I have the "2-disc Limited Collector's Edition" of E.T. I finally got a bigger room, and put up my 6th and 7th speakers attached to my 950.

I was checking which of my discs contained surround back encoding over at HTF. My processor tells me I'm getting DTS 6.1 ES and/or Dolby EX with Gladiator, Finding Nemo, Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean and Master and Commander. So I'm sure the the DVD player and my processor are working fine.

With the E.T. discs the 950 reports Dolby Digital and DTS. My understanding is that this disc is Dolby ES and DTS-EX matrix encoded. The paper cover for the discs says Dolby 5.1 EX and DTS 5.1 ES for the 2002 version on disc 1, but the information about disc 2 is obviously incorrect as it was printed before they decided to include the original version of the film.

Is ET an improperly flagged disc and I have to manually engage either ES or EX, or do I have a bad set?

It's very likely that E.T. doesn't have flags for ES or EX. There are a number of discs with EX or ES encoded soundtracks (especially the early EX releases) that lack any sort of flag - some of the first discs to include Dolby EX soundtracks didn't even mention it on the liner notes.

Thanks gonk.

From Dolby's website:
"Newer Dolby Digital Surround EX soundtracks contain a digital flag which can automatically activate the EX decoding in a receiver or preamp/processor. For titles released prior to late 2001, however, you need to turn on the EX decoding manually."

Since ET came out on October 22, 2002 I thought they would have figured it out by then. I seem to remember buying my copy very early on. I was hoping someone who had bought a copy later might comment. In the end it's a nit-picky silly thing, but I do want to know

The reality is as Gonk states it.

Dolby and DTS didn't do an effective job of patroling and enforcing the EX/ES flagging and, as a result, there are LOTS of DVD's out there without the extra flag. Despite the claim of Dolby's site, I think they're still remiss in this regard to this day.

The best way to deal with it is just to observe what you're told the format actually is on the disk sleeve or in the audio setup menu on the disk and then set the 950 accordingly if it doesn't "see" a flag.

Honestly, this isn't such a big deal with the EX disks since that seventh channel is a derived channel from the differential of the two side surround channels. (Though you may hear a volume different due to some strictures Dolby places on the Cirrus -- or any -- third-party processing, as I've been told.) I often prefer the Cirrus processing of EX to the actual EX mode.

The ES track in DTS is a discrete track, so it's slightly more important to have it in actual ES mode but, again, in the real world, the Cirrus processing is nearly (if not equally) as effective. YMMV

Bob raises an excellent point (and you thought you were just chopped liver, bob... ). I generally use the 950's Cirrus Extra Surround processing for any surround signal (two channel processed with Pro Logic II, Dolby Digital, or DTS). I do use DTS's ES mode some instead of CES, but over the last couple years I've gotten to the point that I rely almost solely on CES for Dolby Digital sources (partly due to laziness, but also because CES has proven to me to be good enough to justify that laziness).

Hey Gonk, I agree! CES is definitly my prefered mode. Question? CES mode seems to play louder and Clearer than other modes with the exact volume settings, is it me or is this a fact?

I perused most of the 23 page thread on EX/ES discs over at HTF. And I firmly believe that it is just not flagged on the disk. And I agree that Cirrus Extra Sound is the simplest and likely best way to have the 950 default with DD and DTS DVDs.

By the way, I'm heading over to Radio Shack to buy the 12v trigger cables because there is so little information in the back channels during most of the DVDs that I've watched that the amps shut off in the middle of my viewing and it's annoying me. In fact this happens in the surround channels in a lot of non-special-effect movies too.

Hey Scott how does the 12v trigger cables help and how would you use them?

I'm guessing that ScottH is running M200 monoblock amps and turning them on and off with the "auto" mode that detects a signal and turns on automatically. When the channel served by an M200 is totally silent for a length of time, the amp shuts off. Using a trigger will guarantee that the amps are on any time the 950 is on.

QQKLTB,

Sorry, I hijacked my own thread. As gonk knows (and what around here doesn't he know :p ) I have 7 M200's currently in music mode, so they turn on when they are fed a signal from my 950. With many DVDs there is little to no surround information. After 15 minutes my amps go into standby mode. This is even worse in the surround back channels.

There are a number of threads in the M200 forum about using the 12v volt trigger from the 950 to turn the M200's on and off. I actually found that I had a suitable cable and have it attached to my center channel amp. I find this a more elegant solution than the music mode. I belive gonk uses the 12v trigger on his 950 to control a power strip which turns on some of his equipment. An equally "elegant" solution.

Unfortunately solution to the ES/EX issue that this thread is really about is rather clumsy. With E.T. and many other matrix back channel encoded, put improperly flagged discs we'll have to manually switch processing, or leave our 950s in DD+CR-M or DTS+CR-M modes.