Originally posted by: SilverWook
I'd take the info about the French mix with a grain of salt. Dolby surround has always been compatible with two channel stereo. The earliest "stereo" VHS movies and Laserdiscs have the surround info in the mix, years before surround sound was available for home use.
Yes, I think I had this discussion before with Neil S Bulk and he said basically the same thing. "Stereo" is actually synonymous to "surround" in most of the film industry, so I can't imagine it would be any different in France. It would be an interesting test to run both the English and French sound mixes through one of the Doom9 upmixing procedures, and compare the resulting surround channels to see if there's a difference. I'd take the info about the French mix with a grain of salt. Dolby surround has always been compatible with two channel stereo. The earliest "stereo" VHS movies and Laserdiscs have the surround info in the mix, years before surround sound was available for home use.
Another question, Dolby Stereo was designed to be compatible with mono cinemas, so why was a mono mix done for Star Wars?