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Over the last year I have read much on the issue of Blu-ray player profiles from various insiders and websites and based on what I have read have made this thread about them. There is one Blu-ray spec and in it there are four profiles including an audio only profile that does not require BD-J or video playback since it was made only for audio playback. Leaving out the audio only profile from this thread there are three player profiles made for video playback. After October 31st of 2007 all new Blu-ray players must meet the requirements for at least Bonus View though older Blu-ray players can continue to be sold. Here are the requirements for the three Blu-ray player profiles:

Profile 1.0:

64 KB of built in persistent memory required
no additional persistent memory capability required
no outlining support for text based subtitles required
no SD PiP decoding required
no secondary audio decoding required
no internet capability required

Bonus View:

64 KB of built in persistent memory required
256 MB of persistent memory capability required
outlining support for text based subtitles required
SD PiP decoding required
secondary audio decoding required
no internet capability required

BD-Live:

64 KB of built in persistent memory required
1 GB of persistent memory capability required
outlining support for text based subtitles required
SD PiP decoding required
secondary audio decoding required
internet capability required


Frequently Asked Questions (last updated February 26, 2008)

1. What are the three Blu-ray player profiles called?
In the technical documents the profiles were called Profile 1.0, Profile 1.1, and Profile 2.0. Profile 1.0 was called Grace Period Profile and Initial Standard Profile by the BDA workgroups. Profile 1.1 was called Final Standard Profile by the BDA workgroups and will be marketed as Bonus View. Profile 2.0 was called BD-Live by the BDA workgroups and will be marketed as BD-Live.

2. Why are there three Blu-ray player profiles?
All three player profiles for Blu-ray were originally made back at the time the Blu-ray specs were originally made. At that time it was known that to cost effectively implement certain features such as SD PiP decoding would require the development of new decoding chips that would be capable of dual stream video decoding. The plan was to eventually replace the Profile 1.0 specs with the Bonus View specs by requiring all new players released after a certain date to meet the requirements for Bonus View. The BD-Live specs were to be optional for those who wanted to connect their Blu-ray player to the internet.

3. Is BD-J a requirement for all Blu-ray players?
Yes, all three Blu-ray player profiles require BD-J support and will be capable of normal BD-J interactivity for menus and games. Note though that certain extras might require features that require the player to be Bonus View or BD-Live compliant.

4. Should I wait for Bonus View or BD-Live players?
That depends. Though stand alone Profile 1.0 players will always be capable of playing Blu-ray movies and normal BD-J interactivity most of them will not be capable of certain extras such as SD PiP decoding. If you are interested in those extras than it would be best to wait for stand alone Blu-ray players to be released that support them.

5. Could a Profile 1.0 player be updated to Bonus View or BD-Live?
That is possible if it had the necessary hardware but none of the stand alone Blu-ray players that were released before October of 2007 do. The PS3 was updated to Bonus View with Firmware 2.10 on December 18th of 2007.

6. Does Bonus View/BD-Live require HD PiP decoding?
No, they only require SD PiP decoding. Blu-ray and HD DVD have optional specs for HD PiP decoding but neither of them require it.

7. What is secondary audio decoding?
This allows for the mixing of two different audio tracks. For instance this would allow for the audio stream included with a SD PiP video stream to be mixed into the primary audio stream.

8. What is persistent memory?
Persistent memory allows for the long term storage of data on the player and depending on the capabilities of the specific player can be done using built in flash memory, a hard drive, network storage, and external flash memory. All Blu-ray players are required to have at least 64 KB of built in persistent memory. The Bonus View profile requires the player to be capable of supporting at least 256 MB of persistent memory. The BD-Live profile requires the player to be capable of supporting at least 1 GB of persistent memory. For both Bonus View and BD-Live this can be done with either built in memory or with user provided memory such as a memory card or a USB flash drive.

9. What is outlining support for text based subtitles?
In addition to graphic based subtitles Blu-ray also allows for the use of text based subtitles allowing for easier control of where they are placed on the screen. This can benefit 2.35 aspect ratio display setups. Text based subtitles though when directly displayed can be hard to read so outlining support, changing their color/shading based on the background, is usually done to make it easier to read them.

10. What decoding chips are known to be capable of decoding PiP?
The Sigma Designs SMP8634 Rev. C, the Broadcom BCM7440, and the NEC EMMA3 are three decoding chips that are known to be capable of decoding SD PiP. The Horizon Hz7220 and Panasonic UniPhier are two decoding chips that are known to be capable of decoding SD/HD PiP.

11. Have any Bonus View players been officially announced yet?
Yes, the following is a list of officially announced Bonus View players:

Denon DVD-2500BTC
Denon DVD-3800BDCI
Funai NB500
JVC XV-BD1
Marantz BD8002
Panasonic DMP-BD30
Philips BDP-7200
Pioneer Elite BDP-05FD
Playstation 3
Samsung BD-P1500
Samsung BD-UP5000
Samsung BD-UP5500
Sharp BD-HP50U

12. Have any BD-Live players been officially announced yet?
Yes, the following is a list of officially announced BD-Live players:

Daewoo DBP-1000
LG BH200
Panasonic DMP-BD50
Sony BDP-S350
Sony BDP-S550

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Originally posted by Ryu77:

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Awesome list eatsushi, however just one little comment...

The "Analog Out Channels" are listed as 7.1, 5.1 or none. I am being pedantic here but wouldn't it be more accurate to put at least 2 channel analog audio output? I am sure all players include at least stereo analog output. :-D

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Originally posted by dblbogey7:

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I think eatsushi's designation of analog out refers to multichannel capabilities particularly with respect to movie soundtrack transmission. This is important information for me since I don't have an HDMI audio setup this time and I use 5.1 analogs on my Rotel preamp/processor.

The PS3 does have 2-channel analog outs but this is irrelevant when you want true multichannel movie soundtracks.

The Denon 2500 actually DOES NOT even have 2-channel analog outs. It's purely a "transport" with both video and audio transmitted thru an HDMI output

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Originally posted by dblbogey7:

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I think eatsushi's designation of analog out refers to multichannel capabilities particularly with respect to movie soundtrack transmission. This is important information for me since I don't have an HDMI audio setup this time and I use 5.1 analogs on my Rotel preamp/processor.

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Originally posted by eatsushi:

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You are correct my friend.

The information on analog outs is essentially for those with non-HDMI audio equipment who want to take advantage of multichannel uncompressed or lossless soundtracks on the discs. Stereo analog outs just seems irrelevant to a discussion of movie soundtracks.

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Originally posted by Ryu77:

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I've found a blog that states that the next PS3 firmware update will support DTS-HD Master Audio. I can not confirm the validity of this but it looks promising to me.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2008/04/1...hrough/

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Now, regarding the PS3, it is speculated that it uses the SiI9132 (though no one seems to know for sure). The best source I could find to prove this was an SEC filing from Silicon Image in a pdf. Note on page 8 that the SiI9132 and SiI9134 are listed, the SiI9132 for "game consoles" and the SiI9134 for "DVD players". Also note that they have the same specifications.

A curious thing is the SiI9132 is not listed on Silicon Image's HDMI products page (the 9134 is). This has led to speculation that Silicon Image will not publicly release any details about the SiI9132 (which is assumed to be used in the PS3), perhaps due to a NDA. It has been rumored that someone contacted Silicon Image who in turn confirmed that details regarding the SiI9132 are not public and would not even confirm/deny which vendors use the chip. Thus, the bitstreaming of Dolby True-HD and DTS HD-MA via the PS3s SiI9132 HDMI transmitter is still an unknown. From this, one can draw two conclusions:
"In absence of any technical spec on the SiI9132, you can make a case that the SiI9132 is a crippled version of the SiI9134 which does not support advance audio. But you could also argue that the 9132 is just a renamed 9134 and the Silicon Image renamed the chip to get around the fact that they were shipping a million of these chips to Sony before the 9134 was available everyone else in Oct 2006." (taken from here ).

I believe that if anything, the 9132 and 9134 are the same, since the Silicon Image pdf shows them having the same specs, and that the 9132 was just a version of the 9134 specifically designed for the mass produced PS3.

Yet another curious thing is we know the Samsung 1200 uses the SiI9134 from here, but as far as I can tell it still does not bitstream the lossless codecs. Maybe firmware can enable this, but I have seen a lot of people saying the PS3 can't bitstream because it doesn't have the 9134, but the 1200 shows that even with the 9134 bitstreaming still isn't enabled (at least currently). That, imo, also casts a suspicious eye on the "common knowledge" that the PS3 can't bitstream the lossless codecs.

Now, as noted above by insider Sir Terrence:

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All PIP audio will be mixed in along with the program audio, and the user has access to the audio of all interactive and program material. Whether you choose to do bass management and speaker alignment in the player, or the pcm audio is sent to the receiver for these functions, they are done in PCM because that is how the DSP chips function, is with PCM signals. So no matter which way you turn, the audio will have to be converted.
If the player passes the audio to the receiver in bitstream form, the receiver will have to convert that bitstream to PCM for any bass mangement or speaker alignment to take place. That process is also lossless, and is much like we have seen with legacy Dolby Digital and Dts. The drawback is that no audio from PIP or any interactive material will be heard because this process bypasses the internal mixer of the player.

and more importantly:

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So no matter which direction you choose, PCM conversion will have to take place whether the player does it, or the reciever does it. In the end, there is no sonic benefit that either has over the other, and why when looked at critically, the receiver doing it becomes a marketing ploy and nothing else.

Thus, the fact that the PS3 currently internally decodes the audio imo suggests that they want to ensure the PiP track is decoded and sent to the player to avoid the noted drawback of bitstreaming (e.g. the bypassing of the internal mixer of the player).

So in conclusion, NO ONE really knows if the PS3 has the SiI9132, and whether or not the SiI9132 is capable of bitstreaming. Some of the information I presented above suggests that the 9132 chip is capable of bitstreaming, but maybe Sony doesn't want to enable due to the PiP audio issue in regards to bitstreaming, especially since we will be seeing more and more "Bonusview" 1.1 Pip bluray releases in the future.

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Originally posted by error5:

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Ryu77: Actually, you don't need HDMI 1.3 if you're letting the player decode the soundtrack. Any flavor of HDMI can transmit the decoded LPCM to the receiver. You only need HDMI 1.3 when you're transmitting the undecoded soundtrack bitstream and letting the receiver do the decoding.

I've tried bitstream, LPCM, and 5.1 analogs from my Toshiba HD-XA2 and both bitstream and LPCM from my PS3 and frankly can't tell the difference. I'm using pretty short cable runs - 6 feet or less - and cables with pretty good shielding (bettercables.com, bluejeanscable.com, Acoustic Research etc. - see my equipment in my sig.) You may have to do some adjustments to the LFE levels depending on your equipment and connection type but the end result in my setup results in no audible differences.

There was a post that I read some time ago from Roger Dressler - an engineer at Dolby Labs - where he argued that letting the player do the decoding was much better. I'll look for that link.

There's also a problem reported with bitstreaming DTS-HD MA to Yamaha, Onkyo or Integra receivers that resulted in damage to speakers:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1008620

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