Who Cares? No One Will Notice!
Dear Gary: It looks like certain studios may be cheating. I rented the Doors remastered in THX®. The case said Dolby Digital 5.1. I am very careful when renting and buying DVDs to look for 5.1 as a feature; otherwise I do not get it. Back to the point. The DVD claimed to be 5.1. While watching the movie, I realized there was no subwoofer info. Sure enough, I pressed display and it reads 5 channel instead of 5.1. I start the movie over and press display during the THX trailer. I hear sub and 5.1 channel displays. Oh, so the studio can get away with marking a package 5.1 when all they did was to throw a trailer on the beginning of the movie? Is this how they remastered it in THX too? I guess they figure no one will notice since the mass of people are ignorant to sound. I noticed very bad remastering on the Lost Boys and Predator (not THX 5.1). Just leave it in the original 2.0 channel format and do not even bother to put it on DVD if the studio is going to cut corners. Who knows, maybe they farm it out to a bottom feeder blockbuster type of company whose philosophy is who cares no one will notice. Just my two bits.
Ben Stuka
Editor Gary Reber Comments:
Your point is well taken and I agree with your assessment. On far too many occasions we have reported mis-crediting of soundtrack mixes encoded in Dolby Digital. Such is a disregard for accuracy.
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