SA-CD.net - Old Warner DVDAs and Pioneer BDP450

Post by Patagium July 5, 2014 (1 of 12)

At the moment I'm looking into a buying a 'universal'player to cover my BRA/SACD/DVDA needs and am considering the Pioneer BDP450 blu ray player as I'm on a budget.

I haven't had the chance to get one demo'd yet, but one of my main concern is 'Will this player be able to access the high resolution layers on the old Warner DVDAs from 10-14 years ago, which were engineered only to be accessed by DVDA players?'

I have about 10 of these discs and have always enjoyed the DVD player accessible dolby digital 5.1 layers, but would love to be able to access the layers I haven't heard!

Anyone have this player and any of these discs?

Cheers!

Post by Kutyatest July 5, 2014 (2 of 12)

Patagium said:

At the moment I'm looking into a buying a 'universal'player to cover my BRA/SACD/DVDA needs and am considering the Pioneer BDP450 blu ray player as I'm on a budget.

I haven't had the chance to get one demo'd yet, but one of my main concern is 'Will this player be able to access the high resolution layers on the old Warner DVDAs from 10-14 years ago, which were engineered only to be accessed by DVDA players?'

I have about 10 of these discs and have always enjoyed the DVD player accessible dolby digital 5.1 layers, but would love to be able to access the layers I haven't heard!

Anyone have this player and any of these discs?

Cheers!

That's an interesting question - and I would feel quite confident in saying that the player should be able to access the hi-res layer of any DVD-As. I can't think of any reason why it shouldn't be able to, as it's a universal disc player. Your question though, made me have a quick look at my DVD-A collection (which numbers about 100) and see if there are any old Warner discs amongst them.

I feel sure I have more than one old Warner DVD-As, but a quick look found one, Deep Purple's "Machine Head". I don't, however, have the player you're considering or any experience with it. What was interesting for me though, was to look at the Deep Purple DVD-A and put it into my (almost) universal disc player - the wonderful Arcam DV137. I had always thought that all of my DVD-As were hybrid discs, but it seems I might be mistaken. Apart from the fact that the "Machine Head" album doesn't display any of the typical DD/dts logos (a bit of a clue), my Arcam DV137 is unable to find in the menu a non hi-res audio option. I have my player configured to default to hi-res layers of any relevant discs, but switching off the function made no difference. The DVD-A just doesn't seem to have anything but hi-res options on it. Just shows how wrong I was to think that all my DVD-As were hybrids.

Post by fredblue July 5, 2014 (3 of 12)

I've heard varying reports on the later Pioneer machines (Firmware bugs and crashes among them) plus bear in mind Pioneers being sold off.. support may not be there down the line, or there may be issues wrt repair/warranty and so on if new owners of Pioneer don't honour existing customers, etc.

meantime the old Warner DVD-A's are probably among the least temperamental on the format and more current DVD-A releases (The Yes Album and Yes/Close To The Edge, XTC/Nonsuch) apparently won't play ball on a number of machines.

all that said, the current crop of Oppo BDP's seem to be the only universal players that really do flawlessly play any disc by any manufacturer you throw at them, there's a reason they're pretty much ubiquitous.

Post by Patagium July 5, 2014 (4 of 12)

Thanks for your reply- interesting!

Here's an example of the 'Disc content' printed on the insert of one of my Warner DVDAs, 'Welcome to My Nightmare' by Alice Cooper (apologies to those of you here with discs from this series/era):

'Advanced Resolution Multi-Channel Surround Sound (96khz/24-bit)
'Advanced Resolution Stereo (96knhz/24-but)
'Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound'
'Video Interview (NTSC 4:3)'
'Photo Gallery'
'Song Lyrics'

Now each of these content lines is accompanied by the a legend which tells you what sort of player can access each line of content. Only the dolby digital line says 'DVD Video Players'. This is the only layer I've been able to listen to on my DVD and BD players - but strangely with some fiddling around with a remote, I can watch the Video Interview.

To be 100% clear, I can't even access any kind of menu that would lead me to the two hi-res layers.

Having said all this, the Dolby Digital layer sounds excellent anyway, with a lovely 5.1 mix, lots of punch and different lyrics being sung by Alice on at least one track -'Devil's Food', I seem to recall.

If anyone is having difficulty identifying the Warner range I mean (which I doubt) - they came in a super jewel case that is larger thatn the standard CD size that's always been used for SACD, but smaller than that used sometimes for music DVDs.

Any thought sfrom anyone else with a Universal player?

Post by Patagium July 5, 2014 (5 of 12)
Yeah, I'd heard about some people having issues with the Pioneer, in particular remotes not working properly as well.

Post by Kutyatest July 5, 2014 (6 of 12)

Patagium said:

Now each of these content lines is accompanied by the a legend which tells you what sort of player can access each line of content. Only the dolby digital line says 'DVD Video Players'. This is the only layer I've been able to listen to on my DVD and BD players - but strangely with some fiddling around with a remote, I can watch the Video Interview.

To be 100% clear, I can't even access any kind of menu that would lead me to the two hi-res layers.

Having said all this, the Dolby Digital layer sounds excellent anyway, with a lovely 5.1 mix, lots of punch and different lyrics being sung by Alice on at least one track -'Devil's Food', I seem to recall.

If anyone is having difficulty identifying the Warner range I mean (which I doubt) - they came in a super jewel case that is larger thatn the standard CD size that's always been used for SACD, but smaller than that used sometimes for music DVDs.

Any thought sfrom anyone else with a Universal player?

I hope I'm not misunderstanding, but the fact that you are able to access the video part of the DVD-A - and not see any of the hi-res content of the disc, sounds exactly what I would expect, i.e. perfectly normal. Before I had my (back in 2006) universal disc player, I was using a Sony DVD-V player to play all my music, whatever format - including hybrid DVD-As. I was not able to access any of the hi-res content back then - but could access video features.

Does this help?

It's a bit like if I load an SACD into my present Sony DVD-V player, the machine merely sees it as a standard audio CD - likewise any DVD-As are recognised purely as DVD-Vs.

Post by Patagium July 5, 2014 (7 of 12)

You've nailed it exactly. :-)

Having no experience yet of 'universal' players, I've just been wondering how universal they truly are, as the Warner range are the only DVDAs I have that my existing machines can't access hi res layers - and I suspect that all the other 5.1 discs I have (other than SACDs of course- I have a Sony DVD/SACD player that I've owned for about 12 years) are simply DVDs, not true DVDAs.

Post by fredblue July 5, 2014 (8 of 12)

Patagium said:

You've nailed it exactly. :-)

Having no experience yet of 'universal' players, I've just been wondering how universal they truly are, as the Warner range are the only DVDAs I have that my existing machines can't access hi res layers - and I suspect that all the other 5.1 discs I have (other than SACDs of course- I have a Sony DVD/SACD player that I've owned for about 12 years) are simply DVDs, not true DVDAs.

The simple version is; if the player has the DVD Audio/Video logo on it, it should theoretically play any DVD-A you throw at it.

It doesn't always work like that in practice however.. but those extra features you mention (not least the Advanced Resolution.. the onscreen lyrics, etc) should all be accessible from any machine with the DVD-Audio logo.

I've been collecting DVD-Audio for nearly 15 years and now have approximately 300 DVD-A's (some on DualDisc; double sided affair with CD audio on one side and DVD-A/V on the other side but the majority are standalone releases in those oversized "Super Jewel Plus" cases you mention, like the Alice Cooper disc, from the likes of Warner, Universal, Arista, EMI, DTS, Silverline, etc.) so fire away with any questions on the format and I'll do my level best to help out.

Post by Yoropiko1 July 5, 2014 (9 of 12)

Just as a sidenote, if you want to access the 5.1 advanced resolution MLP soundtracks from the Pioneer BDP450 you will need a HDMI capable receiver / processor given that you cannot transmit DVD Audios multichannel soundtrack via Digital coaxial/optical in the same way you would send Dolby Digital/ DTS soundtracks from DVD. You can only send the 5.1 advanced soundtrack via HDMI on the BDP450 in the same way as you can only transmit SACD's DSD stream via HDMI ( be it pure or converted to 88.2Khz PCM internally by the player )

In the past, players had the requisite 5.1 analog phono outputs which you would of course connect to the 5.1 analog input on your receiver, the player doing the decoding internally ( and of course the digital to analog conversion).

You didnt mention which receiver you were using but I figured that buying the Pioneer BDP450 would yield no advantage in terms of DVD Audio playback if you are using it with an older non HDMI reciever as there would be no way to connect the 2 devices such that you can listen to the DVD Audio MLP soundtrack. Of course if your receiver is such HDMI enabled then the Pioneer will send the high rez PPCM to your receiver which will do the digital to analog conversion and all will be good ^ _ ^

Post by Patagium July 6, 2014 (10 of 12)
Guys, thanks for your time on my question, really appreciate your feedback. I'm going to get my local dealer to demo some discs for me soon, will let you know how I get on. Again, MANY thanks!