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Author Topic: Is EX dead? Oliver Pasch Film Handler Posts: 53 From: Europe Registered: Jun 2002 posted 04-27-2004 09:44 AM                    Dear colleagues, are you satisfied with the supply of films featuring EX (or ES) encoding? We've bought not a few systems to be able to play the films the way they are pretended to be seen - or heard - and the way audiences expect them to be, but we don't see films featuring this format - well, it's more an addition anyway - often today. Actually, the list of upcoming films is not even short, it's more or less non-existent. None of the upcoming blockbusters, such as "Troya", "Day after tomorrow" or "Van Helsing" is announced as EX, not even the third "Harry Potter", even though his predecessors have been. Is EX dead? Congratulations to the manufacturer, that more than 20 % of his digital format installations feature EX, but does this match that - estimated - not one percent of the films support EX? What are the reasons for this? Do sound-engineers not like EX? I tend to say that audiences definitely do and that even the same manufacturer provides a solution for not EX-encoded soundtracks with the ProLogicIIx-technology for home-cinema-audio, enabling to play every 5.1-feature in reasonable 7.1, which doesn't sound bad or artifical at all, definitely not comparable to such bad DSP-soundfields á la "Stadium". What do you think?  |  IP: Logged Jeremy Fuentes Mmmm, Dr. Pepper! Posts: 1168 From: Corpus Christi, TX United States Registered: Jan 2004 posted 04-27-2004 09:59 AM                     Now you see the problem that theaters who have digital projection face. They spent who knows how many thousands of dollars and only a few movies are distributed for digital. What a waste!  |  IP: Logged Jesse Skeen Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1517 From: Sacramento, CA Registered: Aug 2000 posted 04-27-2004 02:18 PM                     The theatres have all been doing an awful job promoting this- I worked at one that got it installed in 2 auditoriums before Phantom Menace came out, and to this day they have not mentioned it once in any of their advertising or box office stuff (they didn't really promote DTS when they put it in 2 auditoriums either- they'd sometimes show one print in DTS and another in analog but not indicate which was which). When I did the phone recordings I mentioned it there but nobody else did. I don't know if any other theatres in this area have EX since they don't advertise it either! It's been next to impossible to tell whether most films are supposed to be played with EX on or off also; don't know if that's changed recently.  |  IP: Logged Kyle Watkins Expert Film Handler Posts: 185 From: Stuart, FL, USA Registered: Sep 2001 posted 04-28-2004 12:20 AM                     How much extra would it cost to add EX. Say this was during construction. Kyle  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 04-28-2004 01:01 AM                     The cost of equipping an existing theater for Dolby-EX or DTS-ES is relatively small. You're out $2,000 to $3,000 for a Dolby SA-10 unit, or a DTS-ES model, or any other offering out there. Add in some extra wiring work, possibly the need for an additional amplifer or two and my guess is you may still get out under $5,000 for the upgrade. Doesn't the Dolby CP-650 processor already have DD-EX built in? At any rate, adding in a matrixed extended surround process is a very low cost thing when compared to other items like video projection, which costs well over $100,000 per screen. Overall, this is just a symptom of movie studios no longer taking the commercial theatrical market seriously at all. I'm not the only one who believes movie studios are merely using the theatrical market as a rehearsal/sales-pitch for the home video release. If most DVD driven home theater equipment had DD-EX and DTS-ES built in from the start there might have been a chance for better title support theatrically. But even still, more movies surprisingly get DD-EX treatment on DVD than they do in theatrical release. Again, the theatrical release is very often just a rehearsal for the home release. You get a decent audio mix for the commercial theater and then they pull out all the stops later for the cranked up "near field" discrete 6.1 mix. I strongly agree that DD-EX and DTS-ES has been very poorly promoted in theatrical release. Very often, the DD-EX logo is left off of one sheet posters for films with a DD-EX mix. I have personally not seen a single one sheet at all bearing a DTS-ES logo. I've seen a few DVDs boasting about it however. Technical info about sound and projection has disappeared from most movie theater stack ads. That leaves customers to assume every theater is equipped with digital surround sound when many still are not. Finally, lots of movie theaters don't do much to brag about their sound and projection systems when they have any reason to brag. A few theaters still use the THX and sound format snipes on a regular basis, but those clips have disappeared from most others. You see them more often on DVD (especially that damned DTS "piano" trailer that needs to be replaced with something NEW). In the end, DD-EX may not be dead but it is definitely comatose and on life support when it comes to the theatrical version. Just as frustrating, DTS' new XD-10 still has no theatrical title support to take advantage of all its extra capability. I have a feeling the only way we'll hear 10 channel surround coming from this thing is when it is hooked up to a 15/70 or 8/70 special venue system. The folks running the regular commercial end of the film business seem to think straight 5.1 is "good enough" for commercial theaters.  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 04-28-2004 08:21 AM                     Surround-EX does appear to be going the way of SDDS-8. As to the cost...it depends on the EX processor you choose. The SA-10 is certainly the worst bang for the buck. It has a rather limited equalizer...it is unbalanced in and it consumes way too much rack space for what it does. It also is poorly laid out for set up. How are you supposed to set the input level on the thing? Oh yeah, reach around back and measure 120mV with tone running and then adjust from the front. They couldn't provide test points or some sort of meter? Panastereo's SP23 is probably the best bang for the buck. It is 1-U tall, under $2K, even with 1/3 Octave EQ on all three surround channels, has meters on the front that are set using pink noise (easily had on ALL processors) and otherwise just works. DTS' offering recognizes that when in 3-channel mode and 2-channel mode that you probably need different equalizations depending on the surround groupings (EX or stereo surround) and is also only 1-U tall. As for the CP-650...the typical unit, the CP-650D, does not include Surround-EX but the no-suffix CP650 does. A clear advantage here is that it is auto-sensing. Modern EX films have a status bit in their code to trigger the Auto-EX mode in the CP-650. The CP-650 EX option is knocking in the $1000 range. The CP-650 also offers 1/3 octave EQ for all four surround quandrents which is the best way to handle the channels. Coming along for the ride on the EX board is also the ability to decode consumer and pro AC-3 bit streams as well as regular PCM data on AES3 pairs. So you get more than just EX and if you run DVDs and such for alternative content, there is great value here. A quirk of the CP-650 is that if you use the EX board, you have to wire your surrounds to the option I/O connector...inlcuding Ls and Rs...there is no valid excuse for the primary 6 channels not being able to stay on the main output connector. The least Dolby could have done is to provide programmable links to allow for this on the rear of the unit. Steve  |  IP: Logged Gordon McLeod Film God Posts: 9532 From: Toronto Ontario Canada Registered: Jun 99 posted 04-28-2004 09:11 AM                     Ex seems to be popular with the bollywood stuff  |  IP: Logged Steve Scott Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1300 From: Minneapolis, MN Registered: Sep 2000 posted 04-28-2004 07:13 PM                     Most of the EX features now have DTS-ES discs shipped with them (yet they still say six track), is one recording mirroring the other, or are they doing each format's mix seperately?  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 04-29-2004 11:52 AM                     All Dolby Digital EX and DTS-ES theatrical mixes are 5.1 channels, not 6.1. They are essentially the same as any standard Dolby Digital or DTS track. The difference is the Left Surround and Right Surround channels are merely mixed to work in the same way Dolby Pro-Logic handles 2 channel material across Left, Center and Right speakers. If the audio levels are identical in the LS and RS channels, the audio gets shifted to the center surround channel. Mixing for extended surround happens in the audio design process with uncompressed digital and/or magnetic analog material. The sound design in the surround channels will make any of the digital formats work with DD-EX or DTS-ES. You can have an SDDS unit hooked up to a DTS-ES machine and get the DD-EX effect. Dolby has a section in its advertising guidelines that specifically states Dolby EX must be described as a 5.1 channel format and not 6.1. The DTS-ES format is pretty confusing in that the home version has both matrixed 5.1 ES and discrete true 6.1 modes. The new DTS XD-10 processor also has the capability of handling DTS-ES 6.1 discrete material, as well as audio tracks up to 10 channels (or even higher than that if additional upgrades are made to the unit).  |  IP: Logged Darryl Spicer Film God Posts: 3250 From: Lexington, KY, USA Registered: Dec 2000 posted 04-29-2004 02:42 PM                    I may be mistaken but doesn't the Dolby EX have a flag encoded into the track information that tells the EX encoder to turn on the back channel when needed.  |  IP: Logged Jesse Skeen Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1517 From: Sacramento, CA Registered: Aug 2000 posted 04-29-2004 07:28 PM                     I think the new systems do, but the ones I worked with were added on to CP-65's and had to be turned on or off manually. I usually kept it on all the time, as it didn't ruin any soundtracks that might not have been mixed with it (and I'm very picky about that sort of thing.) Not sure how they're run now that I don't work there anymore. If the films did have a flag, they should have also labeled them as having EX.  |  IP: Logged John McConnel Expert Film Handler Posts: 118 From: Okmulgee, OK USA Registered: Nov 2003 posted 04-29-2004 09:44 PM                        We have a 650 with EX, and it has indicated EX on every picture that's played on it. Right now, it has PUNISHER. It says that PUNISHER is EX, and from listening to it in the auditorium, it appears to be EX. Is this not correct?  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 04-29-2004 11:55 PM                     Apparently not. "The Punisher" is not listed on Dolby's web site as being an official EX title (Dolby's list was last updated in December of 2003). Going by that list, none of the summer's upcoming films are going to be DD-EX. Of course, that could change at the last minute. The previous holiday season saw only three DD-EX releases ("LOTR: Return of the King," "Master and Commander," "Peter Pan,"). I'm not denying the data flag's possible existence on "The Punisher" audio track. However, it does raise my suspicion someone somewhere in the film audio mastering process is just leaving a switch "on" all the time. Title support (at least theatrically) seems pretty weak for DD-EX. There is a decent amount of support in places like India and Thailand. Overall, I'm not sure if that is enough to keep DD-EX going. And to be quite honest, DD-EX is really an interim workaround format. It may be time for theaters to boost the number of sound channels upward for theatrical audio tracks. Of course, the movie industry will drag their heels on that while they leverage everything toward DVD release. If a next generation of surround sound is to arrive, I would predict it coming from special venue theaters. IMAX, Iwerks and other large format producers should take advantage of items like the DTS-XD10 or other types of playback technology to deliver 10 channel (or more) audio tracks.  |  IP: Logged Oliver Pasch Film Handler Posts: 53 From: Europe Registered: Jun 2002 posted 04-30-2004 03:23 AM                    quote: Bobby Henderson Of course, that could change at the last minute You're right! "Matrix Reloaded", "Matrix Revolutions" and "Men in Black II" had been listed there for a very long time as EX, but shortly before the opening the EX-logo disappeared... ...question is, if they've ever been planned as EX or if this announcement was just to increase hardware sales. I do not regard EX as a technical or audiophile must in theatres, actually a lot of people won't even realize that it is, the question is about marketing and dissociating a theatrical presentation from home-cinema. Once again: Pro-LogicIIx-technology enables people at home to play everything in 6. or 7.1 (or whatever, more than 5.1 in any case), why shouldn't we do so in our theatres. It should be no problem to have a IIx-Update for a CP-650-like-DSP-grave. And finally the same company has now announced the "Plus"-technology for their format on DVDs, suggesting even higher audio quality in competing markets. I can't see from the informations that this is intended to be introduced to 35mm as well. Again: i don't believe that you will hear a difference from a let's say 24Bit/96KHZ-format theatrically as long as there's someone with loads of popcorn sitting next to you, but that's another point that might suggest that the theatrical version of films or their presentation withholds something from the audience.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 04-30-2004 11:16 AM                     I saw that blurb about "Plus" at Dolby's web site. I would need to know more about how it works to be sold on it. If it is supposed to accomplish higher audio quality while working within the confines of the 384kb/s and 448kb/s rates on DVD then I would be a bit skeptical. The same goes for the theatrical DD format. You're really not going to get anymore out of it with it running at only 320kb/s (technically there's around 550kb/s streaming from the film print, but that extra data is there for redundancy and error correction). If Dolby is going to do anything new in terms of theatrical surround sound they're going to be better off adopting a dual system approach. I would recommend something not much different from DTS' XD-10. Definitely a hard disc based solution. Dolby could stick a new time code over on the right side of the film strip in between the sprocket holes, or even use a standard Dolby Digital track and film reader to provide the synch. quote: Oliver Pasch Again: i don't believe that you will hear a difference from a let's say 24Bit/96KHZ-format theatrically as long as there's someone with loads of popcorn sitting next to you This is why I think it would be better to have more discrete channels of sound rather than just blowing standard 5.1 up to very high rez levels. Unless the theater has a top flight sound system with perfectly dialed in EQ, you're not going to hear much benefit of 24/96 audio above what you hear with standard 16-bit or 20-bit LPCM. The audience will derive more benefit from a greater number of discrete sound channels. More people will hear proper surround coverage rather than the big left-right effect commonly heard now in most theaters with 5.1.  |  IP: Logged

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