Display ? on Pioneer 45 (1 Viewer)

[Brad Newton]

I just got my system hooked and started experimenting....now I have a couple of questions: Please be patient - I'm trying to learn.

What should the default display should it be dolby digital or thx cinema? I am using optical connection to the receiver from the dvd player. If I watch a 5.1 ex movie should the display say Thx cinema surr or dolby digital ex? I selected the "movie" button on the receiver and it gave me the different dsp modes - is thx cinema a dsp mode or a true decding mode? The dts sound track seems to decode properly - it shows 6.1 + thx.
Should I leave the SB mode as on or auto? When I turn it on, the rear surronds display lights up on the receiver & the display reads thx surr or dolby ex. Are these the same?
Can I turn off the THX mode off - if so how? OR should I leave it on.
I reset the receiver to see if the display changed & it did. After resetting, the default display for dvd was dolby digital. Then selecting the movie button I saw the thx cinema. Is this normal?

 

[Brad Newton]

Surely some one can help me out....

 

[Steve Schaffer]

Brad,

See pages 47 and 107 of the owner's manual for an explanation of what THX processing does.

If you don't want THX processing, then select Dolby Digital as the default movie mode. If you do want THX processing, then select THX Cinema. If you're in THX cinema mode and want to turn THX off without affecting anything else, just press "movie", press the right directional button (below the "music" button on the remote) and then press the enter button below the right directional button.

The default decoding for 2 channel sources (if the disc says it's Dolby Surround but does not state it's 5.1, then it is pro-logic and thus a 2 channel source) is Pro-Logic II in THX mode, this can be changed as per page 90 in the owner's manual.

Page 33 has a pretty good explanation of what the receiver's front display should show.

DD-EX discs are mostly not flagged properly, so the EX indicator will not light and EX processing of rear surrounds will not occur if you set the receiver to "auto" for surround back speakers. I always leave SB in the "on" position, which forces 6.1 processing for incorrectly flaggeed DD-EX discs and adds a matrixed rear center for all 5.1 encoded discs.

If you did a complete reset of the receiver, you will have to go back and re-do the MCACC procedure and any manual changes you did as far as speaker size settings. The 45TX tends to set all speakers to "large" even if they really aren't capable of good low bass, so it's a good idea to manually switch them to small after running the MCACC auto-setup. See pages 39-41 in the manual for the procedure to set speaker size manually. This will not affect your MCACC settings except that the eq for the 63hz frequency band will not be used any more.

 

[Brad Newton]

I guess I just paniced.....wanted to make sure that I hadn't screwed up something right off the bat.

Are these displays supposed to be lit up:

1) next to the signal display of auto, etc. - this indicator show which type of signal is being decoded I assume.
2) next to the SB display - movie - is this supposed to be lit? I have found that if I select a DSP mode, that it goes out & "DSP" lights up, but I didn't think that "movie" would light up unless it was not processing a true signal.

 

[Steve Schaffer]

If you are in Movie mode and not using THX or a dsp, the display will show what format is being decoded, yes. If you use a dsp mode it does not show this. It continues to decode the format of the disc and adds the dsp on top of that.

If you force the SB channels on by selectin "on" instead of "auto" or "off" with the SB mode button on the remote, the display will show DTS-ES or DD-EX, even if the disc you're playing is not recorded in that format. If the source you're playing is 5.1 rather than 6.1, the receiver will create a matrixed rear center channel out of the two side surrounds.