Pioneer Blu Ray Player BDP 05 FD


Hi, can someone please tell me if this is Pioneer's lastest and greatest model for the upcoming year or so? Does or is Pioneer going to be coming out with anything better soon? Sorry, I'm just not up to speed on their players. Thanks in advance.
tlg
Unfortunately, Pioneer has not been very forthcoming on the details of their plans for decoding DTS MA internally. My experience is that manuals are often not written carefully enough to be definitive, unfortunately. The phrase in the footnote in the manual for DTS HD MA over analog is "DTS Surround Sound signals converted to linear PCM audio signals are output". They use the term "DTS Surround Sound" elsewhere in the table to reference lossy DTS signals, not MA signals. That would imply that for DTS HD MA sources, DTS lossy is output over the analogs. I just find that hard to believe and I think you agree. Note the HDMI column explicitly says that DTS HD MA is output. I would expect that same phrase for the analog column, not the DTS Surround Sound phrase. My guess is they carried some of that wording over from the similar table for the 95, which did not decode DTS MA internally. With these problems in the table, I would also not trust that the 5.1 reference is accurate. I think we need to wait for some official word from Pioneer or the actual firmware before we can be sure of this. I like Pioneer products, but they are having a tough time with some of the details on this one. Hopefully, it is just start-up pains for the new platform.
Rumor on the blu ray forum is the 05 will soon have update 1.08 available. It has been mentioned that you can have it sent to you now from Pioneer before it is available on the website by calling them. It still wont decode DTS MA, but maybe it will improve performance.
v1.08 discs have been sent to some.
Even v1.112 will not decode dts MA. ;-)

Kal
That is because the 05 is bitstreaming the dts MA to the Yamaha which is doing the decoding. The 05 cannot do it yet.

Kal