Hello. I've never seen a W-VHS, HDVS Disc, or MUSE LaserDisc with Dolby Digital or DTS. What is the reason of this? Were the disks having insufficient capacity?

Early Hi-Vision releases predate both Dolby Surround AC-3 and DTS Laserdiscs. They likely didn’t exist during MUSE encoding development and NHK developed the DANCE audio soundtracks. DTS was relatively small company in its early days. The company was comparable to Ultra Stereo which no one knows now. It would have never been where it is now if it didn’t attract Steven Spielberg’s attention. All this happened well MUSE and DANCE have been developed. Another distant reason could be the royalty fees. Hi-Vision had DANCE which could do discreet surround sound. Why pay more royalty fees to Dolby and DTS?


As far as the capacity goes, Hi-Vision discs had the capacity to have both DTS and Dolby Surround AC-3. You didn’t ask but they could technically have LD-G too but it wasn’t implemented.

Thank you for your reply. I've seen AC-3 RF on a few models like the HLD-X0, but never on a product from 1987-1993. What does it take to use DANCE?

a MUSE source (like a Hi-Vision Laserdisc played on a MUSE Player or a W-VHS tape on a W-VHS deck) and a MUSE decoder.

But that requires digging in vintage products (20~25 years old), with a good dollar budget.

Julien

There is nothing out there or have been released in the past which can properly process DANCE audio within modern standards.

DANCE A-Mode is 3+1 channels that is front left, front center, front right and a single mono rear in 13 bits with 32kHz. MUSE decoders output these channels in analog RCA or a pair of SPDIF (Toslink or Coax). MUSE decoders internally upsample and upscale the DANCE stream to 16 bit 48kHz on both analog and digital outputs. The digital outputs have front left and right on one SPDIF output and center and mono rear on another SPDIF output. MUSE decoders also have an un-decoded native DANCE output but there is no AV processor out there which can decode it. There is no delay/distance or sound level adjustments in the MUSE decoder so all channels output in the same magnitude and phase.

Typically people feed the 3+1 analog outputs into an AVR with 6ch (or 8ch) analog inputs. They use a Y-splitter for the mono rear channel which practically turns 3+1 into 5.0 channels. Keep in mind these MUSE decoders are very old now. Their DACs are outdated so the analog outputs will not have the best clarity and dynamics to begin with. DANCE channels are in full range so no LFE ( .1 ) channel is not a big issue unless you routed all your bass to your subwoofer in your AVR/AVP. Nearly none of the AVR/AVP will do bass management on their 6ch/8ch analog inputs. They won't do distance/delay/phase correction on the analog inputs either. Outlaw made an out board base management pre-amp in the early 2000s. You can try to find one in the used market to retract bass from 5.0ch and create LFE. It won't do distance/delay/phase so there is no remedy for these. Your speakers will be out of alignment and out of tune while listening to DANCE unless if you have identical full range speakers all around and they are exactly the same distance from your seating position.

Some people bought DTS encoders. Creative made one for PC gamers in the early 2000s. There are some pro encoders directly from DTS too. You can route the analog 3+1 into these DTS encoders. You can use a Y-splitter for the mono rear and the Outlaw base management pre-amp for the LFE before the DTS encoder. the DTS encoder will encode these analog inputs into DTS 5.1 with 1.5mbps bitrate. It is not really 1:1 bit perfect but close enough. The DTS encoder will output this new DTS 5.1 stream into any modern AVR/AVP through its single SPDIF output (Toslink or Coax). Any AVR/AVP capable of processing DTS should be able to apply base management and delay/distance/phase to this stream. If you have a modern AVP/AVR, it will even do room correction (Dirac, Audyssey etc..).

@efishell, I just noticed, you are the first person to post here from Türkiye.

@admin, Julien, you got the Turkish flag mixed up with the Tunisian one in profiles


Turkish flag

Unacceptable !!! I demand repercussions and a formal claim at the United Nations !!!

=> Fixed (might require to refresh the cache to show the correct flag)

Julien

Hivision/MUSE is from 1988. It predates the audio standards you’re talking about from the 90s. Also it’s predominantly a broadcast format so putting DTS on an HDVS disc wouldn’t be logical since there was no way to send it over the air. Most TV in Japan was mono well into the 2000s since people are watching morning chat shows in their 10 square meter kitchen before work and don’t need earth shattering bass or circular sound tricks. Doing anything loud in your apartment is considered rude. This is why whenever you watch normal awful Japanese TV like talent driven junk they put huge captions on the screen for nearly every word said. It’s assumed the tiny speaker in your itty bitty TV won’t be on at max volume.

X-0 type gear didn’t sell well at all compared to normal person gear. The X-0 was for people who own yachts or for people who spent every cent on their AV system. At $6000 (without decoder!) it wasn’t what you’d call “successful”. These were skunkworks level products that probably lost money and were only put on the market at all for R&D purposes or as a halo product. So while they could have developed a home version of HiVision LD that incorporated digital surround, LD+G, a Laseractive game, the barcode reader, and karaoke the only customer who wants all that crap is some retro gamer nerd who wouldn’t be born until 1997 anyway.

In other words: this stuff was all very expensive and niche and just became more expensive and niche as time went on and more features were added. There was almost zero market for MUSE on disc at home to begin with so making an even more expensive more hardcore version wasn’t possible and it might really irritate customers who just spend twenty grand on the now obsolete system they bought just six year earlier.