Apex dvd players?cheap plaers....Dolby or surround?

[Mocha]

Checked the cybehome specs on the bestbuy website, and it doesn't have dolby or surround sound, only stereo. Under 40 bucks. Couldn't find anything about the apex at walmart. Does this or any of the chea players which play svcd and vcd also have surround or dolby?


Thx

[adam]

Dolby Surround and Dolby Prologic are decoding methods. Both simply require stereo output to do their thing, though for Dolby Surround the audio must be encoded using a special matrix.

All DVD players can output at least stereo sound, which can be decoded as Dolby Surround (if properly encoded) or Dolby Prologic as long as your receiver also supports these formats, which pretty much all do. So if you have a Dolby Surround or Prologic receiver than you will get that respective type of audio regardless of what DVD player you use...and for VCDs and SVCDs thats pretty much the best audio you can hope for.

Some DVD players have built in audio decoding which can outupt, for example, Dolby Surround or Dolby Prologic without the need for an external audio receiver. I don't think you are going to find many lower end DVD players with this function.

Basically, as far as the audio output for VCDs and SVCDs is concerned, the Cyberhome and any cheaper model Apex are going to be identical.

[clayts]

All DVD players can output at least stereo sound

Not strictly true - all DVD players must be capable of outputting a digital 5.1 bitstream - it's part of the spec for the hardware. Any DVD player without a digital output is not worthy of the DVD symbol ! Of course, you need a suitable amplifier equipped with a decoder which can translate the stream of 0s and 1s into a meaningful sound.

Having said that, virtually all have left/right analogue audio output too, but it's not necessarily a requirement in a true DVD player

[adam]

Well I didn't say it was required I just said all DVD players can do it. Maybe it is a generalization but I've never seen a DVD player which is limited to mono output. I'm not sure any exist.