BluRay with 7.1 output and DTS HD

[JeffKnob]

I have a receiver with a 7.1 analog input. I was hoping my first Bluray player would have a 7.1 output and decoding capabilites for DTS HD and Dolby TrueHD. Does anybody know if something like this is available or in the works?

[elapsed]

Panasonic DMP-BD10 has 7.1 analog out, and support DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD in the lastest firmware

http://ultimateavmag.com/hddiscplayers/1106panasdmpbd10/
http://www.gadgetell.com/2007/04/panasonic-dmp-bd10-blu-ray-firmware-update-dolby-truehd-and-dts-hd-support/

[Woochifer]

For the time being, you don't need an internal DTS-HD or Dolby TrueHD because Blu-ray discs primarily use uncompressed PCM as the lossless audio track. And as far as I'm aware, Blu-ray players that don't include internal DTS-HD or TrueHD decoders are setup (or will be via firmware update) to transcode those tracks to PCM anyway. DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD are considered optional audio tracks on Blu-ray. Thus far, most of the Blu-ray players that have come out opted not to include internal decoding for DTS-HD and TrueHD, since the vast majority of Blu-ray titles that include lossless audio use uncompressed PCM. The Sony and Pioneer Blu-ray players are setup for 5.1 analog output, while the Panasonic player has 7.1 analog output.

As far as I'm aware, all of the Blu-ray players can output the uncompressed PCM track through the multichannel analog outputs. One advantage of uncompressed PCM is that the audio tracks can also digitally output to existing HDMI 1.1 and 1.2 receivers. The disadvantage is that uncompressed PCM consumes more disc space, and mostly uses a 48 kHz sampling rate that's lower than the 96 kHz sampling rate used on some TrueHD tracks. (Many of Sony's titles also use a lower 16-bit resolution, rather than the 24-bit depth typical of Fox and Disney titles)