What's the difference between Dolby and DTS?

[GMichael]

G,
As much as my time will allow, I am back. I am helping out at Bluray.com right now, but I miss this place alot. My drum corps duties have kinda died down now that we are off season, and I have a little more time to hang out.

I see you have been holding the place together.

So very glad to see you post again T. Sounds like you've been busy. Tell us about what's been going on.

Me? Hold the place together? Not really. I still just poke fun at everything I can.

[Feanor]

G,
As much as my time will allow, I am back. I am helping out at Bluray.com right now, but I miss this place alot. My drum corps duties have kinda died down now that we are off season, and I have a little more time to hang out.

I see you have been holding the place together.

There are areas where you knowledge and experience are unsurpassed around here.

[Woochifer]

Welcome back T-man!

I go on vacation for a week, and all hell breaks loose on the board!

Good to have your presence back. The little one has been reducing my time spent hanging out with the "boys" but I still check in every now and then. These format war discussions should get a bit more interesting now that you've gone Blu ...

[PeruvianSkies]

Recently checked out the newer "extended" DVD edition of Ridley Scott's GLADIATOR, which includes some extra scenes not in the theatrical release, but both the extended and theatrical cut of the film are on the disc. This was a mistake.

When GLADIATOR was original issued by Dreamworks onto DVD it was one of the best DVD's of the time with a phenomenal amount of extras and the film was presented in both Dolby Digital EX and DTS-ES Discrete and remained one of the finest demo discs in terms of audio for many years, it still holds up well, but this newer 'extended' cut does NOT contain the DTS audio track.

Why on earth would they put a film that is nearly 3 hours onto a single dual-layer disc along with the extra cuts and bonus features and skip out on the DTS? No clue. If they would have issued this new edition with a full-bit rate DTS audio track and left the other discs for extras or even have the 'extended' and 'theatrical' on separate discs.

It's apparent very early on that the lack of DTS really causes this film to suffer, no matter how much I attempt to boost the DD track up volume-wise, it never comes close to the amazing punch that the DTS had to offer. Not only that, but the dialogue is constantly competing with the rest of the films audio, notice right in the beginning where Maximus is preparing his troops for battle, his dialogue is muffled and sounds weakened compared to the battle scenes, which are nowhere near as engaging in DD, this was also true on the regular DVD edition when you switched between the DTS 6.1 and DD EX tracks, there was always something missing in the DD track.

Another prime example occurs early on when one of the barbarians in the first battle of the film is swinging around this large branch-like staff and hits a shield, the DTS on that particular moment is superb as the front right channels suddenly erupts when the staff crashes into the shield, but not so on the DD track as it's weaker and not really felt or heard as much. There are other examples of this as well, which if you ONLY had this new edition of the film, it might not matter as much to you, but if you are as familiar with the original DVD's audio track and/or theatrical version of the film as it was in theaters and recall how great the audio was for this film, than this new edition is a disappointment to say the least.