High Resolution Blu-ray The Easy Way

IMO the Oppo BDP-95.<br />

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1. Exceptional sonics, at least based on reviews of previous Oppo models.<br />

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2. Exceptional transport reliability, at least based on customer reviews of previous Oppo models.<br />

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3. Support for an eSATA external hard drive, in case you don't want or need a computer in your listening room.<br />

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4. This is sonically the best player that dozens of folks will come out with mods to take the stock unit to higher and proven musical levels. The expected larger user base will give some validity to any sonic improvements.

I was pretty much speechless, incredulous, incomprehending, and a lot of other adjectives I can't think of. Like I said, they clearly exist. As far as I know I don't think a lot folks would sit around with a DTS-HD MSTR authoring kit and be able to create that kind of sound from what is available. Again I may be totally wrong. All I know is that the files definitely light up the right lights on the receiver, and I can get few MOVIES to do that. Therefore I am asserting their legitimacy. It's really quite amazing that they are available somewhere, with people obviously clamoring for them enough to put them on the internet, and yet the consumer goes to purchase one after hearing the amazing sound and is greeted with no store with which to do so, and no product to purchase. Serious idiots.

(ripepd from DVD-Audio, mostly, some from mdoded oppos and 24/88 SACD) and converted it to BluRay DTS HD Ma for play on BD players, Windows media Player 7 (via HDMi, etc). That's simply what you've found via the torrents. There are authoring projects to do this. nothing has been "remastered" (like Talking Heads Brick DVD-A collection) just re-purposed for DTS HD MA.

This is interesting, and gets back to the OP...<br />

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What's the mod that turns an oppo into a "writer"? Is this via CDR- or DVD-R, or somthing else...usb/esata transfer....<br />

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And will the mod turn the oppo into a blu-ray "reader" as well? <br />

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Could this be a neat way of using the Oppo as a blu ray drive for Chris's initial m-shuttle transfers...?<br />

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Perhaps I should have said they sound different from the DVD versions, not better. The conversion definitely does something to the file...Seriously people sit around and remaster DVD-A's to put on a blu ray? I stand corrected! Apparently there are people with lots and lots of time on their hands...

Dolby DTS HD is a compressed format, right? Is it Lossy or lossless compression? Perhaps the on the fly decompression in the computer is changing the sound (if lossless), are there different settings for encoding in Dolby DTS HD?<br />

I generally avoid any compression formats for computer playback, preferring to play uncompressed aiff files, as having the computer deal with de-compressing the files on the fly is just another variable that could effect the sound.

and I am just reading from the DTS site here, apparently DTS-HD mstr recordings are identical to the masters. Again, just repeating their blurbs. Apparently there is a core file that can be accessed by anyone (DTS) and when the transporter is hooked up to a receiver that can decode, the remainder of the information missing from the original DTS core is then made up and reconstituted to contain all of the information from the master. This is how I read it anyway. It actually is giving me around 18mbps on average on something like neil youngs harvest. So there is clearly more info than yr average DVD which tops out on most of mine around 9mbps. I am definitely not as experienced as most of you guys and girls in the audio department so it's certainly possible I understand none of what I am talking about!!! haha...Actually I preserved all the DTS-HD stuff on disc and play it from there. My new mac mini does not support DTS-MA or DTS-HD from the HDMI so there is no real way to tell how a computer would handle the signal. I am playing the files on an oppo. When I streamed the m2ts files I only can stream the DTS core from my mac. I cannot get the full stream. I imagine if you were to remux (is that the word?) the stream in something like vlc its probably possible to get more than the core but I don't have the equipment to do a proper analysis of the resulting files to be able to know, and if I had the equipment I am not sure how I would find out...LOTS I don't know!!! I'm still perplexed that anyone would spend time converting dvd-a's to blu discs...it seems like it would be fairly easy to convert say flac to m2ts someway, but to actually remaster the whole thing with a DTS-HD authoring tool just to put it on a blu disc seems to be way intensive for the resulting file (which to my ears sounds different, has higher mbps read)...Sorry if I got everyone in a tizzy but they did appear to be pretty legit...I guess my first clue should have been when I tried to buy them...

I do believe you are right about dolby though. That is a lossy format. The HD varient has a lower bit rate than the DTS-HD though they both claim the same thing. Dolby in particular has several different bit rates available when you convert it or what have you. I almost always see that option when using something encoding in Dolby...not with DTS though.

There is no "Dolby DTS HD". The lossless BluRay codecs are called Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD MA (for Master Audio). If the MA is not there (like "DTS HD"), then it is a lossy (slight but) format. My point is that these folks are using the DTS HD MA encoder suite to encode fully lossless DTS HD MA. I'm not sure what kind of compression (like FLAC) occurs, nor exactly why all this work is going on to take already ripped multichannel FLAC or wav and encoding it to DTS HD MA...possibly storage (if compression is true) or ease of HDMI decoding...dunno. Certainly there are more prevalent low cost BD machines than DVD-Audio.

Ok I have just bought a BD. DTS HD Master 24/96 surround and 24/96 stereo....<br />

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So what tracks can be accessed here....and more importantly what media server library programs can be used?Im talking about the surround m2ts files here.... I know how to get the stereo files out into flac and itunes...but what do you do with the surround files? And what media players can play them? JRiver? any others? What about streaming these surround files....The oppo has been mentioned, but are there other music only players....maybee the classe 800 perhaps? Or others??<br />

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And Chris, is the mshuttle technology also going to provide easy access for us to the surround 5.1 files as well?<br />

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(you guys are starting to win me over..heck if ya cant beat them, join them....)

I am sure there are others. Don't forget these are MOVIE files to most programs NOT music files. Therefore you are going to be mucking around in the movie folders in these programs. It would likely work with JRiver but haven't used it in some time. Again, just remember that to the program they are movies. I think I mentioned it before but you can remux the DTS core (not sure about the HD part but the resulting file was about the same size) with VLC to get a wav. I have not tried to downmix to stereo...if thats what you are asking...if you are asking which is the stereo and which is the surround...they would be one of the m2ts files you have. Id imagine you would have to play it to figure it out or look at the file sizes as the stereo should be a bit smaller at the same bit rate. Not sure if that is the answer to your questions but I hope it helps.

I am sure there are others. Don't forget these are MOVIE files to most programs NOT music files. Therefore you are going to be mucking around in the movie folders in these programs. It would likely work with JRiver but haven't used it in some time. Again, just remember that to the program they are movies. I think I mentioned it before but you can remux the DTS core (not sure about the HD part but the resulting file was about the same size) with VLC to get a wav. I have not tried to downmix to stereo...if thats what you are asking...if you are asking which is the stereo and which is the surround...they would be one of the m2ts files you have. Id imagine you would have to play it to figure it out or look at the file sizes as the stereo should be a bit smaller at the same bit rate. Not sure if that is the answer to your questions but I hope it helps.

I'm interested in just how you stream or access your blu-ray .m2ts files and play it on your oppo. Where you store the file (what music library)....because I use itunes. You use JRiver? And how well the Oppo plays the file...ie, is the OPPO DNLA/upnp mature enough to never crash and stream these files. It is capable of streaming the surround file..Correct?<br />

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I assume the Oppo won't handle bluray.iso

First you need to use something other than iTunes. I dont think it plays m2ts and if it did you would not get the master DTS from it anyway. It will not play on a mac. The core will but macs will not output DTS HD or MA from its HDMI. Its their video hardware. Now the oppo will play that just fine. Is it crash free? Not in the least. Though to be fair to Oppo, they claim the streaming feature is experimental, so it's not supported. You can however do it with something like PS3 Media Server. Again you will NEVER be looking into a music folder for an m2ts file. NEVER. It is always going to be a movie file to whatever player you choose to use and as such it will only show up in the movie menu of whatever system or hardware you're using. The oppo can play surround files and/or downmix them to stereo, 5.1, or whatever config you are using. I store my files on a drobo that is attached by firewire to my mac mini. Previously the drobo lived on my Time Capsule but it is rather slow and clunky on usb. So I run it directly from the mac for now. PS3 media server works good but just about all the DLNA and UPNP servers I have used have had some bug with respect to the oppo. It's not there for use as an all in one quite yet. It could be if they worked on it some more but I don't think that is the direction the company is taking or the bugs would already have been worked out from it's implementation in bdp-83. They don't seem to want to make streaming a priority, though the feature is there and does work most of the time. It also works better for video files than for music files as the scrolling required using a remote (and the varying limitations to the number of folders one can have nested inside another folder) makes the practical use of it as an everyday player for music pretty impossible. But as M2TS is a movie file they play well on the oppo. Most of my crashes are from badly encoded MKVs. A couple 3D movies also experience some probs in the mkv form so it's far from perfect but an acceptable movie player. (and in your case and mine it also plays the DTS-HD and MA parts of the M2TS file, resulting in some great sounding music--even tho the player thinks its outputting video.) If I didn't answer your question sufficiently feel free to PM me and I will try to come up with an answer for you.

and I THINK I recall playing an M2TS file on there or remember when I was hooking it up trying to get all the codecs firing on all cylinders, that there was a place where you could specify whether you wanted ffmpeg or Jriver to handle various codecs. I SEEM to recall m2ts being listed somewhere in there, so I am thinking given it's extremely wide record of support for various codecs that it indeed would have no trouble playing such a file. Now getting the HD core may be problematic depending on your set up. You are obviously going to be using HDMI as that is the only way I personally know of to output DTSHD if I remember correctly. So really it will depend on your hardware what kind of signal you are going to get. You will at the very least get a DTS core file. I would suspect if you have something running windows other than a mac with a recent implementation of an HDMI standard video card that you would have no problems outputting DTS-HD MSTR right from Jriver or maybe VLC. For playing from a computer youre likely gonna run into a few issues if you don't have a fairly new system I'd think.

So why do we need to be bother with HDMI?<br />

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Update: I found the following on WikiAnswers which seems to state that my blu-ray drive does not need HDMI, only my computer does, which it has:<br />

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Question - Will blu-ray playback via usb using an external blu-ray player for computer that plugs in using usb 2.0 cables be in lower quality than blu-ray playback using an hdmi cable?<br />

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Answer - I need to clarify a couple of issues on your question. My DIGISTOR external Blu-Ray drive connects to my computer via USB 2.0, but it DOES NOT reduce the quality of the Blu-Ray movie I watch...<br />

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...BECAUSE, I output in HDMI to my HD capable TV.<br />

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See, a USB 2.0 cord is used to INPUT an external Blu-Ray drive to a system, but HDMI is used to OUTPUT from PC ro an HD-capable display. A USB 2.0 can't be used to OUTPUT video, and there are no PC or Mac or any other computer system that outputs video through USB.<br />

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Chris's enthusiasm is infectious, and so today, I almost pulled the trigger on an external BRD player/burner for my Mac mini. Almost. Then I re-read all the comments, surfed on over to iTrax, where I joined and bought some downloads, went on over to HDTracks, where I was already a "fully invested" member, and downloaded a couple of more items, including the KIND recording by Ensemble 96 at 192/24. Mark Waldrep offers the same recording at 96/24, and he shared with me his view that 192/24 is not necessary, and he may be right.<br />

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But I realized that the last thing I want to do is invest in another physical format. Granted, physical formats are likely to be with us for some time to come. But the likelihood that mShuttle will gain any traction strikes me as slim. So, it's not going to be a reason for me to invest in BluRay. At least, not in BluRay for my computer.<br />

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Now, for the home entertainment system, which is 5.1 right now and is not my home critical listening system, the new Oppo may be a mandatory. Decisions, decisions.

I totally agree PR. Currently I stream all mt HDtracks and other stereo files right out of itunes via a Linn DS and Sonos. This is fantastic!<br />

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The next step is to do the same with surround tracks (see my above posts and the fantastic replies by bleedink... <br />

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I am also in the market for an Oppo. Its my hope Ill be able to stream 5.1Flac backups from DVD-A discs, and .M2TS surround backups from Blu Ray's to the OPPO, in the same way as I stream my stereo tracks to my LinnDS and Sonos ZP's...<br />

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This would be exciting, if it can be done. You wont be able to store and stream these from itunes, so Im looking For a suitable player/library "solution"<br />

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Regarding which Oppo....check out the new nuforce editions.... Much better for audiophiles... They look a a real cool product..<br />

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wap <br />

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Here I thought I'd not said anything worthwhile in ages! Like I said above the Oppo will stream all that stuff it just has a funny DLNA implementation which means you've gotta have yr library set up correctly but for multiple channels the oppo will work great and maps the channels to the correct speakers (don't laugh-a quad or 5 channel file will sometimes do some crazy stuff on a Mac). My best investment outside my speakers.

Fcuk off whoever you are you complete waste of time....

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