Kaiser Soze's Blog

Western Digital WD TV HD, DTS downmixing

Last week I bought the Western Digital WD TV HD with a WD My Book Home Edition (1TB) external USB harddisk. I must say this truly is a wonderfull combination for me. It plays every media file I threw at it, even those encoded with insane bitrates. The number of file formats supported is huge, and still growing with new firmware updates coming.

But  even this little media monster has one big disadvantage, there is no DTS decoding. The DTS signal is bitsreamt trough the optical output so if you own a DTS surround receiver with optical-in you will be able to enjoy DTS audio with your movies. If you are connected trough HDMI only, as I am, you will here nothing.

Who’s to blaim for this? Western Digital? I don’t know. For only 99 euro’s this thing is pretty cheap and DTS certificates and licenses are very expensive so it probably was the only thing WD could do to keep the WD TV HD as cheap as it is now. I have sent an enquiry to Western Digital if DTS to stereo/AC-3 downmixing will be a possible feature for new firmware upgrades to come. Untill now they haven’t replied to my question.

After doing some reading on the WD TV HD it seems it is based on the SMP8635LF chip from Sigma Designs. This chip happens to be used in other Linux based devices like the HD200 (SageTV), Teac HDRM7250, TVIX6500 and the Popcorn Hour A-110.

The Popcorn Hour may be of interest, as it has a feature for downmixing DTS, and reportedly Popcorn Hour Linux modules were imported succesfully in the WD TV HD system.

Another hint of DTS downmixing being possible is in the firmware microcode that is used for the audio processing on the Sigma DSP:

/lib/firmware/xrpc_xload_audio_ucode_SMP8634_2.8.3.0_facsprod.mips.nodts.bin

So it looks like DTS was specifically disabled. Maybe it’s possible to just swap the audio_ucode with one that supports DTS (downmixing), like the Popcorn Hour. Altough this might be blocked by some encryption scheme. I don’t have the technical knowledge to answer this question. But I know that ISTAR doesn’t have DTS decoding neither but some of the users used the Popcornhour firmware and they can now successfully decode DTS. Since WD uses the same Sigma chip, I’m guessing there’s a chance. Still, we need confirmation from a person who has technical knowledge.

So is there anybody reading this with a lot of linux knowledge, serial access to a WD TV HD and willing to help a lot of people? Please let me know. I have Ubuntu installed on a virtual machine but I haven’t got the knowledge and serial access. I’d also would be way too concerned about bricking my device. The guys over at the AVS-forum haven’t got DTS decoding or downmixing working but they sure are making progress. They have reportedly got the WD TV HD running with an ethernet connection using a WiFi USB device!

I know the simple solution would be to buy a DTS surround receiver with optical in, but damn those things are still expensive. The best solution for me would be the HTX-22HD Home Theatre Package System. Since i do not want 5 speakers. Quality 2.1 will do for me. This system comes standard as 2.1 and has all the features you would like for watching high definition video/audio. E.g. TrueHD, DTS HD, HDMI 1.3 in/out, optical in/out. But untill I have the 330 euros for this great audio system I would like my WD TVHD to downmix my DTS. I’m sure you agree!

Update: I got a response from WD “

Dear *****,

Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support.

I apologize for the inconvenience you are experiencing and thank you for your suggestion, we are gathering customers feedback to see how we can improve our product, unfortunately we do not have information on what will be changed or a release date for the upgraded product as of yet. I will forward this e-mail to our feedback queue to be taken under consideration.

Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.

Sincerely,
***** *.
Western Digital Service and Support
http://support.wdc.com

So we might all want to keep sending e-mail about how much we want DTS-downmixing!

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