Dolby 5.1

@LatencyMachine That’s very well thought out, but I see a lot of people not using Phase 1 in fears of screwing something up.

Given this is a tech product, people buying it now are no longer early adopters, it needs to be catered to the general public too. Phase 1 will create a lot of tech support calls. For example, if you don’t set Roku to pass through the 5.1 to your TV/AVR, you wont get any sound. If you use an iPhone with the current Tablo app, I presume you wont get any sound. If your TV is old and can’t decode the 5.1 from the Roku, you wont get any sound, etc.

But I do like it. I vote for this too. But as I have stated in my long winded reply a few dozen posts up, Tablo’s priority has shifted to acquiring a new large customer base. And not too many people (in the grand scheme of things) care about 5.1. There are other low handing fruit they can pursue to grow their customer base.

My goal is to keep pitching a development plan for this that is more attainable in the short term. But yes you are correct in that there are some rabbit holes I/we go down due to objections/points/potshots that get raised.

Phase 1 will create a lot of tech support calls. For example, if you don’t set Roku to pass through the 5.1 to your TV/AVR, you wont get any sound. If you use an iPhone with the current Tablo app, I presume you wont get any sound. If your TV is old and can’t decode the 5.1 from the Roku, you wont get any sound, etc.

I agree with you on all of this. I/Tablo could implement something to mitigate the tech support calls.

And not too many people (in the grand scheme of things) care about 5.1. There are other low handing [sic] fruit they can pursue to grow their customer base.

We disagree here. And it’s tough/pointless to debate because it is business speculation (MBA style guessing :smile: . My position is that there is a lot of cash waiting on the sidelines. Nuvvyo’s marketing guys are unaware of it because they only survey current Tablo owners about what features are important.

Just look at how quickly the SiliconDust guys raised funds on Kickstarter for Yet Another DVR backend. If the market needs were already being met, this would not have happened.

1 Like

Thanks for sic’ing my typo :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

1 Like

LatencyMachine - Thanks for your outstanding posts including your comments above which are dead-on. 5.1 audio would be appreciated but not critical for me however when speaking to friends about Tablo as soon as I mention no 5.1 audio they lose interest.

1 Like

To beat this horse further to death – looking at the top 15 commented threads, 2 of them are about 5.1. If you combine the post count, this is the 3rd hotest topic on the Tablo forum.

Yep, makes perfect sense making this a low priority.

And yes, I’m aware that 10% of the posts are mine! :wink:

1 Like

Oh… it would fly, Candadians != Barbarians :slight_smile: But as snowcat said DD+ supports everything from “poop” to 7.1… so they are ok (sort of diminishes DD+ cert though).

Just saying, and now I’m off my soapbox.

2 Likes

It is my understanding that Tablo preserves the Dolby Pro Logic coding. DPL is not discrete 5 channels. DPL will give you 3 front channels & the two back speakers share 1 channel.

Dolby Digital + that is advertised on their flyer insert is discrete audio. This will give you 3 front channels & 2 channels for your two back speakers. HDDVDs used DD+ & they definitely were discrete audio.

So by listing that on their flyer it is very misleading.

DD+ can be 2.0 to 7.1 channels. It does not have to be a discrete 5.1.

Misleading yes, but they are required to list Dolby certification. And they’re certified for DD+.

1 Like

That is true. But DPL is not DD+. That is the point that I was trying to make. I just worded it wrong.

If they could have they should have put Dolby Pro Logic on the flyer instead of DD+.

They are two different animals.

I see what you’re saying, but I don’t know the intricacies of certification, so I wont comment on that.

@PhilH Just speculating: It could be that since their hardware is capable of processing the DD+ signal, they are DD+ certified, even if later they take that signal and decimate it to 2.0?

I agree though that it’s still misleading and should be up on their site that they can’t do DD5.1.

@theuser86 This still has me puzzled. And now there are 2 TV’s that do this. I have no reason not to believe you, but the only information I found online about this all seems to be from you. And I would like to understand if there is a fundamental problem with passing AC3 over HDMI to HDTVs or if something else is going on.

Did you set the Roku to surround sound (or “Auto” on the new units) when you fed in a 5.1 AC3 DD soundtrack?

It’s also listed in their troubleshooting if you can’t hear audio to try setting it to surround: http://support.roku.com/entries/22281904-How-do-I-setup-audio-for-home-theater-#scene2

They talk about DD+, but there was not a single mention of a TV not being able to process DD over HDMI on that page.

In addition from everything I found online, if you set your Roku to Stereo, it will only pass the 2.0 audio to the TV, but since your source is 5.1 and the Roku is not capable of converting 5.1 to 2.0, you will likely get no sound.

Could this be the reason?

@cjcox No one is talking about whether TVs can play 5.1. HDTVs have to decode a 5.1 signal. See spec at the URL I’ve already mentiuoned. As I wrote, the issue is whether an HD DVR should be downgrading HDTV content before it gets to the TV. The HDTV spec is for both audio and video. That fact seems to have escaped you and others. Tablo claims they offer HDTV content. As such, it is no more OK to downgrade the audio from the HDTV broadcast than it is to downgrade the video.

3 Likes

But only over the ATSC connection right? They don’t have to over the hdmi connection do they?

https://www.google.com/search?espv=2&biw=1440&bih=775&q=hdtv+hdmi+5.1+"not+decode"&oq=hdtv+hdmi+5.1+"not+decode"&gs_l=serp.3...6239.11450.0.11911.13.13.0.0.0.0.170.1250.9j4.13.0…0…1c.1.64.serp…12.1.170.Nnu0byFGaZs

HDTVs do not have to handle decoding of 5.1. But whatever. Most HDTVs built over the past several years include the feature though. Now back to the topic…

Sort of gray. If you support a certain version level of hdmi then you are supposed to. 1.3 I believe.

@cjcox pg. 56 of the spec I’ve previously sent. Read it.

“6.1.12 Downmixing
If the number of channels required at the decoder output is smaller than the number of channels which are encoded in the bit stream, then downmixing is required. Downmixing in the time domain is shown in this example decoder. Since the inverse transform is a linear operation, it is also possible to downmix in the frequency domain prior to transformation. Section 7.8 describes downmixing and specifies the downmix coefficients which decoders shall employ.”

I am referring to the ATSC spec. ATSC IS HDTV. HDMI is a different org and spec.

I have never stated any requirements about HDMI. Read my previous comments in this thread. Perhaps I’ll look at that spec; but it would be better if we had the HDMI version of the one TV mentioned here that does not decode 5.1 over HDMI. As far as I remember, we never got a make and model of that TV.