Blu-ray sound output?

[Baseley09]

Just been in my local Sony centre to grill them about their Blu-Ray players and came out none the wiser i was getting solid answers of "i think so" and "you should be alright" lol.

Like HD-DVD players with the appropriate outputs, do Bluray players output the HD sound tracks over multi channel so i can use them on my ancient av amp?

I.E. I dont have HDMI 1.3a or whatever on my amp to pass it over that, so would i be stuck on standard DD 5.1?

[sj33]

A legacy track is mandatory on Blu-Ray disc, be it a DD5.1 track, or a DTS Core track extracted from the DTS-HD track (as DTS-HD tracks have a standard DTS track as the core).
I'm not sure if it's mandatory for players to be able to 'downconvert' HD tracks to legacy formats, but it's not necessary anyway, as a legacy track is required on all discs as spec.

HD-DVD differs because players downconvert the DD+/TrueHD to DD or DTS.

[Baseley09]

Yeah i figure theres support for standard current soundtrack formats, but what about listening to HD soundtracks?

Aside from being able to listen to the DTS HD etc tracks, are these always in 7.1 i mean who wants 8 speakers in their room unless they have a dedicated cinema set up, or are the high quality tracks at 5.1 too?

[sj33]

It'll be whatever legacy track is on the disc, so if it's a DD or DTS 7.1 track, that'll be what you get. It'll depend on the film if the DTS-HD track is 7.1, but if it is, you'll get 7.1 from the extracted Core DTS track too.

You've honestly got nothing to worry about, almost all of us are using optical/coaxial at best too.
The PS3 cannot 'downconvert' HD tracks into legacy tracks, but doesn't need to either for the reasons mentioned. I guess some standalones may offer such functionality, but it's not really needed as I say.