a person who knows way more than I do said this about MA (not THD or HR) from the aforementioned NAD thread. Basically defending a modular design w/o having MA decoder built in already for a 2k unit....:
"I do think the DTS-MA decoding upgrade path could prove useful, if more discs start shipping with it. I believe only the Onkyo HD-805 can unpack DTS-MA on the HD-DVD side, and none can on the BD side. The Onkyo may actually require external (receiver-based) decoding for DTS-MA to work at all, possibly because it lacks the hardware to do the decode by itself.
So I guess in summary:
1. If you must have DTS-MA, you need
2. the Onkyo HD-805 and
3. a receiver that can accept DTS-MA bitstream (HDMI 1.3) and
4. decode it via an upgradeable module offered by NAD in the future if there's enough demand for it.
Until then, I'm glad they didn't build the extra cost into the system."
** Nuttz, this person's posts can be *sometimes rather cryptic....
OK, I found that blurb about "remixing", and why bit-streaming would be UNwanted, or why referring to why it needs to be decoded in the player in the future:
"It doesn't matter at all, actually, since the player needs to unpack the TrueHD anyway to remix it with the other features (a.k.a. "Advanced Authoring") of the disc, including menu sound effects, PiP (in HD-DVD's case anyway, since BD doesn't support PiP yet), and so on...
For now and the foreseeable future, this is a pointless feature that few if any will need to take advantage of."
(**Then a different person said this):
"the new release tosh hd-dvd players are said to output bitstream, as is the sony to come and the pioneer blu-ray. theres also the samsung 5000 dual player. so quite a few players with bitstream ability for the hd audio formats. there are a few avrs with hd audio capability, onkyo denon, yamaha and pioneer to name a few.
all that said yet to see anyone talk abotu bitstream from player to avr and the benefit. till someone can actually do it and find its fo some benefit probably a moot point. and moot as a feature. and I think thats the angle nads playing. the aurious texas chip can apparently do the hd audio formats but no point buildign the capability in jsut yet if it cant be used. another one to wait and see. do they infact deliver on the modular promise...if the genuine need arises.
I like the idea of hte modular construction that they can add a dab tuner down the track to suit local broacast format for example."
I told you it was a bit confusing 