It needs to have just the right number of buttons, so you’re not fumbling around trying to accomplish simple tasks, and the buttons need to be clearly labeled so you can see them at a glance. Remote control The quality of the remote control can have a tremendous impact on how much you enjoy using your Blu-ray player. Audiophiles, meanwhile, will appreciate having these connections so that they can put a higher-end digital-to-analog converter (DAC) between the player and their receiver or amplifier for listening to music. Be aware, however, that these connections don’t provide sufficient bandwidth to handle Dolby TrueHD, DTS HD Master Audio, Dolby Atmos, or DTS:X. If you’re using an older A/V receiver that doesn’t have HDMI (or one that has HDMI, but not HDCP 2.2), you can connect the player to your TV using HDMI and use whichever of these digital audio outputs works with your receiver. Optical and/or coaxial digital audio out Flexibility is the key benefit here. You could compare to a ZIP file since it retains the full fidelity of the original file. Lossless compression uses a sort of shorthand to eliminate only redundant information. Lossy compression, such as MP3, throws away some of the information in the original recording. In short, it’s all about having options.Īudio encoding Audio can be compressed using lossy or lossless algorithms. Or you could even connect the player to a separate two-channel amp that’s dedicated solely to music. In that case, you’d connect the Blu-ray player’s analog outputs to the A/V receiver’s analog inputs and only use the receiver’s amplifier. Second, you might discover that the Ultra HD Blu-ray player’s DAC sounds superior to what your A/V receiver puts out.

You’ll have to go back pretty far to find an A/V receiver that has neither HDMI nor analog audio inputs for at least stereo and a 5.1-channel speaker system. First, in the event you’re using an older A/V receiver that doesn’t have HDMI. Analog audio out There are two reasons to value analog audio outputs on a Blu-ray player.

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