Hi, Dudes:

When you play back a dolby digital surround EX encoded laserdisc like Star Wars: Episode I, does it turn on the dolby digital EX decoder automatically or you have to turn it on manually?

I have to do it manually on my yamaha 5940. Any other case from your experience?

Thanks.

I don't think Dolby EX soundtrack back then had the coding to alert the decoder. You will have to manually select Dolby EX.

No wonder. It makes sense now. I love the surround back channel from Star Wars: I, nice and warm

Thanks.

It took Dolby two tries to get the Surround EX code in the AC-3 bitstream correct - it wasn't implemented for LaserDisc, but they did for DVD - unfortunately, it didn't work with some receivers - it messed up their decoding up in some way - so Dolby changed it again which made it compatible with new receivers but older ones that could read the old code now had to be switched manually. I watch all 5.1 films with EX - or PLIIx - or DTS-ES. I wish receivers would let you use DTS ES with DD soundtracks because I think its a more accurate matrix decoder since it splits the signal into multiple bands and steers each separately, instead of the broadband steering of Dolby PL and PLIIx used for EX decoding.

Too bad Neural has never been adopted as an EX decoding system.

On my 5940 the decoder is quite indecent. It will not decode any DD by DTS or DTS ES. PLIIx works sometimes.
I may have to go a bit further in regards to the DSP. Yamaha DSP can help but not a lot.
Thanks for all the technical knowledge, excellent.