Dolby Surround vs Dolby Digital (1 Viewer)

[Shivvvvvvv]

I have an old receiver that has Dolby Surround. Most of the content I play is Dolby Digital. Is my receiver capable of playing back the surround sound coded into my content, or is it just playing stereo?

 

[Mark-P]

Not discretely.

 

[Shivvvvvvv]

One more question:
If my Dolby Digital content already has the content coded, does that mean that my Dolby Surround receiver won't have to encode that signal?
AKA my receiver is almost capable of playing back what was coded?

 

[Shivvvvvvv]

Can anyone please reply

 

[Lord Dalek]

All Dolby sound formats on dvd are technically Dolby Digital as its just an encoding and compression format. I'm assuming what you have is an old ProLogic 1 from the early 90s. That's the home consumer version of the old Dolby Stereo from the 70s and 80 and it was designed to work with stereo sources (specifically ones withe Dolby LT-RT matrix information) only. Dolby 5.1 (which is the theatrical DD format) has four additional discrete channels that are not compatible with your receiver.

 

[Shivvvvvvv]

My receiver is from 1999, and Dolby Surround means 4.0 (almost 5.1), not 2.0.

 

[DaveF]

I have an old receiver that has Dolby Surround. Most of the content I play is Dolby Digital. Is my receiver capable of playing back the surround sound coded into my content, or is it just playing stereo?

You're most likely getting a stereo downmix from your DVD player that your receiver decides into Dolby Pro Logic's pseudo surround output.

Dolby Digital is far, far better than Pro Logic. It's a huge upgrade if you've got 5.1 speakers.