Why no FLAC support on recent Blu-Ray devices? Options

[krafty]

I've been watching recent releases of Blu-Ray players and most of them just ignore lossless formats like FLAC, WavPack and so on.
They ship with MP3 and some are shipping with AAC support, but FLAC is a dream...

Any logic reason besides contractual ties with proprietary formats?

[polemon]

Usually, they use decoder chips which are basically mass produced SOCs. You can find those chips on stand-alone media players as well, those little boxes that have a few USB ports, probably eSATA, and one or more HDMI outputs. Sometimes, the same chips are also in modern TV sets, and those are usually build into DVD players as well. There, the DVD is accessed like a mass-storage device, but the decoding part is one of those SOCs.

Now, the cheapest SOCs are those that are also used in mobile media players (we used to call them "MP3 players"). Those media players can decode only a couple of files and codecs, and that's because of cheap decoder chips. Since one of those cheapie decoders are used in most DVD/BR players, they also can decode only just a few file formats and codecs.

The "better" decoder chips, like the Sigma Designs SMP8647, are used on more expensive media boxes and some higher class DVD/BR players.

Edit:
The Popcorn Hour A-300 is one of such "better" media boxes with said chip. Check the specification page, they decode a large plethora of formats and codecs.

This post has been edited by polemon: Jan 13 2012, 16:31