Blue Ray Blues

[Bucky]

We recently bought a Panasonic Blue Ray Disc player (DMP BD65) to go with our new Panasonic 42" plasma TV.

The Player plays commercial Blue Ray discs just fine, but Mrs. Bucky's best friend sent us a home-cooked BlueRay disc from Japan that seems to have an audio problem.

As I said, the commercial disc runs fine, but we can't seem to get the audio off this home-made disc to play. The video is fine, great quality in fact, just no sound. The friend in Japan sent this same disc to her brother in London and it played fine on his Sony Playstation. It just seems that we are having problems getting the sound out. I have gone through the manual, changed all the setting to every configuration I shown and even some configurations not mentioned but to no avail.

Just wondering if any our our resident Gaijin Otaku here might have some suggestions? It is hooked up via an HDMI cable.

Thanks,

Buck

[FG Lurker]

I don't have a lot of experience with Blue Ray yet, but I have one thing that you might like to check:

1) What is the brand of the BD recorder that recorded the disc that won't play?
2) What is the brand of the BD player that played the disc in London?

If they are the same (and not Panasonic) then I suspect the audio was encoded in a format that can't be read by your Panasonic player. Likewise if the player in London is a brand that is known for playing most anything (some seem to be better than others at this) then that is also likely the problem.

I was recently looking at LG BD players at Costco and one of the listed features was that it would play discs recorded in other BD recorders so I suspect that not all recorders encode their recordings in exactly the same way.

[Bucky]

Lurker, Thanks for the quick response. That is one thing that I was thinking too. The Disc was recorded on a Sharp unit in Japan and played back on a Sony Playstation 3 in London. The PS3 was a Japanese model. Our Panasonic was purchased in the US. I may have to call Panasonic customer support here in the US and see if they have any thoughts.

Buck

I don't have a lot of experience with Blue Ray yet, but I have one thing that you might like to check:

1) What is the brand of the BD recorder that recorded the disc that won't play?
2) What is the brand of the BD player that played the disc in London?

If they are the same (and not Panasonic) then I suspect the audio was encoded in a format that can't be read by your Panasonic player. Likewise if the player in London is a brand that is known for playing most anything (some seem to be better than others at this) then that is also likely the problem.

I was recently looking at LG BD players at Costco and one of the listed features was that it would play discs recorded in other BD recorders so I suspect that not all recorders encode their recordings in exactly the same way.

[Kuang_Grade]

It is a long shot, but why not try with it the component output instead of the HDMI just in the off chance there some issue with digital sound format interoperability or some J DRM bullshit when using HDMI?

[Taro Toporific]

We recently bought a Panasonic Blue Ray Disc player (DMP BD65)... plays commercial Blue Ray discs just fine, but Mrs. Bucky's best friend sent us a home-cooked BlueRay disc from Japan that seems to have an audio problem.

Before beating your head against the wall, diagnostically speaking you need to check if that "home-cooked BlueRay disc" is able to play in ANY player purchased in the US.

During a slow part of day, just go down to your local Best Buy and if they're not busy just ask them to play the home-cooked BlueRay disc.

If the home-cooked BlueRay disc does not work, then Mrs. Bucky's best friend most likely did not perform the "finalizing" (final initialization) process. This happens all the time we folks record several programs over time on a disc and then send to their friends. Mrs. Bucky's friend can view the disc just fine on her own machine but not with anyone else's player.

If the home-cooked BlueRay disc does work in another machine, I haven't the foggest idea what the problem is.

... The Disc was recorded on a Sharp unit in Japan and played back on a Sony Playstation 3 in London.

The one good thing about the Sony Playstation (or the XBox) is that they much more willing to play discs with slight problems.

[Tsuru]

Bucky, do you use a DTS home theatre system as go-between or is the BD player hooked up straight to the TV? If it's the latter, I'd hook up the analog audio. I've had the same problem trying to stream HD mkv files with DTS audio tracks straight to my TV through HDMI and the audio didn't work. It did work through the downsampled analog channel, but unless I get a sweet amp for my system the DTS won't work. You could also try a digital audio channel like the SPDIF or optical if your TV supports it but I have not tried this yet... then again the TV's I know only have two speakers.

[Bucky]

Yes I did try the analog hookup. It is working with HDMI right now. I thought the analog might at least allow us to see that it worked or not. Unfortunately, that did not work either.

I did some research and found that there is an type of encoding that is used, apparently, only in Japan called [size=84][font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]AVCREC. Does anybody know about this? I searched around for this a little and it seems to be some sort of encoding done on Blueray discs to allow more data to fit on DVDs and it is only used in Japan.

Taro, I will take the DVD down to a video store and give you idea a try.

Thanks,
Buck[/SIZE][/font]

Bucky, do you use a DTS home theatre system as go-between or is the BD player hooked up straight to the TV? If it's the latter, I'd hook up the analog audio. I've had the same problem trying to stream HD mkv files with DTS audio tracks straight to my TV through HDMI and the audio didn't work. It did work through the downsampled analog channel, but unless I get a sweet amp for my system the DTS won't work. You could also try a digital audio channel like the SPDIF or optical if your TV supports it but I have not tried this yet... then again the TV's I know only have two speakers.