Back in February, I groused about the fact that no home theater receivers could decode Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD Audio (you had to depend on your set-top Blu-ray or HD DVD player to decode them and output linear PCM to your receiver for multi-channel playback). If you have a really nice receiver, you'd be better off having your best piece of equipment to do the decoding. And from what I've seen of Blu-ray and HD DVD players, almost any receiver is going to be that best piece of equipment.
Since then, several receivers, including a few being introduced here at the Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association (CEDIA) trade show in Denver, do the job. One slight catch, though--almost no Blu-ray or HD DVD player will output bitstream.
That is, until now. Sony's new BDP-S2000ES and BDP-S500 support 7.1-channel Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD High Resolution Audio bitstream output though their HDMI 1.3 connections. However, they won't output DTS Master Audio, the highest-quality DTS audio format. And despite Sony's claim that they'll read almost any disc format, they won't read DVD Audio discs (Sony prefers you use its SACDs).
On the other hand, they do support AVCHD discs--the high-resolution format used by many high-definition camcorders. I still haven't seen any video-editing applications that will output (not just input) AVCHD, though.
So how are they different? The BDP-S2000ES is one of Sony's "Elevated Standard" models, so it has features that are supposed to appeal to audiophiles--for example, it has separate audio and video components, and a more rigid chassis.
When they ship this fall, the BDP-S2000ES will cost $1,300 and the BDP-S500 players will cost $700.
