Joe Schmoe

Is this 2006 or 2008? BR has been around for 2 years, and neither store could demo Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD MA for me. I could understand that if BR had just hit retail, but in 2 years neither store has bothered to set up equipment to show off the new lossless formats? What the fuck? Before I consider upgrading my receiver, I'd like to hear the same movie scene in compressed audio and then again in uncompressed audio in a store. Is that really asking for too much? Not only could they not demo it, but the 2 geniuses "helping" me in Best Buy tried to convince me that the human ear can't tell the difference, and the 3 brainiacs in RC Willey said I'd have to spend $50,000 on equipment to hear the difference. I said, "How do you expect to sell consumers on Blu-ray or lossless audio if they can't hear the difference or if they have to spend 50 grand to hear the difference?" Morons.

Alan Smithee

Stores can't demo ANYTHING- I still can't believe how impossible it is to shop for a TV and see how it might look when you get it home. Most stores now play demo material from a hard drive, and it's at a low bitrate so everything pixelates whenever anything on the screen moves. They don't have any DVD players or anything else hooked up to most sets so you can't put in a disc you're familiar with to see how it looks. When I'm finally ready to buy something, I'm going to insist they let me check out a few DVDs on the TVs I'm considering, and if they can't do that I'll buy someplace else.

Most stores are so loud that it's pointless to demo sound there- soundproof demo rooms seem to be a thing of the past now.

Joe Schmoe

RC Willey suggested I go down the street to a high-end store where they have $50K equipment set up. (I had never heard of the store, but they were closed at the time anyway.) Even though the conditions in RC Willey and Best Buy aren't ideal, I would think if they played me a compressed track and then an uncompressed track, I would either hear a difference between them or not hear a difference. And that's all I'm looking for.

Mordred

You're going to be hard pressed to hear any difference:

http://www.hemagazine.com/node/Dolby...compressed_PCM

Brian Shannon

Why is this suprising?

"Best" Buy exists for one purpose. To sell boxes of stuff. Period.

DVD Josh

Exactly. You are getting price, not service. The 50k place aims for service, and you'll pay more.

Joe Schmoe

Thanks for the article, but I guess I should have worded it this way: I'd like to hear a comparison of Dolby Digital to Dolby True HD or DTS to DTS HD MA.

Mordred

Well that's what they do in the article, they compare DD to DD+ and Dolby Digital True HD (which is the same as the Uncompressed PCM)... and the same with DTS against DTS HD MA. I know you yourself are wanting to try and hear the difference, but it'll probably be pretty hard to tell. Your best bet is going to be at the high end audio place. They should hopefully have good demo material as they want to sell you the higher end stuff.