Engadget HD Podcast 141 - 06.17.2009
By Trent Wolbe 
posted June 17th 2009 10:15AM
posted June 17th 2009 10:15AM
After last week's sleeper of a show we were excited to jump in and talk up interesting topics like Managed Copy, the digital transition and the latest do it all media device from Popcorn Hour. As you've come to expect, we took questions via comments, the phone, and the live chat; so don't hesitate to let us know how you feel, any way you like. UPDATE: Looks like we have some gremlins in our MP3 version of the podcast, but the other formats should be fine. Please bear with us as we try to get the MP3 sorted.
UPDATE: Things seem to be working now, so you can finally hear how Ben managed to lose 20,000 rankings across his music library in one fell swoop. Ouch!
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Hosts: Ben Drawbaugh, Steven Kim, Richard Lawler
Producer: Trent Wolbe
01:05 - Comments from Engadget HD Podcast 140 - 06.10.2009
04:30 - Blu-ray gets Managed Copy next year, requires new hardware
18:45 - Poll: Is Blu-ray coming to Apple anytime soon?
23:57 - Transformers Blu-ray owners get an early peek at the sequel via BD-Live
33:57 - Will the DTV transition get more people watching OTA television?
46:32 - Digital transition causing grief for Windows Media Center users
59:10 - PopcornHour's latest C200 media box is Blu-ray (& anything else) ready
LISTEN (AAC)
LISTEN (OGG)
Steve:
Perhaps you can ask Dolby how they feel about studio support for Dolby TrueHD. It seems to me that DTS HD MA is taking over (see the new Watchmen movie from Warner, as Warner, as far as I know, is using DTS HD MA instead of TrueHD for the first time). Are they confident that their high resolution format will continue to be used? I'm pretty sure I know how they'll respond, but I'm interested to hear what they have to say regardless.
Further, why should consumers demand studios include Dolby TrueHD tracks? Essentially, why is TrueHD better than DTS HD MA? If they're both lossless, bit-for-bit codecs, why shouldn't all studios simply adopt the DTS since it appears to be winning the codec war?
The statistics I've seen suggest DTS HD MA is a little less efficient than Dolby TrueHD. I would also imagine that there are licensing fee differences, though which is the lower cost codec is something I can't answer.
I don't think consumers need to "demand" either of them. Receivers are generally built to support both or neither, I've not seen one that supports one but not the other. The only thing I can see on the consumer side is that DTS HD MA's "fallback" is more elegant than TrueHD's - DTS HD MA has a "core" DTS component that can be extracted and played on a plain DTS player, whereas TrueHD needs to either be converted in real time to DTS or AC-3 by the player, or bundled with an additional AC-3 track. HD DVD solved this by making TrueHD support mandatory for players (ie players needed to decode it natively, whereas players only needed to extract the DTS core for DTS HD, not decode the whole thing.) Blu-ray doesn't.
Good points, squiggle.
In my previous post, I was suggesting that Steve ask the Dolby reps why the consumer should demand TrueHD over DTS HD MA.Personally, I don't think consumers should demand one over the other, but I'd like to hear why Dolby thinks that there codec is superior. Perhaps they'll mention its greater efficiency, as you did. Perhaps they'll say that it's more widely supported than DTS HD MA (more players can both decode and bitstream it, while there are still some Blu-ray players that can only bitstream DTS HD MA). I'm not sure, but I'd like to hear their spin since they're both lossless codecs.
Personally, I'd welcome a standardization on DTS HD MA because I prefer it over TrueHD. Don't ask me why. To my ears, it just sounds better. Perhaps it's because it's typically louder than a TrueHD track. Whatever the case, we have one next generation DVD format, why not have a single next generation audio format as well?
What the hell happened to the end of the podcast? Itunes version just cuts out at 1:18:59 in the middle of them talking about racing on espn.
Cut off for me too :(
Same here but Zune software only shows about 42 minutes. Well, it shows that the show is 1:18:59 but actual show time is only 42:30.
Zune subscribed podcast is only 28 minutes long :(
What are you talking about Ben? The Stanley Cup was on NBC, at least in Chicago. And on May 31, almost all the channels had sports. On the primary digital OTA channels there was golf, tennis, indycar, baseball, nascar, and soccer. I believe I put them in order of the channel they were on when complaining to a friend that there was nothing to watch in a text message, so it goes 2 (CBS), 5 (NBC), 7 (ABC), 9 (WGN), 32 (FOX), and 50 (MY 50, which is a second FOX channel). That's right nascar AND indyracing; and I'll be damned before I watch racing. I spent a lot of time outside that day.
Ben, I like you have every one of my 30,000 songs rated and use an unranked playlist. And I had to move over libraries from mac to pc due to hardrive space. I did that same thing of find replace in the librarry file.
In regards to person who wanted to know what to use to have synergy with your mac and pcs, I would suggest using each program that you like for the task. This is what Ben was saying. Almost every major program has someway to share that with the other environment.