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hi just would like to know to enjoy DOLBY TRUE HD and DTS HD do i have to have a 7.1 setup for my amp to display dolby hd/dts hd? my setup at the mo is 5.1 and my onkyo amp says dolby digital when i play a blu-ray film!

do i need to do any extra setup on my amp or my panasonic dmpbd80 to get my amp to display dolby true hd/dts hd? the blu-ray is connected by hdmi to my amp and the the amp connected to my tv with hdmi

No need for 7.1, most soundtracks are still 5.1

Few things to check first:

(a) On the film, make sure you have the Dolby TrueHD soundtrack selected - quite a few still start by default on the Dolby Digital soundtrack. Just go into the Menu and it's usually under Setup or Audio.

(b) Another classic setting which seems to cause this is called BD-Video Secondary Audio (under the Sound menu) - make sure this is set to Off.

 MANY thanks,just made sure secondary audio was off which it wasnt and now my amp displays dolby trueHD!!

do you have the panasonic dmpbd80? if so what should all the other settings be set too?

I don't I'm afraid, just have the manual!

There's a couple of other settings which I might change from the default, firstly, under the Sound menu, there's a setting called High Clarity Sound which looks to be Disable by default. If you're only using the HDMI output of the player, set this to Enable to cut out the analogue video circuitry and this should improve the sound further. It does mean the other analogue video outputs (component, s-video etc.) won't work when this is set so if you need them, set this back to Disable.

Also, under the TV/Device Connection settings, it looks like 24p Output is set to Off as standard - if you have a TV capable of receiving 24fps, set this to On to benefit from the native framerate of Blu-Rays.

All the other settings are very much dependent on your own preferences / setup.

changed those 2 settings u mentioned,looks and sounds even better now!!!!! many thanks again

Most welcome

mgillespie05:

sorry for sounding silly but were do i find bd secondry audio ,ps3 and onk 906

Do you mean on the PS3? If so, no need to worry about BD-Video Secondary Audio there, it's not one of the PS3's options.

If you mean the BD80 though, press 'Setup' on the remote, then 'Sound', and it's under 'Digital Audio Output'.

Indeed and if you're wondering why you can't get Dolby TrueHD displayed on your amp using the PS3, this is because the PS3 has a hardware limitation which means it can't bitstream the HD audio formats, instead it has to decode them onboard and output them as Linear PCM (which is the setting you should have for the BD / DVD Audio Output Format (HDMI) setting, under the Video Settings menu). With this set, your Onkyo should display Multich. However, you can check your PS3 is definitely decoding the Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD Master Audio soundtrack by pressing Select - it will show in the top right hand corner.

You are still getting HD audio with this method though, it's just the decoding process is happening at the PS3 rather than at the amp.