DD EX Flagging on Denon 3805

[maverick177uk]

Just put the Incredibles on and flagging seems to work i.e. on the front of the 3805 on the left and right both displays show a six speaker set up, however when I play certain other discs i.e. Star Wars the display on the left displays 5 speakers and the display on the left displays 6 speakers. On both films the diplay in the middle actually says DDEX, so my question is am I getting true DDEX when watchin SW or not? Sound is comming out of my rear centre speaker by the way on both counts.

[Jack the lad]

Originally Posted by maverick177uk

Just put the Incredibles on and flagging seems to work i.e. on the front of the 3805 on the left and right both displays show a six speaker set up, however when I play certain other discs i.e. Star Wars the display on the left displays 5 speakers and the display on the left displays 6 speakers. On both films the diplay in the middle actually says DDEX, so my question is am I getting true DDEX when watchin SW or not? Sound is comming out of my rear centre speaker by the way on both counts.

Do a search on the "Star Wars trilogy". All recorded in EX but a many amps have difficulty picking up the EX flag on those recordings.

[maverick177uk]

Ye tried that but, when I go into my setup I don't appear to have the flag auto line showing at all, how do I get that up? Its not just SW either I always have my back speaker selected its just the display on the left only shows 5 speakers if I already have the back manually selected why doesn't it show 6? How do I switch the Auto flag on and off?

[Eddy Boy]

In some cases the discs say 5.1 EX or 6.1 EX. For 5.1 EX you don't actually have a discrete back channel but some information to help your amp decode and create it.
for 6.1 it is a discrete channel or at lest as far as i know.

[Zacabeb]

Of the current formats, DTS is alone in supporting discrete back surround. DTS-ES content with a discrete back surround channel also has it matrix encoded into the left and right surround channels, for backwards compatibility. This is subtracted from the left and right surround channels upon decoding, to restore the three discrete channels.

Dolby Digital EX always uses matrix encoding and uses Dolby Pro Logic or Pro Logic II for decoding the back surround from the left and right surround channels.

As Eddy Boy mentions, matrix encoded back surround is referred to as 5.1 EX and only soundtracks with discrete back surround as 6.1. There's not much of a standard for what amps will display though. When you have separate channel input and output indicators, it is correct for the input indicator to show 5.1 channels even with EX material.

Regarding the flat, it seems that Dolby had not augmented the Dolby Digital metadata with an EX flag by the time the first Dolby Digital EX titles were released. Some older discs don't have a flag at all, even though they are EX-encoded, and requires manually switching into EX mode.