Dolby and DTS HD: Are they needed?

[DarkElfa]

I am and have been for sometime a lover of home theater. I have about 3 home theater setups in my house, but even I have my doubts about the new HD surround setups. I get majestic sound from my home theaters and the newer versions just don't seem to add enough to justify the added expense. I recently priced the receivers you have to buy to get support for them and the cheapest ones averaged 800$. I can imagine justifying the cost is like justifying the cost of a Ferrari, but for the everyday user, it just doesn't make sense.

[gt500]

This DTS-HD and Dolby Tru HD had been a dud.

I have already update all my HD equipment to HDMI.
Yamaha 663 avr to play 7.1 audio.
Sony Bravia 40" LCD
Samsung BDP1500- Will play DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1
Comcast cable Box
PS3 - PS3 blu ray only has LPCM decoder and will not play the Master DTS-HD format.
HDMI switch V1.3 (http://octavainc.com/HDMI%20switch%205port.htm)

The surpise was that I could only find handful of Blu Ray discs at 7.1.
I found ZERO, 0, Blu Ray discs with 7.1 Dolby Tru HD. Pretty amazing, but true.
Should finally see some at end of the summer.

[Olin Coles]

Thank you for adding your experiences to this gt500. I didn't want to chime in, because my system is a 7.1 Sony HDMI 1.1 based system, and the only thing "HD" is the HDTV. From everything that I've seen, "HD" sound is a marketing gimmick. It's not as if they went from 48KBps to 96... because it was already available.

[DarkElfa]

I agree Olin, its like they felt they needed something sound wise to fit the rest of the HD marchitecture.

[cesium]

7.1 sound is completely useless. but DTS HD and TrueHD are not gimmicks. If you have a good (not a POS HTIB or bose system) the difference is definetely noticeable and it makes a decent difference. Is it worth spending 1500 bucks on speakers, not by itself. But if you have the money, then you should definetely get a good set of speakers and enjoy the differnece.

Also, its not hard to find a cheap TrueHD/DTS HD receiver. The Onkyo 605, 606, etc all support it, and are always available from $300-400

[Olin Coles]

I'm not sure I follow your arguement. How can 7.1 be worthless?

[cesium]

It's not really worthless, as much as its not worth it. There are too few titles to take advantage of 7.1 sound.

I was simply arguing the merits of DTS-HD and TrueHD, which do not require 7.1 (although they support it).

[Olin Coles]

It's not really worthless, as much as its not worth it. There are too few titles to take advantage of 7.1 sound.

I was simply arguing the merits of DTS-HD and TrueHD, which do not require 7.1 (although they support it).

Oh- Well to that extent I totally agree with you. To a less "completely worthless" extent, I think that 7.1 has its place, but it's rare that the environment can utilize it. 5.1 FTW.

[cesium]

Yeah, I tend to overstate things sometimes :p

[slugbug]

I'm happy with my mish mash home theater setup.

- 34" 16x9 Toshiba CRT that outputs 1080i
- old Kenwwod 5.1 DTS receiver
- Athena Audition Series fronts, rears, and center channel
- old David D-BOX 10" active subwoofer
- Toshiba HD-A3 HD DVD player :)
- old Pioneer AC3/DTS Laserdisc player

To be honest the absolute best audio I've heard was from the AC3 Laserdisc of Saving Private Ryan. I was excited when the dvd of that movie first came out and immediately bought it. The audio was horrible compared to the laserdisc. I guess because the audio and video on the laserdisc format was not compressed.