HD Audio on DVD [Archive]

TinTime

17th June 2009, 17:03

I was just browsing through the DVDs at my local supermarket and I noticed a couple of oddities. The film "Transsiberian" claims to have a DTS-HD Master audio track, and the 40th anniversary edition of "The Italian Job" says it has TrueHD audio.

Has anyone had any experience with these kind of DVDs? Any trouble ripping them, or extracting the audio for example? Presumably you'd have to play them in a Blu-Ray player to access the HD audio anyway so why would you not just buy the (admittedly more expensive) Blu-Ray? Or is the packaging just wrong on them? Unlikely but not impossible I suppose.

Adub

18th June 2009, 21:07

I severely doubt this. For one, there is not a single DVD player in existence that could play those audio tracks. I'd almost wouldn't be surprised if the players refused to even load the disk. You sure that those were DVD's? Could you take a picture of the rear cover, so I can see this with my own two eyes?

TinTime

19th June 2009, 15:18

Could you take a picture of the rear cover, so I can see this with my own two eyes?

Certainly! I've just bought "Transsiberian" because it was cheap, looked like it might be ok and, well, I was curious :)

So here are pics of the case:

front (http://i44.tinypic.com/xpu8oo.jpg) (logo bottom left)
back (http://i44.tinypic.com/szham8.jpg)

Unsurprisingly, but disappointingly, there's no HD audio track that I can find - just plain DTS.

Didn't take pictures of "The Italian Job" case but I had another look and it's definitely a DVD and it definitely claims to have a TrueHD soundtrack. I'm guessing the whole thing must be a packaging error, perhaps as a result of simultaneous DVD and Blu-Ray releases. If it's an error it's a pretty bad one though.

setarip_old

19th June 2009, 18:46

Hi!

Just an observation - Sounds like typical Asian bootleg packaging...

Inventive Software

19th June 2009, 18:48

That almost definitely smells of a pirate copy. Unless (and I doubt it, but anything can happen), it's a printing or mastering error on the part of the production company.

TinTime

19th June 2009, 20:02

rica

20th June 2009, 00:18

Would you tell us how you extracted the audio?

Inventive Software

20th June 2009, 01:04

I bought it at Sainsbury's!

For non-UK members that's a major supermarket chain where I would assume that nothing dodgy is sold.

For UK members - do you think Sainsbury's would sell pirate copies? Sounds really unlikely but then so does a packaging error like this.

Options open to you are: to return it for a full refund or exchange under the Sales of Goods Act since it has been missold, to contact the major studio backing the film and outline what's been done to their product, contact the production company and tell them what's happened.

TinTime

20th June 2009, 13:07

Would you tell us how you extracted the audio?

I copied/decrypted all the files using AnyDVD and used eac3to to demux.

Options open to you are: to return it for a full refund or exchange under the Sales of Goods Act since it has been missold, to contact the major studio backing the film and outline what's been done to their product, contact the production company and tell them what's happened.

I'm not going to return it - I do want to see it! But you're right, I could contact the studio or DVD producers.

SeeMoreDigital

20th June 2009, 13:29

.... and the 40th anniversary edition of "The Italian Job" says it has TrueHD audio.The "DVD case" in WH Smiths, also mentions TrueHD. Unfortunately when I went up-to the desk to look at the real thing, they were out of stock!

TinTime

20th June 2009, 16:00

Just looked at "The Italian Job" in HMV. I noticed that the packaging is identical to "Transsiberian". They're both in normal DVD cases but those cases are then inside a separate card sleeve, with a small cut-out on one of the spines.

I guess this means that the packaging for both was done by the same company, and this company has a new boy there who doesn't know the difference between Blu-Ray and DVD. And they don't do QA either, and their clients don't check the finished product. Also the VPRC are supposed to check packaging for honesty.

For one title to slip through the net like this is surprising, but these things happen I suppose. Two incorrect titles sounds really strange though.

Ghitulescu

24th June 2009, 20:15

But have you checked the DVD on a BD player?

Just a guess, maybe it's there, not seen by software, however a BD player would be able to decode it from the muxed stream.

As I said, just a guess.

Blue_MiSfit

24th June 2009, 21:52

SeeMoreDigital

24th June 2009, 22:35

There's just no way.... show me an authoring tool that can build VOBs with these audio formats... then consider how DTS-HD Master Audio or TrueHD alone are probably higher than the DVD max bitrate, and would probably filll the whole stupid DVD before you have any video :PFrom what I understand, the DVD standard does allow for 8Ch PCM 48KHz/16-bit at up-to 6Mbps.

At least, that's what's intimated here: -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video

Cheers

Guest

24th June 2009, 22:47

Post a VOB sample. Then we can quickly see what audio is there.

TinTime

25th June 2009, 00:57

But have you checked the DVD on a BD player?

Just a guess, maybe it's there, not seen by software, however a BD player would be able to decode it from the muxed stream.

As I said, just a guess.

Yep, I've put it in my PS3. It says it's standard DTS on its OSD and the DVD menu just says DTS Digital Surround. However I should point out that the PS3 is not connected to anything capable of decoding HD audio tracks.

There's just no way.... show me an authoring tool that can build VOBs with these audio formats... then consider how DTS-HD Master Audio or TrueHD alone are probably higher than the DVD max bitrate, and would probably filll the whole stupid DVD before you have any video :P

~MiSfit

I'm sure you're right about authoring such a DVD - could it even be called a DVD if this were possible? But I think it's a standards problem rather than a bitrate one. A 16 bit TrueHD track could well be smaller than 1.5Mbps DTS. Coincidently I just got the Blu-Ray of "The Italian Job" through the post today from Blockbuster's subscription service. I checked and the TrueHD track (max 24 bits, average 19 bits, most common 16 bits according to eac3to) is only 1.28GB for a 100 minute film, so it would certainly be doable for the DVD if it was dropped to 16 bit.

That said, I think you're right about there being no way - this is almost certainly a packaging error.

Post a VOB sample. Then we can quickly see what audio is there.

Here's a sample (http://www.sendspace.com/file/c9bunm). It's been decrypted with AnyDVD. I'm assuming that AnyDVD only decrypted it, and didn't strip away anything that it considered to be non-DVD. The decrypted files were the same size as the encrypted ones (i.e. without AnyDVD running). Let me know if you want a sample straight from the disk.

Mug Funky

25th June 2009, 02:43

i bet they correct this on the next replication run. probably some kind of bugger-up on the part of the designer who no doubt had to make several versions, and a big cock-up on the part of their system for not picking it up before it went out.

FWIW, the 2 formats don't sound too different so i wouldn't feel cheated at all. i'm sure if anyone were to ABX the DTS versus the DTS-HD they wouldn't score too highly (unless it's half-rate DTS which is actually crap).

btw, that package doesn't look at all pirated. it's in a cardboard sleeve! no pirate would bother with fancy packaging, and sainsbury's wouldn't bother with pirates either considering how cheap the real thing is.

[edit]
aren't these new formats meant to be backward compatible? isn't the extra data placed in ancillary data or something? it's quite possible DVD authoring software could be fooled into thinking it's regular ac3 or DTS, but to what end? no player would pick up on the extra data as the stream would be flagged as vanilla ac3 or DTS on playback.

TinTime

25th June 2009, 03:51

FWIW, the 2 formats don't sound too different so i wouldn't feel cheated at all. i'm sure if anyone were to ABX the DTS versus the DTS-HD they wouldn't score too highly (unless it's half-rate DTS which is actually crap).

It's half rate :( I've only ever seen one DVD with full rate DTS. I agree with you about full rate DTS vs. DTS-HD. As a test once I ABXed some music ripped from a CD against the same music converted to DTS and I couldn't tell the difference. That convinced me that I didn't need to buy a new amp :)

I was really just curious about the whole thing. It seemed strange that I should find two DVDs claiming to have HD audio in the fairly small selection that they stock at Sainsbury's.