[mulder]

can anyone help as i am looking for a dvd player to replace my faulty Yamada slimline 5320 player but the thing is everywhere i look on the internet for a replacement it states dolby digital and doesn't state whether it's 5.1 or not do all dvd players playback in dolby digital 5.1? i do have an yamaha DSP-AX620 dolby digital amp which I use for my old toshiba sd2190B player but my yamada slimline 5320 dvd player never quite sounded so good as my toshiba player. to be honest all this pretty confuses me so any help would be appreciated.

[albertz]

virtually all dvd players output / decode 5.1 surround sound, the phrase 'dolby digital' means just that ( digital = 5.1 ), you should also look for a player that decodes DTS.

[vonhosen]

If your amp has a Dolby decoder your DVD player doesn't need one. If you connect your DVD player to the amp with digital coax or toslink , then the DVD player will pass the digital bitstream to the amp for decoding.

You only need the DVD player to have a Dolby decoder if your amp doesn't, then you would use the analogue outs from the DVD player to the amp analogue Inputs (with the DVD player doing the decoding.)

[Reiner]

virtually all dvd players output / decode 5.1 surround sound, the phrase 'dolby digital' means just that ( digital = 5.1 )

That is not correct, Dolby Digital can be anything from 1.0 to 5.1

However all DVD players will output any form of Dolby Digital (incl. 5.1) via the digital output (coaxial or optical), so if you use an AV amp as described by vonhosen you won't need a decoder (or rather a 6-channel output) in (at) the DVD player.