when will blu ray movies have 7.1 soundtracks as standard?

i know few are 7.1 but when will they become more common?

i currently have a 7.1 system and i want to utilize 7.1 Dolby HD or 7.1 PCM but without a 7.1 soundtrack would have to use the 5.1 Dolby HD track and not use the rear 2 speakers.

I wouldn't expect them to ever be "standard," or if they do it will take quite a few years. If the rate of adoption of Dolby EX and DTS-ES Discrete is any indication, 7.1 TrueHD and DTS-HD tracks are going to continue to be intermittent. When the HD format war started, there were a number of comments suggesting that interest in mixing such tracks was low - bordering on outright resistance to do so - in the industry because it wasn't being used in the theaters and thus required creating two separate multichannel mixes (one at 5.1 for theaters, one at 7.1 for video release). I haven't seen much talk about that in a couple years, but I would suspect that the issue of investing time and effort in additional mixing work would still hold true and would most impact movies with less successful box office results. (Take Speed Racer as an example - it's BD release is reported to be a BD-25 with basic Dolby Digital audio, not a higher-bitrate transfer on BD-50 with a lossless audio track, and the decision to do so is generally being attributed to SR's poor box office take.)

For folks using HDMI for their Blu-ray audio, it will often be possible to use matrix processing modes like Pro Logic IIx to expand 5.1 tracks to 7.1, but for folks using multichannel analog it remains to be seen what player manufacturers will do for us. Even 7.1 analog outputs on players remain a bit elusive, but in theory a player with 7.1 analog out and onboard decoding could include Pro Logic IIx or something similar and be configured to automatically engage that when a 5.1 track is being played. I haven't seen it yet in Blu-ray hardware, but OPPO already did it (with a basic steering logic rather than PLIIx) on their 980H and 983H players.

In addition to what Gonk said, surround sound plugins and support for studio software - such as Digidesign, Logic etc - didn't really come into their own until the last 5 years. Studio's don't always update their software to the latest releases either because they don't want to deal with bugs when everything is flowing well.

The surround sound software is much easier to use today and is much more automated, but it doesn't mean it is used and remixing a film's audio tracks would be a serious undertaking.

in the interim, what would you do in a 20 x 24 dedicatd HT with an existing 7.1 speaker setup

would you guys use a 5.1 DolbyHD track by itself and not engage the rear speakers, or would you engage a 7.1 surround mode to incorporate the rear speakers?

any guess if any upcoming big releases will include 7.1 dolbyhd or DTS Master 7.1? batman?

I have been fairly satisfied with the basic logic used by the Oppo players, but I'm leery of suggesting one option as inherently better than another without all the facts. Are you connecting via analog or HDMI? If it is analog, what processing options are available in the player? If it's HDMI, you probably have Pro Logic IIx available, and I'd feel pretty good about using it. Whether it's "better" than the straight 5.1 is hard to prove either way.

Since I haven't been buying many Blu-rays, I haven't been watching the release news closely enough to know what's coming. I bet there are some sites - and possibly even a thread or two at AVS - that track that, though.

i'm connecting my blu ray with 7.1 analog to my 990. the blu ray player is the panasonic bd-50. so do i have to aaply a dolby matrix in the blu rau player or can the 990 do it?

The BD50 actually simplifies things, although not in my favorite way. The multichannel analog output is only 5.1 anyway, so you can just split each surround output with a Y cable and connect to both side and rear inputs on the 990 (left surround to left side and back surround and the same for right surround). Since it lacks a 7.1 analog output, it renders the whole debate moot.

A second comment - I know of no surround receiver or processor that supports surround processing of the multichannel analog input. Not only would it require converting the signal back to digital (which can be done and is done), but it would also require knowing how many incoming channels were active - and there is no data stream or mechanism in place to identify that. If you are using analog connections, the source player really needs to do all of the surround processing.

would spliting the 5.1 to make 7.1 with a Y degrade sound quality or not at all?

i'm really looking foward to DTSHD and DolbyHD tracks. not sure if i should split the signal though.

PS. why do they make so many electronics in 7.1 if it doesn't really seem to be used on many fronts?

I have been splitting the rear channels for years when listening to SACD recordings. The ear (at least mine) cannot distinguish those channels enough to pick out the subtle differences caused by the split.

Splitting the signal should not degrade sound quality, as long as you use a reasonably well made splitter. You may need to adjust the left and right surround channel trim settings on the BD50, as the act of splitting the signal will reduce both divided signals. The adjustment is likely to be +3dB on both left and right surrounds, although I'd personally prefer to use a calibration disc's test tones and an SPL meter to verify that.

I think the word you are looking for is "marketing" - a receiver or processor that does not offer 7.1 support is going to have a hard time in the marketplace when all of its competitors do offer 7.1 support. And to be honest, the processing options available to generate 6.1 or 7.1 content from 2.0 and 5.1 sources are pretty extensive and widespread. Dolby and DTS both make sure to have equivalent algorithms (again, "marketing" is significant here, although it's not a bad thing - competition in the marketplace improves both companies' offerings). The only case where you see limited adoption is on source material, and I have a hard time complaining too much. Adoption of DTS 5.1 was slow enough that it's hard to be surprised DTS-ES Discrete didn't catch on, and I'm not terribly overwhelmed by Dolby EX (a Dolby 5.1 track and PLIIx is pretty effective, after all, and works with any ol' DD5.1 source). That just leaves the three new formats - Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, and DTS-HD - that can offer more than 5.1, and all were tied to a messy format war until earlier this year in addition to requiring changes in how audio mixing is done. That means studios had to decide to invest money and time in order to create 7.1 tracks that only work with formats that were caught up in a format war (coming just a few years on the heels of a format war in which both sides "lost" for all intents and purposes) and for a limited customer base. After all, many people are doing well to just get five speakers in their room - much less the seven needed to use that more expensive mix. That last issue - limited number of 7.1 systems - is likely to be a big reason that 7.1 mixes don't become standard. Here's an example: I work in an office of close to 15 people, most of them engineers. Out of that group, three have home theater systems with separate processors and amps as well as very nice speakers. Of the three of us, only one has a 7.1 system - the others are 5.1 and 3.0 (although the 3.0 setup may finally move to 5.1 before long). So of the 15 people who might buy movies, only one would benefit from a 7.1 mix - and even that one (me) would only benefit if he had a player with 7.1 analog outputs or a processor with HDMI v1.1+ input, which is not currently the case. So, basically, none of us could properly use a disc with a 7.1 mix at present. In contrast, those same 15 people include at least five HDTV owners, at least two of whom already own Blu-ray players.

in my 7.1 system my side speakers are the rocket dipoles and my rear speakers are the rocket bookshelf speakers. being that the speakers are different designs receiving the same info if i split it, is it going to sound off?

No more so than they do at any other time - after all, you are panning across that same set of surround speakers in other modes (Dolby EX, DTS-ES, Pro Logic IIx) in a very similar manner. Heck, in 7 Stereo mode, you are copying the left and right signals from the fronts all the way around, and this is just a scaled-back version of the same thing. The calibration you did on the 990 set the speakers' output levels so they match, and checking the BD50's outputs after splitting the signals will make sure the signals start out level when they enter the 990. As long as you don't have a level mis-match (such as the entire rear soundstage running too low or too high, or the rears higher than the sides) you should be fine.

i know what your saying gonk. Was i better off buying 4 dipoles or 4 bookshelves rather then 2 dipoles and 2 bookshelves?

the reason i bought the dipoles for the sides was when i ordered they suggested for 7.1, dipoles for the sides and direct firing bookshelves for the rear.

Yep, you bought right methinks. A lot of vendors suggest buying their speakers in that manner. Dipoles for the sides and regular speakers for the backs.

But you could have gone with 4 bookshelves and would have been good that way too.

I would stay away from dipoles all around for the 4 rears as you would lose a lot of the directionality that you get with the way your system is set up now, which is, I think, one of the points of a 7.1 system vs a 5.1 system. More front to rear and rear to front effects. Those kinds of effects, one would expect, would get muddied if you had dipoles in the rear.

The traditional recommendation is dipole sides and direct-radiating rears, at least for those spaces that are large enough to accommodate a 7.1 system effectively. I have the opposite arrangement, but it is due to room constraints rather than choice (my dipoles wouldn't fit anywhere on the side walls when we moved, so I moved them to rears and found direct-radiating speakers to use as side surrounds). I've had decent luck in my case, but I also have really good dipoles spaced out along a very wide rear wall (the room is 23' wide and 17' deep). In spite of what I've done, I would say that the most typical approaches are direct-radiating all the way around or dipole sides and direct-radiating rears, with the latter being the place to start in most cases.

any suggestions for blu ray players that decode DolbyHD and DTS Master with 7.1 analog out so i may use my 990?

The only one I know of is the Sony BDP-S550. It offers a feature set comparable to the BD50 but has a 7.1 analog output, but I'm not sure if it's shipping yet or not. It's reportedly due "this fall" from everything I've seen.

OK, there's one other - Denon's high-end Blu-ray player also has decoding and 7.1 analog output, but with an MSRP of $2000 and no Profile 2.0 support it's not a player I generally think much about.

Here's a chart of blu-ray players. This has been updated recently and should continue to be.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1050507

Personally I don't care about 2.0, but I do care that it at least has 1.1.

Nice chart - it looks like both Sony and Pioneer will have players with 7.1 analog output and full onboard decoding by some time this fall, although the chart suggests to me that the Pioneer units won't decode DTS-HD when they launch (will need a firmware update) and only the Sony S550 will be Profile 2.0.

You're right on the firmware. Any idea on what upscaler sony is using?

Since I have a PS3, I may wait for the Oppo, but my father will probably get the Pioneer. Extra's don't matter to him, so no 2.0 required.

I don't know what Sony is using for upscaling. The S300 is the last Sony player I looked at very closely, and I got the impression that its upscaling performance was somewhere close to (and possibly a bit better than) Panasonic's BD30. That would put it close to but perhaps not as good as your 980H or your PS3.

For someone who doesn't mind skipping on Profile 2.0 or doesn't want to wait to see what OPPO will come up with at some point, I'd probably look closely at the Pioneers, too.

about how many blu ray movies are their currently that use either PCM 7.1, DolbyHD 7.1 or DTS Master 7.1?

i'm thinking less then 5

Using this stats page I filtered it for just "7.1" audio and got a list of 35 titles total. Most were either DTS-HD Master Audio or LPCM, with one or two DTS-HD HR (lossy compression) and no TrueHD or DD+ at all. There were also 13 discs with 6.1 audio. For comparison, I let the list populate completely unfiltered and got a total of 714 titles. That's less than 5% with 7.1 audio or 6.7% with 6.1 or 7.1 audio.

That leads me back around to a question I had earlier in this thread: do any of these players with 7.1 outputs offer matrix processing to generate 7.1 audio from a 5.1 source? If they don't, then it may actually make more sense to use 5.1 output and split the surrounds as previously described. You'd compromise some on those titles that actually had a 7.1 mix, but you'd get all seven channels active for the 90%+ other titles that you watched.

thanks gonk for the advise.

but the only thing is i'm concerned by splitting the 5.1 to make 7.1 i would degrade sound quality as the info is meant to be heard from the side surrounds and not by the side and rear surrounds. i also heard that there might be noise cancellations involved also by splitting. in your opinion you still think i'm better off splitting and getting all 7.1 involved, rather then not splitting and just using 5.1?

Honestly, the choice is yours. How many Blu-rays are you watching, and how much benefit do you feel you get from having all four surrounds active? Even after I had a 7.1 input on my surround processor, I left my DVD-Audio/SACD setup at 5.1 for several years because I just didn't feel that I needed it. Of course, that was music, not movies, so the circumstances are a bit different.

Sound quality degradation should not be an issue unless you use a really dreadful splitter, and I've not heard of real-world instances of noise cancellation. With the mix of dipole and direct-radiating that you have, I have a hard time envisioning the circumstances that would create a real problem with cancellation, although I haven't actually done it myself so I don't really know how it works out. It doesn't sound like garcianc2003 has had problems with it, at least.

thanks for the advice gonk.

Prior to converting to the 990/770, I was running a Denon 3800 for processing, it had a neat feature which allowed you to use a standard 7.1 speaker set but add a "b" pair of side surrounds "ostensibly for music" then select a, b or A+B surround modes. I have Dipoles on the sides and used a spare set of direct radiating towers placed in the rear corners of the room, well outboard of the rear speakers, for the rear surrounds.
I would often use the B channels only for music, particularly most classical as I felt that this gave me more of the hall effect than the front side surrounds. For movies, I started out using A surrounds only, but eventually gravitated to using the A+B mode for almost all movies.Both for the directionality and the improved bass for the towers. I would think that this would give the same sort of effect that Gonk is achieving by splitting the side surround channels.
With the 990/770 I accomplish this by using a speaker selector for the surrounds. bi-wiring the towers so that my selections are dipoles only, Dipoles + bass from the towers, towers only or the works.
This requires an spltter and an extra pair of speakers, but allows you to split of the 5.1 surround signals and still retain the capability of utilizing the 6th and 7th rear channels discretly when appropriate.

Here's a bit of CEDIA news to toss into the mix. Panasonic has announced a replacement for the BD50 (the BD55) that's due out some time this month. One of the features is a 7.1 analog output. No word on price yet, though.

Has anyone checked out the new Samsung BD-P2550 for $399 at Best Buy. It has 7.1 outputs but not sure if it will pass HD audio via these outputs. I would also like to use my 970 processor until I am able to upgrade to a new HD audio processor.

I've read a little about it, but details were slightly beyond scarce at the time - don't know what processing it supports.

i just made the split for my surrounds and i was just wondering how you came up with 3db+ increase?

i set it for +3 but have not had a chance to test it but it sounds right.
just curious on how you arrived at +3 after splitting? thanks.