode in my kitchen in PCM 2.0 via an HDMI switcher connected to my Blu-ray player in my main viewing room which splits the signal.

In fact, the exact parameters for the downmix are set by the person encoding the audio in the DTS-HD Master Audio Suite software -- so it has been mixed properly for 2.0. The Blu-ray player just blindly follows those parameters. You can read more about it in the manual here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17630423/43/Downmix-to-2-0

I've mixed multi-channel audio in the past, and I have not heard of that, and I just looked at that document. No where does it say that in the same stream you can do both a multi- and stereo-channel mix. It does mention sub-channels, but so far those haven't been standardized for Blu-Ray.

But listening to a 2.0 PCM downmix of a multi-channel source on a consumer Blu-Ray or DVD player is just like listening to that source via analog RCA jacks.

You will loose information because the machine will not mix the audio as a human would mix it for true stereo.

 

[Maxwell Everett]

I've not heard any problems thus far (now that the 7.1 audio channel mapping has been corrected). I sometimes watch an episode in my kitchen in PCM 2.0 via an HDMI switcher connected to my Blu-ray player in my main viewing room which splits the signal.

In fact, the exact parameters for the downmix are set by the person encoding the audio in the DTS-HD Master Audio Suite software -- so it has been mixed properly for 2.0. The Blu-ray player just blindly follows those parameters. You can read more about it in the manual here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17630423/43/Downmix-to-2-0

I've mixed multi-channel audio in the past, and I have not heard of that, and I just looked at that document. No where does it say that in the same stream you can do both a multi- and stereo-channel mix. It does mention sub-channels, but so far those haven't been standardized for Blu-Ray.

But listening to a 2.0 PCM downmix of a multi-channel source on a consumer Blu-Ray or DVD player is just like listening to that source via analog RCA jacks.

You will loose information because the machine will not mix the audio as a human would mix it for true stereo.

Again, a human being (not a machine) sets the parameters for the eventual downmix... that metadata is read by the player and it sends the predetermined 2.0 downmix to the TV. To quote the manual:

"The Downmix to Stereo section of this panel allows the user to specify the appropriate parameters for the downmix as shown in Figure 7-18 ... The values specified for the L, R, C, LFE, Ls and Rs denote their respective contributions to the output mix for the Left and Right stereo channels."

The quality of the audio sent over analog RCA jacks depends, of course, on the quality of the digital-to-analog converter in the player. I agree that it certainly can sound just as good over analog cables... but then again, I never said it couldn't.

 

[dg1379]

Anyone in the Cleveland area get replacements yet? I called way back when they first started the recall and have yet to recieve anything.