In early December kaylasmom and I bought the Beatle’s Love CD. kaylasmom mentioned how much she would like to have the deluxe version with the DVD on it. So a friend got it for her for Christmas.
Well, two days ago, we sat down to watch the DVD, and there’s no video content on it! In examining the packaging, I found a tiny little logo indicating that thi8s was DVD Audio.
What is this? My DVD player already has the ability to play CDs. What’s supposed to be the point of making a DVD with an audio program, but no video content? Or am I supposed to find Easter eggs?
The DVD audio disc contains Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1, and DTS encoded tracks. Unlike standard CDs which are only capable of reproducing 2 channels (left and right), DD and DTS can reproduce 5.1 channels of sound (left, centre, right, left surround, right surround, bass).
Love has been mastered to take full advantage of the entire 5.1 channel soundstage and it is quite stunning when played on a DD or DTS capable system. If you have such a system, lean back and enjoy. On the other had, if your home theatre consists of a simple plain-vanilla stereo setup, then you’ll hear no difference and you might as well just play the CD.
DVD Audio is NOT DTS. DVD Audio, also called DVD-A, is a newish standard specifically for high resolution audio. The main difference is that DTS is still a lossy encryption method which compresses 5.1 audio so that it will fit on a DVD along with the video. DVD-A is a lossless, high-resolution audio format that uses much more space on a DVD than does DTS.
There are audio-only DTS discs out there, specifically designed to play on any DVD player that will support DTS. I just looked at the box for my Beatles Love deluxe set, and it has both DTS and DVD-A logos on it. So the DVD may actually be a hybrid that will support both formats, in which case it will play in any DVD player, so long as the player or your receiver decodes DTS. But if you have a DVD-A compatible player, you’ll get the music in even higher resolution.