A. A Spy

B. CIA

C. FBI

D. DEA

E. ATF

Do not install DTS systems in THX auditoriums! Sure, DTS may lose some sales, but that's OK. Can Dolby Digital play the THX snipes? Yup. Can SDDS? You betcha (when it is aligned properly). So only put Dolby Digital and SDDS in your high end auditoriums and put DTS in the crappy houses. That way when you advertise a movie in DTS, the audience will KNOW that they are not in your cream of the crop house and could be getting a better presentation.

Even Bob Maar will agree with me on this one.

Seriously though, all sound snipes should always be present. I mean c'mon! Which is more important to present in digital - The THX logo or the trailer for America's Sweethearts? This should be non-negotiable from DTS' point of view. Even if a studio pays to have their trailer put on the disc, they should be refused when it "gets full".

Karen, I've said this before but I am going to repeat myself again since I have a feeling it didn't sink in the first time. If dts would just issue a cdrom of all of the sound logos (THX, theater policy logos and so forth) to every theater one week along with their normal printing of trailer discs, none of this would be an issue any further. I guarantee you that this WILL affect the sales of dts units and the lack of THX logos will constantly make their way onto this forum until this practice stops (or extra stand alone discs are issued). Drop one of the dts logo sound files if you have to, but at bare minimum don't delete the standard THX Broadway logo.

Allow me to put it in a more straightforward manner. I like the dts system A LOT, but if the THX logos are going to continue to be absent from feature discs and no stand alone THX discs will be made available, to hell with the format. I think my customers watching Rush Hour 2 would agree.

If something has to be dropped, why not drop the old flying disks logo? I can't believe anyone is still using those (although I still have a couple of new copies of it).

With more careful thought I believe that you make a good point. We are in the business of doing things right around here especially those folks that explore the gaunlets of the film-tech threads, most people try and do things the right and proper way. This would also include the audio in the equation. Why should we have to dig up old DTS disks with the correct audio snipes when they should have been there to begin with/??!!!
There is alot of money involved into building a good theater, let alone a properly set up THX auditorium. <remember there are 3000 + world wide and alot of them are proudly packed with DTS!> A theater owner I believe has the right to be upset when hearing that all this "eqipment" that was once thought to be compatible <probably not a good choice of words> and veratile with each other, although infrequent, is now not the case. Remember the early SDDS days where in order to play a newline movie or Sony pictures flick in digital you had to have an SDDS unit?
The DTS processors are on the THX certified equipment list <and they never get taken off> and thus it would pose the possibility of conflict of interest in my opinion should this happen more and more.
Questions that flood my mind are...
Why has this happened all of a sudden? Seems that just this year.
What was so different about the way they did things in the past that this never happened? Feature length can't be a culprit!!
What are the possibilities that it will happen again?
What can be done to prevent this from happening again?
From the previous post weeks back I understood that THX was not aware of this happens. Have they been made aware that this can occur now? (since its second time i think)
Can THX offer a solution to protect its interests?

I dont know if it will affect DTS unit sales however, leaving out some of the big players <THX> out is kind of unfair and ridiculous. All those people that had to decide what equipment to buy are going to be made to feel pretty silly and are going to regret it! Imagine if this (DTS-problem) was part of the thought process originally, sales WOULD have been affected.
Brad I agree with leaving out trailers over the audio snipes. perhaps reconsidering the 4:1 compression rate would help to make more room on those disks. Is it really a storage space problem? its hard to believe that DTS wouldn't then send out a special "three CD-rom set" with their shipments. alot of the DTS units out there are the 3 carriage models, why not ship out three then? some movies come in one CD... others require two. its hard to believe that 3 minutes cant be fit somewhere.

Hell, omit your own snipes before cutting out everyone else if thats the case. thanks for making me rethink this Brad. I figured it be allright to just slip in alternate disks or just playing trailers in analog, but thats like condoning Dolby from encoding all but reel #3 of a feature. Is that right? Its almost like DTS knows there is so much Dolby Digital out there that someone in their engineering-decision making process said "thats ok it we'll leave out the THX.....it will probably switch over to DD for that part" Thanks for improving sales for Dolby!!!!!!! talk about insider trading!!!!
In short, you seemed upset Brad, and I thought to myself "its not that big of a deal, I can make do", but it really is a big deal....a bigger deal than I think DTS has ever guesstimated to be.

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What I would like to know is just how feasible it would be to have all the DTS and THX trailers included on those movie trailer discs. If a film has only one CD-ROM for the release, then it will not matter at all if the theater has a DTS-6 player or 3 drive 6D unit. With only one movie disc, the trailers disc would go into the second drive on either type of player.

"Jurassic Park III" was an extremely bare bones disc. There wasn't any room on there for any of the film company policy trailers --at least I know Carmike Cinema's policy was not on the disc (and it really sucks to hear that one in analog, you don't hear the "Carmike across America" music lyric rotating in the surrounds). For most 2 disc releases DTS is pretty good about getting most of the THX and DTS snipes on the movie discs. Overall, there have been 10 THX trailers made and the cumulative total can start to eat up valuable CD space.

I think if they are a standard feature on trailer discs then there won't be any THX trailer lacking digital problems --and DTS might feel more like getting more trailers for their format made. I wonder if the space issue on the CDs is one reason why they have only 2 trailers in 8 years.

As far as the DVDs and LaserDisc logos go, really, is this a big deal? The home THX system is NOTHING as compared to the theatrical THX system. I laugh quite hard when a customer blabs about "I have THX in my home." Hardy, har, har, whoopie shit. So far every "home THX" system I've heard is PATHETIC! Just give me the 3 inch built in tv speaker anyday. I think Mr.Norwood put it best, good mono is better than bad digital. Home systems are the same thing and it seems that few are set up properly. I just LOVE that guy who comes into the theater and complains that "the surrounds aren't working. I have THX in my home and I can hear the actors talking out of all the speakers." Yeah, right buddy. Home THX = nothing.

As far as the DVD/LaserDisc logos go, the THX Broadway logo isn't even the same damn note! It's a higher note, I guess because so many "home theaters" cannot reproduce the theatrical note, even though it isn't really all that low in the first place. In fact, it's not even one "note". It's just two notes combined together which give the illusion of a single, deeper bass note. It's not hard to reproduce at all.

And yes, it is a problem.

This may call for a retaliatory air strike. I say we settle this on the softball field... THX vs DTS, winner take all. If DTS wins, they can leave THX Trailers off their discs forever. If THX wins, we are on each disc as an "obligation" and if there is not enough room, DTS spends the money to send out two-disc sets to accomodate the "space problem", which as many of you have mentioned, had not happened prior to the recent rash of THX Trailer exclusions.

THXfully Yours,

1. The THX/DTS/Circuit snipes were all on the "trailer" discs. And,
2. The "trailer" discs are not compatible with the DTS-6 players, even if you have a single-disc feature.

It's been a year since I've used DTS, so maybe they've corrected this phenomenon.