Dvico 6632N upgrade for HD audio

Over the last few days I’ve noticed some interesting information cropping up on specialist websites about a forthcoming upgrade to the Dvico Tvix 6632N multimedia centre. With the new product upgrade set to bring support for HD audio, we thought we’d contact Dvico directly to try and find out more.

We exchanged several letters with the heads of Dvico in Korea. We asked about the forthcoming upgrade to Tvix 6600 media centres, but also about support for Dolby Digital+, an audio format that could be adopted by some HD television broadcasters. Here's a summary of what Dvico said.

Upgrade or update? No plans for a product replacement scheme

It’s first of all important to understand why there needs to be a new version of Dvico's Tvix 6600 media centres. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the Realtek 1073 and 1283 chips found in most media centres on the market aren’t able to bitstream HD versions of Dolby Digital and DTS.

This function was due to be integrated at a later date, but the chips have displayed a hardware fault that has made this impossible. Realtek has recently revised its chips to correct this fault. So, we imagine that from now on, Realtek is only supplying its 1073+ and 1283+ chips that are able handle HD audio as a bitstream.



That leaves Dvico with two choices: carry on selling their media centres with the revised version of the chip and don’t mention the change; or announce the launch of a new and improved version of their multimedia players. Dvico has opted for the latter.

So where does that leave owners of the brand’s current Tvix 6600 media centres? As yet, the manufacturer does not plan to recall or replace existing media centres. Instead, it is encouraging users to install an alternative firmware, developed by members of the community.

This firmware works in a similar way to that found in the Sony PS3 console, in that it allows the device to decode the audio signal to a 5.1 or 7.1 PCM output, with no noticeable difference in quality, according to Dvico.

To us, that looks just a little bit complicated for novice users, so we asked Dvico to make this 'unofficial patch' part of an official fix directly integrated into the next firmware updates.

Dolby Digital+

It’s still early days for HD Freeview in the UK but at some stage, certain broadcasters may well choose to use the Dolby Digital+ audio format, which is used and decoded under licence. Dvico Tvix 6600 multimedia players can only read this audio format in the two following ways:

- The device transmits the raw format via the HDMI connection to an audio amplifier that’s compatible with Dolby Digital+ (bitstreaming).
- The device decodes the format and turns it into a stereo output via the HDMI or optical connections.

So what about users who don’t have an audio amplifier that can decode Dolby Digital+ but who still want to enjoy the 5.1 output? Well, they’re not going to like Dvico’s answer to that one, as the licence covering Tvix 6600 media centres doesn’t allow Dolby Digital+ to be decoded to a 5.1 output via the HDMI socket. Nor does the licence allow Dolby Digital+ to be transformed into ‘standard’ Dolby Digital.

You’ll therefore have to make sure you have an audio amplifier that’s compatible with Dolby Digital+ to enjoy 5.1 sound from broadcasts in Dolby Digital+.


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