Hi All,
So as I had posted in the 990 forum, I have finally added pair of back surround speakers to my h/t setup. After a couple of days messin' around with the new setup, I can say that it was a very worth while addition. So now that I've added the extra channels, I have a few questions and comments about surround formats that have become available in my Model 990.

I can now select Dobly Digital EX, even on sources that are encoded only as DD5.1. How can that be? Does the 990 just create the back surround channels out of the two descrete surround channels? If so, is this faux channel "matrixed" or descrete? Seems to be kind of faking it to me. If a sound source were encoded in DD EX, I could see the processor spreading that mono back surround signal across the two back surround speakers. But there's not even a matrixed channel there to begin with... I don't get it. That being said, why would I choose that option when I have Dolby PLIIx available to me? Dolby PLIIx supposedly creates two descrete back surround channels out of the surround channels right?

Another thing that I found strange was that I can add Dolby PLIIx to any DTS encoded source. Crazy. I can't imagine that the DTS folks are very fond of that. Seems to sound great though. I watched a couple of my favorite "Band of Brothers" scenes in DTS + PLIIx Movie and loved it. Yikes! Bullets zingin' over my head!

My last comment is regarding PLIIx Music. I rarely, if ever, listend to music in anything other than Bypass mode using the analog outputs of my Denon 2900 DVD player. I decided to try using PLIIx (still using the analog inputs) and really enjoyed what I heard. I spread the center channel evenly across the two fronts and turned on Panorama, but left it at that. As I mentioned, I liked what I heard. (Sorry 2-channel purists...)

So, those are my questions/comments. I am wondering what modes you all watch movies in. As always, thanks for listening to my rambling.


later,
simp