one for professor hat and anyone who can help

[poolmaster]

Good morning professor i am new and have been watching from afar for sometime and i think i am sorted on most things.

I have now taken the plunge. I have got pioneer bluray bdp51 fd which is a 12 bit player, my hdmi cables are qed hdmi-p 1.3 they support deep colour etc and push 8-bit 1080p 60hz . Please forgive my ignorance but am i losing 4 bit of info richer sounds where i got my cables say not.

Also have seen another thread about not using the firm-ware upgrade from pioneer for my player due to regional status being changed, if this is the cases true hd is the best sound i can get and i will miss out on dts will i notice?

samsung ue46b7020 pioneer bdp51 fd yamaha dsp ax863 se monitor audio br5 av package qed hdmi -p x 3 qed anniversary silver xt - sky hd in transit

 

[professorhat]

poolmaster:I have got pioneer bluray bdp51 fd which is a 12 bit player, my hdmi cables are qed hdmi-p 1.3 they support deep colour etc and push 8-bit 1080p 60hz . Please forgive my ignorance but am i losing 4 bit of info richer sounds where i got my cables say not.

This is a good question! Firstly, there isn't actually a 1.3 cable, 1.3 refers to the HDMI spec. HDMI cables come in two forms, either Category 1 (or "Standard" HDMI cables) and Category 2 (or "High-Speed" HDMI cables). Category 1 cables have been tested and certified at 1080i/720p bandwidth levels and Category 2 cables are certified up to 1600p bandwidth levels. From the sound of it, your QED cable is a Category 2 since it supports the 1080p necessary for Full HD bandwidth.

On the 8-bit versus 12-bit issue, as far as I'm aware, we've yet to see any Blu-Ray titles which are actually stored in 12-bit colour, making this a moot point. However, I'm struggling to find any claims from QED that the cable only pushes 8-bit colour - where did you get this from? In fact, it suggests here that any Category 2 cable is capable of sending 16-bit colours (see the table about halfway down). So I can't see this being an issue.

poolmaster:Also have seen another thread about not using the firm-ware upgrade from pioneer for my player due to regional status being changed, if this is the cases true hd is the best sound i can get and i will miss out on dts will i notice?

Can't really comment on the Pioneer firmware issues except that this thread suggests a new upgrade is due soon to allow DTS to be decoded. I guess the best advice I can give is to just wait for something official from Pioneer.

 

[poolmaster]

Many thanks professor hat that has helped i will indeed keep an eye on pioneer

Regarding cable and the 8 bit colour, i am sure that is stated on the packaging and think it says that is a minimum that the cable will do.

My cable is the one WHF give 5 Stars too also called qed hdmi performance coloured purple and is £50 for the one metre length. I will need to check when i get home . I will update tomorrow as i have not got a computer at home.

I am sure my cable also does support full band width and does show a similar graph on the packagingas the one on the attached info you set me

 

[poolmaster]

Checked my hdmi cable must be version 2 due to packaging showing HDMi standard 1.3 and meeting 1080p60 standard The 8 bit was refering to 8 bit colour so that would suggest i am getting everything off the disk It also states a pixel clock @ 148.5Mhz. a data rate of 4.455Gb/s Thanks again Professor Hat