Light 'em up

Hats off to Toshiba for their continued FW updates. The latest FW version 2.7 allows the raw digital bitstreams of movie soundtracks (Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, and Dolby True HD, and DTS-HD) to be sent and decoded by the SSP (both HD DVD player and SSP/receiver must be HDMI 1.3 compliant). Prior to this FW release, the XA2 could only send decoded PCM to my 885 and the 885 display would show "HD DVD Multich" (meaning, Mulitchannel PCM). With HDMI sending out a raw bitstream the 885 display will show "Dolby TrueHD" because the SSP is performing the decode. To me, that is so cool. Does it make a real difference in terms of sound quality? I have not listened enough to say a definitive yes or no. My initial impressions lead me to believe that it's not a drastic difference. But in theory, by sending a raw bitstream it's one less conversion. So why am I so excited? What can I say, I just like seeing "Dolby TrueHD" light up. Haha.

There is an important caveat. Because of the way HD DVDs are authored (what I read to be termed "advanced mode"), special features like PiP video commentary will produce no sound unless you switch the XA2 output to PCM. I verified this on the "Knocked Up" HD DVD.