DVD Surround
Dear Gary: I am a longtime fan of Widescreen Review and I am hoping that you can answer a question. I have a Denon 2600, and a Yamaha Dolby Digital AC-3 decoder with my Laser Disc player and DVD hooked to it. The DVD hookup is optical. When I got Laser Magic 1998, I noticed that you said that A Few Good Men is Dolby surround. But when I tried it, my decoder indicated that it was decoding digital and that it was reading it as Dolby Digital Stereo with sound coming only from front left and right and nothing to the surrounds. My decoder seems to be working very well with all LaserDisc and DVD Dolby Digital 5.1, so, is A Few Good Men in Dolby Digital Stereo or am I doing something wrong that I don’t get Dolby Surround from this disc? P.S. If a LaserDisc is not 5.1 decoded, the decoder says so and the receiver reads Dolby Surround and plays the LaserDisc accordingly. This does not happen with my DVD. Is it because of my hookup as the DVD is hooked up from the optical output? The LaserDisc is hooked up to the decoder just through the regular RCA audio outputs. HELP.
Editor Gary Reber Comments:
We too have had the same problem with various DVDs credited at Dolby Surround that will play in stereo-only, not matrix surround. We do not know what the problem is, but suspect that an incompatibility problem exists. Virtually all DVDs have to be checked for compatibility with respect to menu navigation and content coding on numerous DVD players, then a decision has to be made whether to go forth issuing the disc or to remaster to ensure all players can play the disc. We will look into this problem further and publish our results in an upcoming editorial.
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