By default, Dolby Pro Logic uses five audio streams. However, the encoded audio is still two channels (the other three are "loaded" into them), left and right. What this means is that your receiver has to do the split (extract the additional three streams). This specific encoding was done for years to maintain backwards compatibility with older 2-channel systems. Naturally, this is where the issue with Criterion's release is:tenia wrote:If someone can explain me how you can have information for the surround speakers in a 2.0 soundtrack, it would be highly appreciated.
If you bitstream, you essentially bypass the process I described to you above - your receiver does not extract the additional three streams, it only processes the two-channel audio your player sends (bitstreams). For you to discover that there is an issue with the Pro Logic track, you must change your audio set up, meaning that that you must stop bitstreaming and instead leave your receiver do all of the decoding (when you bitstream, your player does the "decoding"). Early in the life of Blu-ray, this was what most people did, as not all players could bitstream the major audio codecs. For example, not all players could bitstream DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks, including the PS3. I don't know if you remember, but the PS3 had an upgrade that took care of that.
Back to Criterion: Perhaps the best thing to do would have been to encode the audio tracks as Artificial Eye did. Have a plain DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0/Dolby TrueHD 2.0/or LPCM 2.0 track AND another DTS-HD Master Audio 5.0/Dolby TrueHD 5.0/or LPCM 5.0 track (whichever you prefer). This way, if you bitstream, like pretty much everyone else out there, you won't have to tweak your system to get the surround activity. For me personally the plain two-channel audio is just fine.
Also, Tenia, here's a link for Dolby Pro Logic II directly from Dolby.
I hope things are clearer now