Audio Video News

IC manufacturer Broadcom made waves this week by introducing the industry's first integrated chip solution that will allow manufacturers to support Blu-ray and HD DVD in a single player. No OEM deals were announced, but this development offers a glimmer of hope to manufacturers and consumers alike, many of whom have been waiting to discern a "winner" in the next-gen HD disc format war before either building or purchasing a player that supports only one format.

The Broadcom BCM7440 SoC (System on a Chip) is a full-featured solution that, in addition to supporting Blu-ray and HD DVD in general, supports the range of audio and video codecs that are spec'd for both formats. On the video side the BCM4770 supports MPEG-4/AVC, Microsoft's VC-1, and MPEG-2 video compression, all of which have already been employed on various Blu-ray and HD DVDs that are in stores now. For audio Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD lossless are supported, in addition to DTS-HD and DTS-HD Master Audio lossless. Dolby TrueHD lossless and DTS-HD have been used on a number of HD DVD titles, and on Tuesday Fox will release a handful of Blu-ray titles that bring the first DTS-HD Master Audio encoded next-gen discs to market.

This integrated chip set is significant in ways that go beyond the obvious appeal to consumers of having a single disc player that plays both Blu-ray and HD DVD. While Toshiba's HD DVD players now decode DD+ and Dolby TrueHD lossless, neither the Toshiba HD DVD players nor the currently released or announced Blu-ray players support DTS-HD or DTS-HD Master Audio lossless at full resolution.

DTS-HD and DTS-HD Master Audio lossless streams contain a "core" DTS 5.1-channel stream at 1.5Mbps that can be decoded and/or sent out via a traditional SPDIF digital interface and played back by any existing DTS decoder. A number of manufacters promoting their next-gen players tout this backward compatability as a benefit, which it certainly is, but don't be confused into believing that you're hearing all these new codecs have to offer from this legacy core stream. While this 1.5Mbps stream is at a higher data rate than the 754kbps rate at which DTS tracks are typically encoded on DVD, DTS-HD and DTS-HD Master Audio lossless both offer the potential for sound that's far superior, with the latter offering bit-for-bit reconstruction of the soundtrack master.

Another potential benefit from this integrated solution is in startup and disc access speeds when playing back discs. While Toshiba's HD DVD players have been universally praised for overall picture and sound quality, they've also been rightfully panned for brutally slow startup and disc booting speeds. It takes nearly a full minute from loading an HD DVD disc into the tray until the user can take command of the viewing experience from the on-screen menus. One of the possible reasons for this is that it's known that the Toshiba players are essentially built on a platform of somewhat antiquated computer components rather than an integrated chip solution such as Broadcom's BCM4770. It's entirely possible that in addition to offering Blu-ray and HD DVD playback, players built on this solution could be faster and more responsive than the single format players currently on the market.

CES 2007 is just around the corner, and hopefully by then UAV will have had the privelege of reporting announcements of dual-format HD disc players. Of course this won't offer any relief to the software dealers who will still have to stock triple inventory on many releases, but it's a start.