thats what I want to make sure of - BlueRay/HdDVD MUST be backward compatible and play regular existing DVD Media without any loss of performance or audio capability for DD5.1 - and also was just making sure of that because the original post was making it sound like BlueRay/HdDVD would only adopt DTS leaving people whose HT receivers cannot process a DTS signal in a lurch....hence my statement for saying it would be nice for the PLAYER to decode the stream as well, instead of just output it....I was conned in my first ever DVDPlayer purchase, not knowing anything about it, to the tune of about $350 (which was normal for the time in 1998) - where the salesman said that once you get a receiver, some of them dont do DTS...that I wouldnt have to worry about it becasue THIS player took care of that....well I didnt get a receiver until at least a year later, and I tried to save a little money and went with one that didnt decode DTS, me thinking that the player was going to handle it.....imagine my surprise when I tried to play a DTS track on that setup and only got silence.....and of course, being a year later, it was too late to bitch about the bastard lying to me.

JupiterPrime,

Feel free to mention the salesman and the exact location and store of where you got this information.

They're forcing me to upgrade my dvd player and or receiver! Bastards! Oh well I was probably going to do it anyway in the next couple years.

You guys are freaking out over nothing. If you don't have the abillity to decode DTS now, you still won't have the abillity with HD-DVD. You don't HAVE to buy a new receiver or preamp. If you don't have DTS capable equipment right now, you are missing out on all the DTS discs that are currently out there. Just like now, you will still be able to listen to the Dolby tracks on the discs.

If Sony is behind Blu ray, won't it try to push it's own sound system?Since they got the studios merged,maybe they will set the sound system to follow their needs only

I disagree. If somebody does not have a DTS decoder on their receiver now but their receiver has 5.1 line inputs on the back they can purchase a HD-DVD player that has a built in DTS decoder and use 6, maybe 7, analog cables to pass all channels to the receiver. Actually this can be done today with regular DTS DVD players.

You are correct, but that has nothing to do with my point. I was referring to the couple of guys who were thinking thay they HAD to up grade their receivers to use HD-DVD/Blue-Ray.

Exactly the method I described can be used to play DTS and DD using a new HD-DVD player and their existing receiver.

As long as the receiver has line level ins.

From this weeks Audio Revolution Newsletter:

DTS and Dolby separately announced that they are going to be mandatory surround sound formats on both the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formats. The surround sound format war between the two companies has been on-going for years with Dolby being the established leader while DTS earned marketshare in the world of DVD-Audio and especially in theatrical releases.

With Hollywood considering new formats to deliver movies on discs that high definition video (720p or 1080i in most cases) the news now is the audio is going to be equally high resolution and that neither of the two top formats will be left out of the specification. The winner being the consumer who can get a movie in the exact format (or who can choose the exact format) that was featured in the theatrical release from the comfort of their living room.

DVD has been the single most successful format in audio-video history but like its older, more musical brother, the CD – the DVD is getting a little long in the tooth for the HDTV crazy consumer market. And unlike surround sound music formats, Blu-Ray or HD-DVD are much more easily made into HDTV resolution, surround sound discs. The surround sound mixes need to be fine tuned for home use but that is a small job as compared to trying to completely rethink the way a classic stereo record sounds for surround. The HDTV video element of the new discs is even easier considering most modern films are archived on large format, digital video thus to make them into HDTV versions all a movie studio needs to do is a somewhat simple down-conversion. The process isn’t as easy as 123 but it is far easier and less political than the world of DVD-Audio or SACD however with even more storage capability the two new video discs offer the chance for music labels to potentially resell their music in ways not possible on the CD, DVD or DualDisc.