Very good question!

a couple a days ago I send this question (BV8-40) to beocare.

This is what they told me.

We are pleased to see that you are the owner of BeoVision 8-40.
We have to inform you that BeoVision 8-40 cannot play Dolby True HD and DTS HD Master Audio formats. However, it will be able to play these formats in Dolby Digital format.

Kind regards,
Bang & Olufsen a/s

They didn't give you a very good response.

Who would want to great HD signal and make it Dolby Digital?

Felle wrote:

They didn't give you a very good response.

Who would want to great HD signal and make it Dolby Digital?

 

The HDMI receiver chips in the BV8 chassis claim to support HD audio although whats happens to that after they reach the "Digital Sound Module" isn't made clear. Certainly the chips within the BV8/BV10 receivers seem capable whereas the chips of the BS3/BV7 don't. This is only my interpretation of the respective service manuals of course.

The specs from B&O don't clarify.

As far as I understand the manuals (of the BV-10 at least) and all the other discussions on this topic on the forum  is that the surround system can not process HD-audio signals and will output standard DTS 5.1

More or less what B&O state for the BV-7 as well... Sound wise the Blu-ray player in BeoVision 7-40 and 7-55 supports the following formats: Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital + 7.1, Dolby Digital True HD 7.1, DTS 5.1, LPCM 7.1. Blu-ray discs with DTS HD 7.1 or DTS HD Master 7.1 will be decoded as DTS 5.1  

I have my Beovision 10 now and borrowed a PS3 to play blu-ray. For your information, it does play PCM as far as I know. I set up the PS3 to send it as PCM at the highest resolution possible and I got sound. But I didn't hear a very big difference really. 

You need a BD player that can decode HD audio by itself. Decoded HD audio will be sent via HDMI - doesn`t work via spdif - as multichannel PCM to your Beovision. Set the audio input of the AV port to HDMI. Now the Beovision should receive decoded HD audio as multichannel PCM. This is how it works with a BV7-40 MKIII and an LG BD player. Might be different with BV10 and PS3...(?)

Stefan

bear in mind that if you have the old fat ps3 in the audio settings you must set the audio to linear pcm it doesn't display the hd codecs but will send the audio as hd.

and if you have the ps3 slim set the audio to bitstream once you have done that you will be able to get hd audio.

On the one hand I like to think of B&O as being a bit like Apple: most things automatically compatible, plug and play etc.

Then I read a group of posts like this and wonder whether/how anything B&O makes works without specialist input!

Graham

Right now, the internal receiver in the BV8/10 does not support decoding of the new high defenition audio standards.

The BS3 bases tellys does not either.

To go arround this, just get a good BR player like the Oppo 83, and make it decode the audio and send it as LPCM to the BV10.

So yes, the answer to your question is; "its the same with the BV8/10 tvs".

Having your BR player decoding the HD audio formats and send it through PCM is exactly the same. As LPCM is lossless, and so is DTS-MA. You wont loose any sound quality, doing it this way.

I own a BV8-40 and is using a ps3 to decode BR audio and send it to the tv via LPCM

Have a look at this article: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=5d4eb95bb5c9c4fca2a5679677892469&t=867502