Best AV Receiver settings for standard TV viewing

[Starnzy]

I have a Yamaha AV Receiver (RX V671) and for movies, I use the STRAIGHT (or Pure Direct) mode on the yamaha, so I'm not using any of the receivers processing modes.

For watching standard TV, I wondered what the most commonly used settings are? If I have it set to STRAIGHT, for the most part, audio is coming out of the front left & front right speakers, with nothing coming out of the centre speaker. This was the default under the 'TV' scene on the receiver, but I was interested to know what others use for viewing normal TV?

 

[dante01]

Pro Logic II or IIx Movie is the most commonly used mode in relation to TV viewing. This will create pseudo surround from stereo audio, extract matrixed channels in relation to Dolby matrixed stereo and will be overridden when true Dolby Digital 5.1 discrete audio is detected. You also get much the same functionality with DTS NEO:6 Movie as you do with Dolby Pro Logic II.

 

[Starnzy]

Thanks dante01, very useful to know.

 

[Mark.Yudkin]

Don't know how things are in UK, but over here, especially with "better channels", the stereo broadcast is typically Dolby Pro Logic II encoded (details here) from the original multichannel source. By allowing the receiver to perform the corresponding decoding, as Dante01 explains, you get a surround sound experience that approximates that on the original. Using straight mode defeats this, and the resulting experience therefore poorer.