HD-A1 Audio question
 

Do the HD-A!'s built in decoders have the ability to decode advanced Dobly Digital and DTS formats on SD DVDs, like Dolby Digital EX and DTS ES?

With the digital ouput, it would be totally up to your receiver/decoder. So it should work if that's how you would be connecting it.

With analog, it can't because it only has six analog outputs. In addition, I believe the player would have to be THX certified to officially output DD EX.

Ok, thanks for the info.

Drexl is spot-on. This little bug-a-boo basically necessitates having both analog and digital audio connections to your receiver. Even though my receiver does digital processing on analog audio and can send 5.1 information to a 7.1 setup, it would never get the matrixed, in the case of DD-EX, or discrete, in the case of DTS-ES, information in the first place from the player.

At this point, I plan to use SPDIF for SD DVD regardless of whether it is DD-EX or DTS-ES and will continue to use analog audio for HD DVD.

Spot-on except for the info about THX being required for Dolby-EX. That is not the case, except with a couple products from about 4 years ago. Those products happened to be made when THX-EX was done, and shipping (read: available to manufacturers), but Dolby-EX was not yet shipping. Bizarre situation.