Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems The Quasi-Official Meridian CEDIA Q+A Topic.

Regarding differences like 1.3, 1.3a, 1.3b etc, IIRC that there is no physical differences in the HDMI specification with these, but the a/b etc simply refers to an update to the specification document to clarify things.

As much of HDMI is a non mandatory specification, its up the the manufacturers to implement which bits they see fit. This it may be perfectly feasible that a gadget stipulating HDMI 1.3b may only be implementing the core HDMI 1/1.1 spec. All a bit of an almighty cock up if you ask me presumably invented by the marketing people.

Thankfully we don't see such stupidity in media players and media - imagine the confusion if for instance the CD red book standard had optional bits in it that could be implemented at will by the player manufacturers and media authors - it would be like your CD player in the car would not be able to play half the discs that you have in the house because it did not implement some bit of the standard. How stupid would that be?

My bold

Yep, very short CDs with 4-channels

Thanks VK, now I am begining to understand some of the discussion on the video side of the HDMI issue.
To make sure that I am extrapolating correctly, is it therefore correct to say that the new HDMI box will have no application for standard CD or standard DVD?

Why? HDMI (1.3) can carry any of the audio formats.

Kal

I think that is accurate. I would just use the standard digital input for CDs and DVDs. Some universal players like the Oppos output SACD as PCM over HDMI, but getting Shawn Fogg to modify your player for MHR output would be the most economical route to achieving that goal.

I don't know that much about HDMI. Not sure how LPCM is transmitted over HDMI. Not sure if it is packeted. Even if it is packeted, it might be the licensed HDMI chips that unpacks it may have jitter issues.

EDIT: Now if the box supported bitstream codec which packeted and it decoded in the box, I don't see how jitter would be an issue.

EDIT: Keep in mind there are different types of jitter. Low frequency drift for example in the example JK and I were talking about between one pair of speakers and another on two different network nodes could be a problem. There could be drift between the audio and video stream (I doubt that but that might be what Meridian is complaining about). The other types of jitter like peak to peak jitter should not be a problem for packeted audio (packeted implies it has to be decoded and reclocked). Perhaps there is drift between channels (I doubt that though). LPCM over HDMI might be SPDIF at different carrier frequencies or something and might be a mess. I have no idea though how it's done.

That's not 100% true. On a DVD you can let the player decode DD/DTS and then allow that go over HDMI as LPCM and then the box splits it out and then a G68 can upsample it. Some feel very strongly about upsampling, I've not been convinced yet. Maybe with the new apodizing filters I will be. But in the scenrio above I think I'd still prefer the processor decode DD/DTS.

Technically correct George, though I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense to pay $2500 for the HDMI Box just to upsample lossy DD and DTS from a standard DVD player which is where I thought the question was heading. It's something akin, to use a current phrase, to putting lipstick on a pig. Naturally it is a side benefit of having a Blu-ray player and an HDMI Box when playing standard DVDs. I'm with you; I am in favor of letting the Meridian processor do the decoding and foregoing upsampling.

As I posted earlier in this thread or elsewhere, I was once told by M that it was almost certainly better to decode a DD/DTS bitstream in my G68 that have it decoded by a stock chip and upsample in the G68.

Okay, but would this be better than having an outboard audio processor by M decode and then pass it along downstream as PCM?

Cheers,

Would it be possible to DVD-> digital input of 568-> multi-channel digital input of -> G68? If so, given the used price of 568s, it would be less expensive lipstick.