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Thanks for the link. It was interesting to learn that Sony manufactured a first e-reader incorporating e-ink (technology invented in the US, now owned by Chinese). BTW, the next stop for Chinese is domination in the energy sector.
http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/08/13/battery-technology
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The Seventh Taylor said:
Reading this article about the (SACD-compatible BD player with 4K upscaling) BDP-S790 however makes me rather pessimistic:
Sony hits a new high and a new low - http://tv.about.com/b/2012/04/25/sony-hits-a-new-high-and-a-new-low.htm
I'm not sure why you would be pessimistic about that? It all seems quite clever to me ... They release the 4K Blu-ray player now ... retaining the Blu-ray name (very smart) ... it's future compatible and backward compatible ... introducing the next step forward now ... and doing so at very reasonable price point of $250. All of which means they intend to get them in every house ... selling physical format ... and make their money from blu-ray royalties, rather than from hardware per se. All smart.
The thing that irritates me about these Sony Bluray players that are stated to be SACD compatible is ... well ... that they are not. Not really. I have one of them ... a BDP-S480 that has the SACD logo on the box ... but it doesn't play my SACDs at all. It has no DSD to analog converter ... so you have to have a special receiver that takes HDMI to play SACDs. Not my set-up. Doesn't work for me.
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Canonical, without HDMI the unit will also NOT upsample 2K x 4K. It's time to break from crusty old traditions and upgrade to HDMI.
And, honestly, what can one reasonably expect in terms of SACD playback from a unit costing $250? Four Esoteric stereo SACDs cost more than that.............
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Post by pacwin August 16, 2012 (6 of 11)
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canonical said:
BDP-S480 that has the SACD logo on the box ... but it doesn't play my SACDs at all. It has no DSD to analog converter ... so you have to have a special.
You can't expect miracles happening in the analog output stage of such inexpensive universal players but it would be weird if it can'y play SACD stereo layers "at all". Have you got any single layer SACD discs? Try them. Both of the Sony Blu ray players used around the house here S-370, S-770 play these DSD only single layer discs fine. They may need a little bit of configuration in the menus.
There are devices called HDMI splitters which can take PCM audio off the HDMI transport stream allowing you to route that audio via coax/optical connections to another DAC, but should not be necessary.
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Post by seth August 16, 2012 (7 of 11)
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Eh, Sony's problem was that that they stopped making quality products but kept charging premium prices -- this is especially the case with their TV division. In the 1980s and 90s their TVs were noticeably better than everyone else's. When LCD TVs hit the market competitors like LG were selling TVs that while not quite as good, were substantially cheaper than Sony's, and other competitors like Samsung did in fact offer a better TV at a lower price. There was no perceived extra value to justify Sony's high prices. The same thing played out with all of their other hardware.
I cannot blame them so much on missing the boat with e-readers. As the largest book seller, Amazon was in a unique place to corner the e-book market. In hindsight Sony could have gone and made deals with the major publishers to ensure that there would be a healthy amount of content for its e-readers, but the only companies that seems to have that kind of foresight is Apple and Google
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canonical said:
so you have to have a special receiver that takes HDMI to play SACDs.
Not my set-up either but it's really not that special anymore. HDMI inputs (typically for high-res PCM but in better AVRs also for DSD) have been pretty much standard since more than five years.
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Sorry - I may have given the wrong impression here.
My Sony Blu-ray player connects direct to the Sony Bravia TV (current 3D blah blah) using HDMI (latest 1.4). The problem, it would appear, is that the TV doesn't know what to do with the SACD signal, irrespective of:
a) whether I play back through the in-built TV speakers, or through the monolith aluminium speaker stand
b) whether I change every possible screen option to play SACDs as DSD direct, or convert to PCM etc
I used single-layer SACDs for my tests, to make sure it was reading the SACD layer. I get nothing. No sound when playing SACDs ... works with CDs.
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There's a troubleshooting guide for SACD playback issues on PS3 that may address this situation. I'm not going to post the link here so please check your mailbox.
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