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"More and more I hear VHS referred to as "video". "Do you want that on DVD or video?" When the heck did VHS become synonymous with "video"? It's as if DVD is something other than video."

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"I bet Brad saw a tremendous increase in the number of participants when this was briefly the Film- Tech DIGITAL Forums. The quality of the postings probably was much better too."

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Not everyone will have a Dolby Pro-logic set-up to send this to the center channel.

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I rented The Man With Two Brains, which has a 1.0 mono soundtrack, this is back before I decided to connect the stereo to the DVD player, it played on both speakers (on my TV which has ok seperation) in mono. My brothers rented Airplane 2, which has 2.0 mono in english and french (2 separate audio streams) it also plays in mono on both speakers (after I connected the stereo). Both of these discs played the same way on my equipment.

What I'm asking is why do producers use an extra channel of audio, which uses up more bits (bits that could have gone to the video stream or to one, better-sounding audio stream)?

Battlestar Galactica has a 1.1 mono soundtrack (center/sub), but Road to Morrocco has 2.0 mono (left/right) These were both released by Universal.

With that in mind, a 1.0 mono track is going to only come out of the center channel speaker on some newbie's home theater setup. And while that center-only placement may be artistically correct, the newbie is still going to be pissed off beyond belief, thinking that his home theater system is defective or something. Anyway, that is the mindset behind 2.0 mono. And the funny thing with 2.0 Mono is if you engage Pro-Logic with it much of the audio grounds itself to the center speaker anyway. Hehe.

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What I'm asking is why do producers use an extra channel of audio, which uses up more bits (bits that could have gone to the video stream or to one, better-sounding audio stream)?

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What I've found is that most 1.0 and 2.0 mono DVD soundtracks are encoded at the same 192 kbps rate. Other bit rates have been used, but 192 seems to be the most common for mono discs whether they are 1.0 or 2.0. A data rate of 192 kbps isn't really taking up much disc space. Now, full rate DTS (1509 kbps) and PCM tracks start to eat up space....

On VHS and laserdisc formats (whether Hi-Fi, linear, or PCM) there are two audio tracks -- no more, no less -- so mono soundtracks are essentially "2.0" signals there too. Apparently people never really realized this or made a fuss about it until DVD came along.

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Battlestar Galactica has a 1.1 mono soundtrack (center/sub), but Road to Morrocco has 2.0 mono (left/right) These were both released by Universal.

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Apples and oranges comparison, I think. The GALACTICA disc was an attempt to preserve its original Sensurround presentation (there are a couple other 1.1 Sensurround titles on disc as well). Actually, I was surprised Universal didn't issue that one in "2.1" given that they customarily issue their mono titles in 2.0.

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Perhaps someone who actually works with some sort of DVD authoring program with full AC3 (1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, 3.1, 4.0, 4.1, 5.0, 5.1) capabilities can tell me the advantage to 2.0 mono over 1.0 mono.

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I'm not sure there are any real advantages or disadvantages. It's merely a choice, just like the choice the companies make when deciding if a disc will have only a 5.1 track or if it will have separate 5.1 and 2.0 tracks. The 5.1 soundtracks are flagged to down-mix themselves when played back on systems that cannot reproduce 5.1 discrete channels. Likewise, 1.0 tracks are flagged to "up-mix" to 2.0 for Dolby Pro-Logic and similar process playback, which in turn reproduces it as "phantom" mono.

One distinct problem with 2.0-encoded mono tracks is that if they are even slightly out of phase or encoded incorrectly, they won't properly "phantom"-image. In addition, some audio processors have difficulty playing these back as phantom-image mono. This is where that one particular magazine's term "big fat mono" comes from.

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Oh yeah, and then there is that argument that Dolby Digital EX is 6.1 when it is really only 5.1.

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Bobby,
You and Paul L. should chill out over this "argument." If you would've simply made a distinction between "tracks" and "channels" (multiple channels can be derived from a track) then no argument would have been necessary. Moreover, if one were to write a sentence describing a Dolby Digital Surround EX soundtrack (whether theatrical or DVD) and simply framed the 5.1 term in quotes ("6.1") then it would be a subjectively correct statement (e.g. Harry Potter sounds great in "6.1").

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As far as I am concerned 5.1 audio is 6 track. There is no if's or but's about it. Another thing that bothers me is when a sound mix that does not use the right and left surround and LFE and uses only the front soundfield - Left, Center and right and is referred to as 5.1 really annoys me very much.