oliver oli wrote: > Is there a way to play lossless multi-channel audio with DVD-Video > players? AFAIK most video players only play the first two PCM channels.
I think the DVD-Video spec allows for multi-channel PCM, but I'm not sure if any disks (or even players) have ever tried. > But DVD-Audio players should play multi-channel PCM audio from a video > DVD. Is there any reason not to produce a DVD-Video intead of DVD-Audio? > (What are the aditional features of DVD-Audio besides MLP?) One difference is that the maximum bitrate allowed for audio on a DVD-V is 6.1Mbit/s, compared with 9.6Mbit/s for a DVD-A disk. So this allows more channels of uncompressed PCM at higher sample sizes and samplerates. You can also create a DVD-A disk without any video content at all - so giving the whole capacity of the disk to audio. DVD-A also supports multiples of 44.1KHz (44.1KHz, 88.2KHz and 176.4KHz), as well as 192Khz - DVD-V only supports 48KHz and 96KHz. DVD-A disks also allow slideshow like images to be displayed (and navigated) independently of the audio - in a DVD-V disk, the video and audio are linked together and can't be navigated independently. Finally, DVD-A incorporates what is known as a Simple Audio Manager (SAMG). This is compared with an Audio CD's Table of Contents and gives the user full access to the audio content of the DVD-A without needing a monitor. It also allows for the possibility of "simple" DVD-A players like portables or in-car units to be built. Some more details (and links to other resources) are on my project website here: http://dvd-audio.sourceforge.net Dave.
