newbie surround HT questions

[satscram 4000]

I have just completed setting up my home theater. I have a mitsubishi WD-62725 dlp tv, a
yamaha RXV-2500 surround reciever, Samsung DVD HD-850 dvd player with HDMi. I am
running front, rear surround, back surround, center & powered sub. The Yamaha has a
mic, that you plug in & it sets up all the speaker levels, etc automatically. When done I
recvd the "set up successfully" message. Also I could hear all of the speakers playing the
test tones. The DVD player connects to the TV via the HDMi cable, & I am using an
Optical cable to go from the DVD player to the receiver. The problem I am having is that
dolby digital 5.1 DVD's are not playing back on all of my speakers. That is, the surround
back speaker lights on the display do not come on. I have the DVD audio output configured to "bitstream", which turns on the dolby digital light on the receiver display.
To use an example; spiderman, spiderman 2, hulk all do not turn on all of the speaker lights on the reciever, but star wars IV does, & star wars I does not. Also, I get a message from the DVD player that says "HDMI AUDIO NOT SUPPORTED", which comes
on for a few seconds at the beginning & throughout the DVD movie. Not that I am using the
audio from the TV, but why does this message come on. My other question is that when I play star wars DVD's, I am getting the balck lines on the top & bottom of the screen, I havetried to adjust the format settings on the tv & the dvd player, but to no avail.
Thanks in advance for any light you may be able to shed on these problems

[popolz]

I can answer 2 questions...

Starwars IV, V, VI are 6.1 and Starwars I & II are 5.1, so the rear speaker will be "off" (if your amp is 7.1, 2 speakers should be off)

The black bars are normal on a few widescreen format... when 1.78:1 or 1.85:1 (can't remember exactly) there shouldn't be any bars but if it's a 2.35:1 there will be.

[satscram 4000]

Thanks for the info, but you mean to tell me with the Yamaha RXV 2500, there are no
soundfield processing programs to take a 5.1 signal and convert it to 7.1???

[popolz]

I don't know that AMP... I know on my JVC you have to enable the option as it`s off by default.

[Woochifer]

The problem you're running into is that most DVDs with DD EX soundtracks dating back more than two years lack the signal flag needed to automatically activate the EX decoder. Basically, with those discs you need to turn on the EX decoder manually. That means setting the receiver to the 6.1 or "7.1" mode.

This is not an issue with DTS ES discs. Those discs all have the signal flag that automatically activates the ES decoder.

Keep in mind that DD EX is NOT a true 6.1 format. It's a 5.1 format with encoding applied to the R/L surround channels (similar to how Dolby Surround 2.0 works by encoding the surround track into the L/R main channels for the Pro Logic decoder to extract). Thus far, only about 100 movies have been encoded for DD EX, and only a few of those have the automatic signal flag that automatically activates the EX decoder.

Star Wars I is encoded with DD EX (in fact, it was the first movie mixed with the EX encoding present), but it lacks the automatic signal flag, so you need to turn the back surrounds on manually. The original Star Wars trilogy was remixed with EX encoding, and those DVDs have the EX signal flag present, so they will automatically activate the EX decoder. I believe that Spider Man 2 and Hulk are not encoded in DD EX, so the 5.1 playback represents the optimal playback for those soundtracks. You can still manually activate the EX/ES decoder for DD and DTS 5.1 soundtracks, but the quality of the backfill on the back surrounds in 6.1 or "7.1" playback will vary a lot.


Thanks for the info, but you mean to tell me with the Yamaha RXV 2500, there are no soundfield processing programs to take a 5.1 signal and convert it to 7.1???

There should be an option to manually switch on the EX/ES decoder. Check your manual.

That will turn on the back surround channels, but it convert the signal to 7.1. It will simply activate the decoder, and process the L/R surround channels. If the original soundtrack was not mixed with EX encoding, then the playback quality will vary.

[satscram 4000]

Thanks, I knew it could'nt have been something in the receiver. Is this why the speaker
indicators all do not come on, because they detect the incoming digital surround info from
the DVD player. If I monkey around with the surround processing programs, I can sometimes get all of the surround indicators to light up. In reading the owner's manual, the
actual input information is what turns on the speaker lamps. What surround program that is chosen is what turns on the surround indicators. The newer Star Wars dvd's do this
automatically. When I play some of the older dvd's like spiderman, hulk, etc. I can
sometimes get all of the 7.1 surround fields to come on. Is there any published list of the
dvd's that have these "flags" in them