cosilver

Well, I don't know, I have DirecTV, have had it for several years. Have had HD for almost a year now, and have had no problems.HD looks fantastic, surround sound could be better. I even installed the HD antenna myself when upgrading from the regular antenna. Maybe it is just where you are located. I've ordered a few boxing matches from them as well in HD, and it is just awesome.

I agree, just watching and listening to her Mirrorball DVD is intoxicating. I just picked up the Afterglow DVD and will watch it tonight. The sound in Mirrorball leaves a little to be desired, but she more than makes up for it with the renditions of her songs and the close-ups showing her expressions and graceful hand movements as she is singing - as my dear uncle Joe used to say, translated from spanish (may he rest in peace... ): "Catch me Lord, because I'm slipping... "

Two movies that come to mind are Two Towers and Die Another Day (both DTS and EX trigger automatically). Perhaps it is just in my head - I tend to notice the sound difference in the front speakers when I turn off EX manually, but it could be as you stated; that when I turn off the rear surrounds, the front's become more pronounced. Thanks for clarifying that up for me, I thought it was only me with this "problem." Now that I know that about half need to be manually set, I won't worry about it and just set it. Thanks for the replies.

OK, first the "Clones" Star Wars - I thought mayble I got some kind of weird defective DVD or something, and now Star Wars III... I get no EX from these movies - why?? I get the EX during the THX trailer (splash) on both DVD's and that sounds awesome... but once it continues on to the movie, the EX is gone from both the display on my receiver and the rear surrounds. What gives?? Do I need a THX certified receiver? Other THX movies with DD-EX and DTS-ES play fine. It's only the Star Wars movies... can someone shed some light on this? I can manually put the receiver on EX for these movies, but this seems to slightly degrade the fullness from the front speakers. I have Klipsch Synergy speakers all around, a Pioneer P-Scan DVD Player and a Pioneer VSX D-812 receiver. Thanks!

I think the best "position" from which to hear music, and to place this "virtual microphone" would be from a conductor's listening point. A conductor has a listening arena of 180 degrees. This would make good use of front, center, and side surrounds, and with really good mixing and a well balanced home surround system, could make use of everything in between these speakers. I think this would work great for classical, jazz, acoustic, and yes, maybe even contemporary rock and other music. The "booth" method would sound too isolated and false, there has to be a multi speaker mixture so the sound envelopes you and you can't directly tell what speaker a specific instrument is coming from, but rather, so that you would say, "it's coming from somewhere to my right...", or left or center - whatever the case may be. If this can be done properly, it would be pretty awesome.