Do I have to buy a new receiver to enjoy blu-ray??

Question

I am so frustrated! We just bought a PS3 and enjoying blu-ray movies. We have a dennon receiver that at the time in 2003 was over 800 bucks it’s a fantastic receiver but does not offer DTS. I’ve found recently that many movies we try to watch are only in 7.1 DTS and not in 5.1 Dolby Digital . Is this going to be the norm? Do I have to replace my receiver to get an DTS or is there a way around this.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, I had the same problem with a Denon receiver that I had.  It decoded Dolby Digital and AC-3, but not DTS.  You will probably need to sell your receiver and upgrade to a receiver that will be able to decode 7.1 DTS.  

Answer 2

      You need to buy an HDMI switching receiver to enjoy some new HD audio formats such as DTS-HD MA or Dolby True HD. Around $400 you can buy Onkyo 606, Yamaha 663, Sony 820. If you want Denon, you have to spend $650 for the newest Denon 1909 with 3 HDMI inputs.

Answer 3

The PS3 will decode DTS MA and pass it as LPCM over HDMI or DTS Core over optical. Of course your receiver has neither of those options so YES you will need to upgrade to get the most out of Bluray.  

If you upgrade you'll also get HDMI capabilities which is a plus. A Denon 2308 or higher would be recommended if you want to stick with Denon.

Oh and...AVR's depreciate almost as fast as computers. You would be extremely lucky if you were to get over $100 for your old Denon on Ebay I would bet.

Answer 4

That is strange that Denon didn't offer DTS on that receiver. Denon was usually very adamant about including both Dolby Digital and DTS.  Anyways, I don't know if there is such a thing as normal when it comes to movies. The movies are still coming through every which way - some still in 2 channel stereo and even mono { which surprised me}. If you haven't hooked anything up yet, go ahead and start hooking things up. Look around in the PS3 menu and see if you have any surround sound options. I would think that there should be a Dolby Digital option somewhere in the menu.  There should also be a stereo option available. Also, check the discs that you intend to play and find out if there are other playback options available. Some of my discs have that. Not everybody is doing surround sound.  At this point, you'll just have to try things out and experiment with various settings and see what happens. I would think that the worst case scenario  would be regular stereo.