Movie 2.0 Audio Option.Why?

Why would anyone use this audio option? I do not have my L or R surr.speakers hooked up yet & I wanted to watch the movie 4 brothers.I went into the dvds audio options & selected the 2.0 audio option.I did not notice a change in sound.It was like listening to a movie on tv without using my Keenwood VR-615 HT 5.1 system.Why would anyone use the 2.0 sound option? :confused:

A person would use 2.0 if they were also using a reciever or processor that did not have 5.1 Dolby Digital or DTS decoding. Regular Dolby Prologic needs a 2.0 signal to properly decode. If you feed a 5.1 signal to a Prologic decoder, it will not work properly.

Thank you !

The obvious answer is that people in your exact situation—having only 2 main speakers and not a full surround setup—would choose this option.

That 2.0 audio option is also for the vast majority of households that have their DVD players hooked directly to the TV. Like it or not, most people watch their DVDs through only a pair of TV speakers.

For anyone who uses only two speakers, whether thru the TV or an audio system, the 2.0 option is typically preferable because it is a dedicated two-channel soundtrack. With a 5.1 soundtrack played through a two-channel setup, the soundtrack gets downmixed using preset attenuation levels. At no point during the mixing process was that 5.1 soundtrack monitored for how it would sound when played through two speakers, because the soundtrack was specifically optimized for 5.1 playback. Because of this, a downmixed 5.1 soundtrack played thru two speakers will sometimes have problems with dialog clarity, or the background sound effects drowning out the other sound elements, or the stereo effect just compromised in general.