Sony 7.1 system questions

[bamaredwingsfan]

I have a sony str-de697 reciever for my home theater, an i have a question about it.
1. The instruction booklet wants you to hook up your dvd player through digital coax, instead of optical input. I hooked up my dvd player with an optical digital cord in the video2 input. Here is my question, when i put a disk in the dvd player an it starts to play the movie i notice that on the recievers screen it will flash across there dolby digital 3/2.1 but i have sound comming from all the speakers in the 7.1 system. Does that mean that my reciever is playing in 3.1 or does it mean nothing?

[m_bathke]

Some movies are in Dolby Digital but only recorded in stereo, so that might be your issue.

Also, usually the movie won't start to send a Surround sound signal(5.1, 6.1, etc) to the reciever until the Movie actually starts to play, meaning after you select to play the movie from the menu on the disk. They usually never are actually in surround sound during the intro before the menu.

If you watch the front of your reciever you will probably see it change to 5.1 or 6.1 after the actual movie starts to play.

[saurabh]

Yes, you never see the 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1 before the DVD loads (logic : the system can only see all the formats inside the DVD after it reads it and not before). It seems like some BIOS display, just like in your PC, which btw should not be displayed. Speak to Sony support about it, they will be able to help.

BTW, you can set 5.1, DTS etc using the movie Menu or DVD player menu.

[br33zy]

Actually, what u are seeing is what speakers are being utilized. The "3" is for your front speakers, right, left and center, the "2" is for surrounds, right and left, and the .1 is the LFE channel. I have a HK235 that does the same thing. It should be in your manual as well.

[bamaredwingsfan]

Another thing i tried was to switch from video2(the dvdplayer) to video1(the satelite) an then back to video2 while the movie is playing, to see if it would show something different but it still showed the dolby digital 3/2.1 just like it says the first time. I did notice that when you are surfing around on the menus of the dvd that it will say dolby digital 3/2.0 I just wonder if i moved the dvd player to a different optical input, if that would change anything?

[Kevin P]

Switching to the optical input won't change anything in terms of the formats that get decoded. The coax or optical cable simply passes the bits from the DVD player to the receiver, then the receiver interprets those bits, changes them into analog audio and sends them to the appropriate speaker(s).

Dolby Digital 3/2.1 as displayed by your receiver is more commonly known as 5.1. 3/2.0 is 5.0 (5 discrete channels but no LFE channel). You may see something along the lines of 2.0 or Dolby ProLogic on the display, meaning the DVD (or cable/satellite channel) has 2 discrete channels and the receiver decodes it using ProLogic or ProLogic II/IIx to send it to the 5 or 7 speakers.

Also, there is no actual discrete "7.1" sound format on DVDs. There is a DTS ES 6.1 Discrete mode, that's as close as it comes to true 7.1. Instead, 7.1 receivers use matrix algorithms to extract the surround back info from the side surround info in the soundtrack. That's why all 7 speakers were playing when the display read 3/2.1.