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Author Topic: Is 35mm print standard 5.1 obsolete? Tom Petrov Five Guys Lover Posts: 1121 From: El Paso, TX Registered: Jan 2003 posted 02-01-2011 01:36 AM                    I see all this Dolby 7.1, Blu-ray master audio and I am thinking theatrical 35mm 5.1 is obsolete Wondering what others on here think? Is DTS/SDDS/DD 5.1 from standard 35mm prints obsolete? Do they still release movies with DD EX or DTS ES?  |  IP: Logged Manny Knowles "What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???" Posts: 4247 From: Bloomington, IN, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 02-01-2011 02:02 AM                     Haven't you been paying any attention at all? 5.1 is -- in practical terms -- all there really is. Those home-video formats are pure marketing. They mean nothing to most consumers buying the discs, but the "hi-def" buzzword (including sound) can be make-or-break when it comes to convincing geeks who already own a movie in another format to buy it all over again. (aka "double dipping")  |  IP: Logged Tom Petrov Five Guys Lover Posts: 1121 From: El Paso, TX Registered: Jan 2003 posted 02-01-2011 02:05 AM                    Manny, 35mm print vs Digital. Seems the wattage is higher in IMAX and ETX, UltraAVX theatres. 7.1 in Digital theatres. Does 35mm still use Dolby EX and DTS ES?  |  IP: Logged Manny Knowles "What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???" Posts: 4247 From: Bloomington, IN, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 02-01-2011 02:08 AM                     for the houses that get converted, i wonder if the owners will spring for the extra bells n whistles i guess we need to hear from other members who underwent conversion to digital speaking in terms of released product (to date) i do recall hearing cries that there aren't enough titles released in the new 7.1 format -- sounds like it's at risk of going the way of EX/ES -- that's certainly a present concern as for the wattage -- IIRC, this was one of the critical suspicions surrounding SDDS-8 -- that the extra channels were really only being used to increase loudness  |  IP: Logged Tom Petrov Five Guys Lover Posts: 1121 From: El Paso, TX Registered: Jan 2003 posted 02-01-2011 02:12 AM                    Thanks Manny, so EX and ES are done? I have noticed no more DVDs are being release in this.  |  IP: Logged Manny Knowles "What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???" Posts: 4247 From: Bloomington, IN, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 02-01-2011 02:34 AM                     Obviously, the format still exists -- I consider EX/ES the same format -- but the issue was that they essentially became a flash-in-the-pan gimmick, and a lot of exhibitors felt "burned" by it. The format was developed as a collaboration between Lucasfilm and Dolby -- it was introduced with PHANTOM MENACE and the word I got was that Lucasfilm was making the "upgrade" mandatory for houses desiring to book the movie. The end result was a lot of houses adopted the format and then very few movies followed in the format. Of the movies that used the format, it wasn't clear which movies were EX. And, since playing a non EX movie through the EX decoder gave undesirable results, a lot of the EX decoders I installed ended up getting left in the bypass mode after EPISODE I came and went. IIRC it was easier to tell if a movie was ES because DTS gave those movies a 5-digit serial number instead of the usual 4-digit number. (Anybody else recall something like that?)  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 02-01-2011 09:28 AM                     The lossy versions of Dolby Digital, DTS and SDDS are not obsolete. At worst, they're obsolescent -particularly in the case of SDDS. Sony isn't doing much of anything at all to support that format anymore although quite a few movies are still released using the audio format. As long as 35mm prints are in use Dolby Digital, DTS and SDDS are going to stick around in movie theaters. As long as DVD is still around Dolby Digital and DTS will be used there. Dolby Digital and DTS are both used in computer gaming audio. Dolby Digital is the de facto surround audio standard for HDTV broadcast and SD digital cable/satellite broadcast. BTW, some movies are still released with Dolby•EX and DTS-ES audio tracks. Blu-ray really hasn't done anything to hurt the Dolby•EX and DTS-ES formats; lots of Blu-ray discs have foreign language tracks encoded in those formats while the primary English language tracks are in lossless formats. Speaking of the lossless surround formats on Blu-ray, they're definitely a significant upgrade from lossy-only surround formats on DVD. And 7.1 is a little more than just a marketing gimmick. The problem is not all movies use 7.1 capability honestly. Some have merely taken a 5.1 mix and blown it up to 7.1. Other released have mixed for discrete 7.1. It varies from title to title. Bit depth and sample rate is another variable; you'll sometimes see 24-bit 96kHz audio used on music oriented releases. I'm personally glad the geeks made a lot of noise about audio on Blu-ray. If they didn't, not only would Warner Bros. probably still be releasing all their Blu-ray discs only with lossy Dolby Digital audio (instead of DTS-HD Master Audio like they're doing now) but we would probably be stuck with the inferior HD-DVD format and lossy only audio instead. Digital cinema has the capability to match anything Blu-ray can do with audio above merely doing 24-bit 5.1 LPCM. But the movie studios and movie theaters aren't doing that because they're still marketing only the projection end of things while sound continues to be treated as an after thought. The situation right now is actually pretty disgusting in that movie theaters are lumping powerful sound systems in with over-priced premium theaters rather than doing their damned jobs right with ALL the theaters. Poorly maintained sound systems are more often the normal state with "standard" theaters, never mind the fact any movie theater can sound pretty damned great with proper equipment choices and proper setup/maintenance. Dolby•EX never went anywhere in movie theaters because it was NEVER marketed competently at all. Dolby didn't do a good job promoting it. And the movie studios and movie theaters did a piss poor job of it as well. I don't buy it that the audiences just didn't care. Most audience members never knew it existed. Dolby Surround 7.1 marketing has been a similar pooch screw in terms of marketing.  |  IP: Logged Jonathan Goeldner Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1360 From: Washington, District of Columbia Registered: Jun 2008 posted 02-01-2011 11:26 AM                     quote: Tom Petrov Thanks Manny, so EX and ES are done? I have noticed no more DVDs are being release in this. 'Toy Story 3' on DVD has EX and I think 'Saw: The Final Chapter' does too, most of the films that were mixed in 7.1 and released as such on bluray, the DVD counterpart is usually Dolby Digital EX.  |  IP: Logged Tom Petrov Five Guys Lover Posts: 1121 From: El Paso, TX Registered: Jan 2003 posted 02-01-2011 12:24 PM                    Thanks Jonathan. I am going to check out those DVDs. It was my understanding that dvd no longer has movies releasd in ex or es formats.  |  IP: Logged Louis Bornwasser Film God Posts: 4441 From: prospect ky usa Registered: Mar 2005 posted 02-01-2011 01:09 PM                        Sound is usually the "last thing to do" in Post. Therefore EX takes time and that means money. EX has a chance, still, on cartoons. Sound is done forst, so there is TIME. Louis  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 02-01-2011 01:21 PM                     quote: Manny Knowles IIRC it was easier to tell if a movie was ES because DTS gave those movies a 5-digit serial number instead of the usual 4-digit number. (Anybody else recall something like that?) That is correct. Since Dolby didn't have a way to automatically sense the EX, people had to remember to enable or disable it. Most of the time it left undesirable results, but there was one movie "Vertical Limit" that I screened with the EX enabled on accident. I left the movie thinking "damn they did an awesome job with the EX" and then realized it wasn't mixed that way. Looking for the 5 digit dts serial number was the de-facto way to tell for many years, and for the most part, still is. Thank you dts! quote: Tom Petrov It was my understanding that dvd no longer has movies releasd in ex or es formats. Tom, you don't seem to grasp what EX really is. First off EX and ES is the same thing. Sort of like how LieMAX is the same as ETX, 3DX and all of those other silly madeup "gargantuan screen" auditoriums are pretending to be something special, when in reality they are simply a branding tactic to fool the suckers, er, am, "customers". Think of it like this, THX is a set of standards ANY theater can apply for and obtain (with enough expenditure for upgrades and such). LieMAX is similar, but the big difference is that the IMAX people have completely lost their marbles in terms of quality, so right now they are a joke to the industry. All of the other 3DX-type auditoriums are exclusive to a particular theater chain...which should be your "wake-up tip" that it isn't anything special and in reality is how those auditoriums SHOULD have been built in the first place instead of cutting corners. I actually shouldn't even be saying "should have been built" because many of them SHOULD have used 2 stacked projectors and not cut the corners they did, but I'll spare you because I was talking about EX before that tangent of annoying marketing distracted me. So in reality the only thing EX does is the exact same thing Dolby Pro Logic does to derive a center channel from a left and right stereo signal. They simply used it as a rear surround channel. It is nothing more. That being said to dumb it down a bit, any sound in the right surround channel that isn't present in the left surround gets routed to the right surround. Same for the left surround. However any sound present in BOTH channels (mono) gets extracted from the side surrounds and plays through the rear surrounds. Make sense? Its the same decoding logic that is used to extract dialogue from stereo sources to "create" a center channel.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 02-01-2011 03:08 PM                        To answer Tom's original question: quote: Tom Petrov Is DTS/SDDS/DD 5.1 from standard 35mm prints obsolete? Of course not! Almost every 35mm release print features Dolby Digital 5.1. Many feature Datasat 5.1 and you'd be surprised at how many releases still feature SDDS 5.1. They still even make SDDS 8 movies once in a while. As long as film is around, Dolby Digital 5.1 and likely Datasat 5.1 will be around. Neither are anywhere close to being "obsolete". And yes, a few of them end up in EX format.  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-01-2011 03:28 PM                        Define "obsolete." Is mono obsolete? Some current films are mixed in mono and every theatre in the world can play that format. On the other hand, there are now better-sounding formats (better dynamic range and S/N ratio, with the possibility of additional channels) available. I would argue that a format which continues to be used for new productions and which can be reproduced in many mainstream venues (not just at some random museum of film history) cannot be classified as obsolete. Thus, Academy mono, Dolby Stereo SR, and all three current digital formats are not obsolete and will not reach that point for many years, if ever. Dolby A can be considered obsolete or nearly so; the playback infrastructure supports it well, but I am not aware of any new or recent productions that use it.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 02-01-2011 07:34 PM                        One could make the argument that SDDS is obsolete as a format. Sony is no longer selling new equipment and I'm not sure if they even support it any more. Granted, it is a gray area since films continue to be encoded with SDDS tracks. It may not be 100% obsolete technically, but it certainly is not a viable format.  |  IP: Logged Aaron Garman Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1470 From: Toledo, OH USA Registered: Mar 2003 posted 02-01-2011 08:31 PM                     CDS: That's obsolete. I'd say SDDS is on the verge, kinda like VHS in the early 2000s. SRD and DTS will be around probably until 35mm goes away. DTS may even live on longer if studios continue to do 70mm prints every now and then. AJG  |  IP: Logged

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