Quote My computer has a Sounblaster X AE-5 sound card and I'm going to speakers via the 5.1 outputs on soundcard. This soundcard is capable of 5.1 playback at 32bits/96kHz. When I play a Blu-ray movie I'm only getting a sample rate of 48kHz. I'm not clear if sample size is 16 bits or 24 bits because the information screen does not list sample size. I would lean towards 24 bits given the bitrates I see. I'm testing on Blu-ray which my understanding is at 24bit/192kHz for 5.1 (The Dark Knight).

Is this software not capable of playback at 24bits/96kHz with Blu-rays via the 5.1 outputs on sound card? I'm able to playback 5.1 Surround 24bit/96kHz flac files no problem.

Thanks!

I have figured out quite a bit over the last day. Foremost, most Blu-ray movies only have a sample rate of 48kHz regardless of them being Dolby True HD, DTS-HD, or DTS-MA. Many of them are at 24bit but there are also a large number of Blu-rays that come only with 16bit/48kHz audio. I had bad information on The Dark Knight (it is actually only 16bit/48kHz). This can be determined over at blu-raystats.com. There are only 33 movies in their database that have 24bit/96kHz audio and only 6 that have 24bit/192kHz audio. I happen to have one of each. Baraka is at 24bit/96kHz and the Japanese Audio on Akira is at 24bit/192kHz.

I played both movies with PowerDVD 17 and another Blu-ray software. PowerDVD outputted at 48kHz with both movies and it would appear at 24 bits given the bitrates. The other software outputted 24bit/96kHz with Baraka and at 24bit/192kHz with Akira. I have screenshots of the audio/video information screens from both programs and both movies if needed. Given that it is the same hardware and Blu-rays with just different software I would say this an issue with PowerDVD 17.

Hi Fliptwister,

Have you contacted the technical support yet?

Cheers,
Hicham Technical support:
EN: https://www.cyberlink.com/support/contact-support.jsp
DE: https://de.cyberlink.com/support/contact-support.jsp
FR: https://fr.cyberlink.com/support/contact-support.jsp
ES: https://es.cyberlink.com/support/contact-support.jsp

Quote Hi Fliptwister,

Have you contacted the technical support yet?

Cheers,
Hicham

I did this morning. Thanks.

Quote Hi Fliptwister,

Have you contacted the technical support yet?

Cheers,
Hicham

I contacted them a week ago and still nothing. Do you have any idea on how long it typically takes?

Thanks!

Hi Fliptwister,

The BD content protection would block non-authenticated audio device (e.g. DAC) to output high definition audio and down-sampling the audio quality directly (e.g. 48 KHz, 16 bit) when you playback BD title in PowerDVD.
To output BD audio with higher/original BD title's quality, you are advised to switch audio connection to HDMI then connect to A/V receiver or use the digital audio connection (e.g. S/PDIF) on sound blaster to connect speakers.
Be noted, the DAC device is not authenticated audio devices by BD protection, you might need an A/V receiver or compatible HD audio sound cards, then connect them with audio speakers for Blu-ray movie HD surround sound playback.
For certain audio card models that compatible with Blu-ray audio protection, you can refer to the product page:
https://www.cyberlink.com/products/powerdvd-ultra/spec.html

Cheers,
Hicham Technical support:
EN: https://www.cyberlink.com/support/contact-support.jsp
DE: https://de.cyberlink.com/support/contact-support.jsp
FR: https://fr.cyberlink.com/support/contact-support.jsp
ES: https://es.cyberlink.com/support/contact-support.jsp

Quote Hi Fliptwister,

The BD content protection would block non-authenticated audio device (e.g. DAC) to output high definition audio and down-sampling the audio quality directly (e.g. 48 KHz, 16 bit) when you playback BD title in PowerDVD.
To output BD audio with higher/original BD title's quality, you are advised to switch audio connection to HDMI then connect to A/V receiver or use the digital audio connection (e.g. S/PDIF) on sound blaster to connect speakers.
Be noted, the DAC device is not authenticated audio devices by BD protection, you might need an A/V receiver or compatible HD audio sound cards, then connect them with audio speakers for Blu-ray movie HD surround sound playback.
For certain audio card models that compatible with Blu-ray audio protection, you can refer to the product page:
https://www.cyberlink.com/products/powerdvd-ultra/spec.html

Cheers,
Hicham

BD content protection does not cover analog 5.1 speaker outputs. This is what I'm referring to. Your competor's software does this just fine. The other Blu-ray player software outputted 24bit/96kHz and 24bit/192kHz via LPCM to sound card which then outputs from 5.1 speaker outputs with no issues. I'm not referring to bitstreaming.

Thanks

I think there are only few legtimately licensed software player on the market currently.
I'm wondering which BD software player you are refering to.

Those popular "free or freemium" BD players have controversial BD license, and probably use decryption way to break protection.
Then, all the protected video or audio will be output freely after cracking.
(It is not a legitmate way at intellectual property protection wise.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_ripper

Quote I think there are only few legtimately licensed software player on the market currently.
I'm wondering which BD software player you are refering to.

Those popular "free or freemium" BD players have controversial BD license, and probably use decryption way to break protection.
Then, all the protected video or audio will be output freely after cracking.
(It is not a legitmate way at intellectual property protection wise.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_ripper

The software is the other big player and it is not free (nor is it cheap).

This is the information screen for PowerDVD 17 when playing Akira:



And here is information screen from other software when playing Akira:



If there is some issue posting these screenshots let me know. I will remove.

I also wanted to point out that ultimately this is not a huge deal to me. Real world with my computer speakers this shortcoming is immaterial. The fact that most Blu-rays coming out now do not have higher res audio so for 99% of my watching this is not an issue even if I could hear it.

I would like to understand why PowerDVD is not taking advantage of the higher resolution audio and if this is something they can address. People do have choices when they get Blu-ray player software.

Quote My computer has a Sounblaster X AE-5 sound card and I'm going to speakers via the 5.1 outputs on soundcard. This soundcard is capable of 5.1 playback at 32bits/96kHz. When I play a Blu-ray movie I'm only getting a sample rate of 48kHz. I'm not clear if sample size is 16 bits or 24 bits because the information screen does not list sample size. I would lean towards 24 bits given the bitrates I see. I'm testing on Blu-ray which my understanding is at 24bit/192kHz for 5.1 (The Dark Knight).

Is this software not capable of playback at 24bits/96kHz with Blu-rays via the 5.1 outputs on sound card? I'm able to playback 5.1 Surround 24bit/96kHz flac files no problem.

Thanks!

Thanks for sharing

I just noticed something that I did not notice before. The information screen from PowerDVD 17 is listing the bitrate for Akira at 14,131 Kbps. When I do the math this is impossible at 16bit/48kHz or even 24bit/48kHz. Frequency × bit depth × channels = bit rate. The bit rate is not consistant and is measured by software at the moment the information screen is called.

What I think might be happening is that PowerDVD is just not listing the sample rate correctly in their information screen. Tonight I will run Akira with both softwares at aproximately the same moment in movie and compare audio bit rates.

I did the testing with Akira at about the same moment in movie with both softwares. My theory appears to be wrong. I would say that the information in the PowerDVD informations screen is the audio stream info and not the audio output information. At about the same moment in the movie the other software DolbyHD stream bitrate was within within 50 Kbps of what is reported in PowerDVD as bitrate. With PowerDVD apparenetly not reporting output audio information I imagine I might never sort this out. It does appear that the reported sampling rate in PowerDVD is incorrect though. With the bitrate they are listing so close to the other software stream bitrate clearly PowerDVD is running the stream at the same sampling rate (192 kHz).