Does THX Certified DVDs mean good quality video?

[icarus]

THX is a set of standards and technologies designed to to make a home theater sound more like a movie theater. as such it deals with audio signals only after they've already been decoded. While generally accepted as legitmate for movie soundtrack reproduction, THX has inspired some controversy in audiophile circles where it is said to compromise music reoprduction.

[Woochifer]

THX is a set of standards and technologies designed to to make a home theater sound more like a movie theater. as such it deals with audio signals only after they've already been decoded. While generally accepted as legitmate for movie soundtrack reproduction, THX has inspired some controversy in audiophile circles where it is said to compromise music reoprduction.

Uh, THX is a lot more than just that, since they're now getting into areas like computer audio and car audio systems. And the THX Theater Alignment Program that started it all was basically setup more or less to improve dialog intelligibility and establish minimum standards for acoustics, amplification, and speaker performance. This thread was about THX DVDs, and as I indicated, in that context it's nothing more than a set of standards used during the transfer and duplicating process.

Based on this definition, the last thing I would want is for my home theater to sound like a movie theater! With a movie theater, the imaging has to be compromised in order to disperse the sound across a large auditorium as uniformly as possible, and you lose the pin-point directionality with the surrounds going through arrays of multiple surround speakers instead of two, three, or four precisely aligned speakers. Plus, screen speakers are generally designed more for efficiency rather than accuracy. While there are some great movie theater sound systems out there, the majority of theater sound systems out there, including most that are THX approved, can't approach the performance of a properly aligned midlevel home setup. This is primarily because at home you can optimize the sound jus for your listening position, something that's not possible in a movie theater.