Panasonic DVD Home Theater - Help please

[admin_exported]

I am about to buy a Panasonic SCPT570EB-K with the wireless adapter (it needs to have rear wireless speakers). I've read some reviews that are good. However, one of them says the following:

" ok first off let me say this unit is very high quailty as u would expect from panasonic with good sound and bass and easy to set up, (included microphone is excellent for setup)however i wish i done more research before choosing panasonic, it turns out after a lot of searching panasonic home cinema sytstems WILL NOT DECODE DTS OVER OPTICAL. which is a bummer for me because i use my ps3 as a blu ray player and more & more blu rays r becoming dts audio only, which on this unit the best u can get from it is left & right stereo. which is not very good in my eyes after spending over [$] on a panasonic set up so good unit BUT NO DTS OVER AUDIO2 stars! for that a lone "

What is DTS? I am buying the kit to watch sky movies mainly. I also have a wii and XBOX360 and would like to play music through it.

Any help please.

Thanks

 

[professorhat]

It looks like this is actually true - downloading the manual it says on page 10 about the optical connection "Only Dolby Digital and PCM can be played with this connection". Which is quite shocking really! DTS is basically a compression format for film soundtracks like Dolby Digital. It is used mostly on DVDs and Blu-Rays. The unit will decode DTS soundtracks on any DVDs you play on it, it just won't be able to on anything you plug in via the optical connection (e.g. as the above person says, using their PS3).

You won't find DTS used on Sky or on the Wii and I think virtually all games on the Xbox use Dolby Digital as well so for the majority of your use, you won't be using DTS anyway. However, it seems like a crazy limitation to me and, considering this unit is roughly £300, you could pick yourself up something else which doesn't have this. Might be worth looking into some of the Sony units which you can also get with a wireless system for about the same price.

 

[Anonymous]

Thank you Professor Hat, you seem to come to my rescue quite often.

I don't suppose you can suggest any of the Sony ones?

So in the future if I bought a Blu Ray player (I don't envisage it in the near term as I don't tend to buy DVDs), what will this mean? Will the sound not be of the quality it can?

But the sound through the DVD player supplied will be as it is supposed?

I currently have the Panasonic on order (it was out of stock) from a local dealer. I live in a small town so the choice is pretty limited if you want to use an independent supplier who will come and set it up.

I have a Panasonic Plasma, so thought that same brand would be best?

Thanks again.

 

[ear]

and I thought DTS and Dolby Digital were the same..

 

[professorhat]

Well, do you have a maximum budget in mind? Not sure how much the Panasonic unit is costing you, it looks like around £300 from looking on the web?

If you can afford a bit more, the Sony BDV-E300 is worth looking into - it can be found for less than the £400 quoted but the trouble is I think it's very hard to get hold of now as it;s been very popular since the WHF group test! However, it offers Blu-Ray playback and doesn't have the optical connection limitation for only a little bit more money. There's also the Panasonic SC-BT200 which offers a similar set of features. Or there is the Sony HT-SS100 which, although does not include a DVD player (meaning unless you have a separate DVD player, you'd need to use your Xbox 360 for DVDs), it does have the added bonus of having HDMI inputs which will accept Linear PCM (basically means you can enjoy HD audio from a Blu-Ray player with the appropriate decoders if you get one in the future) as well as two optical inputs for the Sky HD box and the Xbox 360.

However, if you're looking for your local shop to come and install etc., it might be a good idea to give them a call, explain what you're looking for and see if they can provide a better alternative. (And if you don't trust them completely, post their recommendations on here and we can check up on them!).