DVD Audio Connections

Note that Meridian, Pioneer and Onkyo have recently offered PROPRIETARY DIGITAL connections for DVD-Audio and / or SACD in their high-end models. This means that the connection can only be made Meridian DVD/CD player to Meridian processor, Pioneer DVD/CD player to Pioneer processor, etc., those having the digital feature. A much better solution is near in-hand.

Whoever they are, the people driving the copy protection issues have agreed on the"fire-wire" digital transfer format for the two high-resolution digital formats. So, in the near future we SHOULD be able to plug and manufacturers player into any other manufacturers processor using the open architecture fire-wire format. I hope so anyway; we don't need all those expensive analog cables!!

Has anyone heard about mod's that allow the use of outboard DAC's from different brands? There's a lot ad's for creating "region free" dvd players. How hard could it be to modify a DVD player with digital outputs to allow hi-rez signals to pass as well? If teenage hackers can break into government computers wouldn't it be easy to change to sofware on one of these players to make them blind to hi-rez recordings?

Russ_I, yeap proprietary hi-rez transfer is on the way. Which means that maybe, just maybe we will have some standardization. Firewire is a great choice too. DVD-A's bandwidth can be handled by a single coaxial, but would be better served by two. According to what I have read, SACD's insanely high bandwidth would require a minimum of three coaxials. A single Firewire can handle them all currently.

Sjh32, I think mostly it is more of a hardware isuue than software. It is a totally different chip that decodes the Hi-rez portion (at least in SACD), so it may not physically be connected to the digital outputs.