Why does Bluray TV series have 16bit and 24bit audio on same disc?

[VideoFanatic]

I noticed a TV series had both 16bit and 24bit audio on the same disc. Any idea why that would be? Why not just have 24bit audio for everything?

[Cornucopia]

1. How do you know for sure those bitdepths?
2. Maybe they changed production/distribution companies? Happens alot.
3. Does it really matter? If done correctly, 16bit is still quite good enough for distributing to the vast majority of consumers.

Scott

Certainly not worth fretting about or spending time and effort trying to "fix".

[VideoFanatic]

I know because I checked them with MediaInfo.

I'm not worried about it, I was just wondering why, that's all.

[Cornucopia]

Yes but MI only reports on headers not actually testing streams, and has been known to misreport.
Particularly WRT compressed formats that don't rely on an inherent bitdepth.

Scott

[PuzZLeR]

Maybe the disc's "producer" is indeed incompetent, or has no skills with detail on the format, and only a "producer" because they are a nephew/niece/cousin/fill-in-the-blank of someone high up in the company. Happens alot too.

[pandy]

Yes but MI only reports on headers not actually testing streams, and has been known to misreport.
Particularly WRT compressed formats that don't rely on an inherent bitdepth.

Scott

It can be even more complex - 16 bit can be wrapped as 24 bit and without analyzing for example PDF it will be impossible to say if this is 16 or 24 bit.

[Cornucopia]

I Agree.

[hello_hello]

It might depend on the format. Some are compulsory for Bluray while some are optional. The disc might have an older format to cover the "compulsory" type and a newer format for the golden ear brigade. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray#Audio

Also.... lossy formats such as the older AC3 and DTS, don't actually have a fixed bitdepth. They may store info regarding the bit depth of the source from which they were encoded, or the bit depth that's supposed to be used for decoding them, but that's what MediaInfo would be reporting for the lossy formats. Not the bitdepth of the file itself.