How is Dolby Digital Surround EX encoded for the consumer market?
The cinema Surround EX soundtrack can be directly ported to the home Surround EX soundtrack. Soon Surround EX DVDs will also carry a digital flag within its “metadata” that could initiate automatic activation of the THX Surround EX decoder (as far as I know current releases as of 6/29/00 do not have such a flag.) With regards to the digital flag Shane Buettner of the dvdfile.com has stated (1/26/00) According to Dolby (Laboratories) Roger Dressler, the Dolby Digital encoders that will encode the digital flag (to indicate a Surround EX encoded material) will ship in March and software encoded (by those new encoders) subsequent to that will carry it. It will be up to the hardware manufacturers to determine what their processors do when they detect this flag, and what options they will make available for user configuration of processors upon detecting the flag. An obvious option is to auto-switch into THX EX mode, but more advanced options could include that kind of auto-switching, ignori
