"Uncompressed" audio on blu-ray?

[jackwanders]

I have a pretty basic Yamaha 5.1 receiver (HTR-5830 I think), and I recently added a PS3 to my setup. The PS3 uses the optical out to connect to the receiver.

I watched my second blu-ray movie the other day (POTC: At World's End) and one of the audio options was "5.1 Uncompressed". I chose it to see what would happen and it appeared that my receiver couldn't deal with it properly, as the PCM symbol lit up on the display, and the speaker symbol had only front and rear lit (when I listened w/ Dolby Digital 5.1, front, rear and side speaker symbols lit up).

I didn't listen for any long period of time because I was more interested in watching the movie than testing my hardware.

So, what is "uncompressed" audio, and do I need a newer receiver to utilize it?

[Sparky101]

I have a pretty basic Yamaha 5.1 receiver (HTR-5830 I think), and I recently added a PS3 to my setup. The PS3 uses the optical out to connect to the receiver.

I watched my second blu-ray movie the other day (POTC: At World's End) and one of the audio options was "5.1 Uncompressed". I chose it to see what would happen and it appeared that my receiver couldn't deal with it properly, as the PCM symbol lit up on the display, and the speaker symbol had only front and rear lit (when I listened w/ Dolby Digital 5.1, front, rear and side speaker symbols lit up).

I didn't listen for any long period of time because I was more interested in watching the movie than testing my hardware.

So, what is "uncompressed" audio, and do I need a newer receiver to utilize it?

Yes you need a new receiver. The uncompressed or HD audio codecs like LPCM, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD and DTS-HD MA can only be sent over HDMI into a receiver, digital optical connections don't have the required bandwidth.

[goji]

Not quite true.

In your case with the PS3 yes, you can only hear HD audio via HDMI. However, if you have an HD player that has multi channel analog audio outputs, then you are HD ready.