What Blu-Ray did you watch last night?

[Brian Fretwell]

The nearest thing to home sensuround was seeing at a audio show "Butt-kicker" loudspeaker kits that played the .1 signal to a unit fitted to your seat to shake that. I don't think I saw them anywhere else though!!!

[Ed Gordon]

I'm sure none of our home cinemas have the .1 set up Sensurround had in cinemas. The ones I saw these in had bass units at the front the whole width of the screen and two 6ft cubes of them at either side of the rear of the suitorium. The trilaer for BAttle for Miday had the foyer light fittings shaking. My Super 8 cut down of Battlestar Glactica has the soundtrack duplicated on the balance track at the points where it would be beneficial and when I showed it I put that track through another amp with RIAA equalisation applied and fed it to two 12" bass units. Unfortunately I think that amp, which had a separate swithc so the RIAA (magnetic disc cartridge) EQ is long gone, as is the balance strip head on the Eumig Mark 926 GL!!

Brian, most receivers do not have a phono input these days, but you can still hook up a turntable if the turntable has a phono preamp built in, or you can buy a separate preamp for about $20 US which uses the aux input. If your receiver supports multiple channel sound (such as 5.1), it should support 2.1. In addition to checking your receiver, you would have to go into the setup for the Bluray/DVD and select 2.1 audio.

The Sensurround system had the standard 2 channels for analog stereo. However, the subwoofer worked differently:

The original Sensurround design used for Earthquake employed a pseudorandom noise generator, designed by D. Broadus "Don" Keele, Jr., to create the low-frequency rumble, using recordings of the 1971 Sylmar earthquake as a reference. Two low frequency control tones were printed on the film's mono optical or magnetic track; from the projector, the tones entered a control box in the projection booth, which fed low frequency pseudorandom noise to 1,600 watt BGW 750 audio amplifiers driving the speakers. The control box generated a pseudorandom noise signal with energy between 17 and 120 Hz. The control track method was employed because there was no way to accurately record bass lower than 40 Hz on an optical or magnetic film soundtrack at the time. When receiving the noise signal, the amplifier and subwoofers responded with sound pressures ranging from 100 dB to 120 dB. The resulting rumble could be felt by audience members as well as heard.

So the original third audio track was a control track for low frequency output. What is not clear is what is on the LFE (subwoofer) track. I assume it works the same a the 2.1 speaker system that is common for PC's and external speaker systems that hook up to TV's to provide better bass.

Since I don't have a bluray that includes "Sensurround 2.1" I can not test the performance. Sensurround had a short life in the movies, but it did raise interest in the use of subwoofers in general, and those subs used for Sensurround wound up is Disco nightclubs.

[Graham Ritchie]

Regarding "Hunt for the Wilderpeople" the film does a brilliant take of a NZ Toyota Hilux, "Crumpy and Scotty" commercial that was a TV hit, way back here in 1982.

[Brian Fretwell]

DTS 5.1 is probably the default soundtrack. You may have to go into to audio in you player and select the Sensurround track (2.1). From the quote from the review above, I would not expect the Sensurround audio to be very impressive.

I'm sure none of our home cinemas have the .1 set up Sensurround had in cinemas. The ones I saw these in had bass units at the front the whole width of the screen and two 6ft cubes of them at either side of the rear of the suitorium. The trilaer for BAttle for Miday had the foyer light fittings shaking. My Super 8 cut down of Battlestar Glactica has the soundtrack duplicated on the balance track at the points where it would be beneficial and when I showed it I put that track through another amp with RIAA equalisation applied and fed it to two 12" bass units. Unfortunately I think that amp, which had a separate swithc so the RIAA (magnetic disc cartridge) EQ is long gone, as is the balance strip head on the Eumig Mark 926 GL!!

[Graham Ritchie]

I forgot that I did take a couple of screen shots of "Hunt of the Wilderpeople" a few night ago using the Panasonic. some wonderful NZ scenery.

[Graham Ritchie]

Well tonight it was something quite different and its a film we enjoyed going to see at the cinema when it came out, called "Annie" 1981 it really is a outstanding movie, a brilliant and very talented cast. The blu-ray quality is outstanding using the Panasonic tonight the image was full of color, sound wise DTS 5:1. I would have to rate this release as one of the best to transition to blu-ray a great way to spend a Sunday night.

[Osi Osgood]

We watched a Blu-ray we picked up at a thrift store, The Great Gabsty. Beautiful photography and images, but that wretched modern hip hop soundtrack on a 1920's period film, totally destroyed it for us!

[Ed Gordon]

...Its says on the back cover English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.1 with Sensurround, however my amp was picking up DTS 5:1 so I am not sure what is going on there. I wonder if what I am seeing on the amp is a total of 5:1 which includes the Sensurround track, I will have a look at blu-ray.com for a review. ...

DTS 5.1 is probably the default soundtrack. You may have to go into to audio in you player and select the Sensurround track (2.1). From the quote from the review above, I would not expect the Sensurround audio to be very impressive.

As a bonus, a recreation of the original theatrical Sensurround mix is in full effect, now spread out to DTS-HS MA 2.1-channel mono instead of the 1.1 of the DVD. Sure… what was earth-quaking in 1978 isn’t window-rattling by today’s standards, but it’s accurate to the source and that’s what counts.

[Graham Ritchie]

When it comes to making odd ball films, New Zealand are pretty good at it, tonight it was again the turn of the blu-ray "Hunt for the Wilderpeople"

[Graham Ritchie]

Hi Doug

Its says on the back cover English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.1 with Sensurround, however my amp was picking up DTS 5:1 so I am not sure what is going on there. I wonder if what I am seeing on the amp is a total of 5:1 which includes the Sensurround track, I will have a look at blu-ray.com for a review. The picture is 1080p High Definition Widescreen 1:85:1 The running time is 2hr 4min. The space visual effects look good as well, certainly a big improvement on my old Super 8 digest which to be honest looks a bit sad in comparison.

[Ed Gordon]

It will be interesting to hear what Graham reports about Sensurround on his disc. There definitely is Sensurround on the 35th Bluray anniversary release:

...Like Star Trek before it, Universal’s excellent restoration takes the pillow off the speakers, and it sounds sharp, clean and brand new. For this review, I compared the 1999 movie DVD, the 2003 TV DVDs and the new Blu-ray directly, and the previous iterations are not even in the same league. As a bonus, a recreation of the original theatrical Sensurround mix is in full effect, now spread out to DTS-HS MA 2.1-channel mono instead of the 1.1 of the DVD. Sure… what was earth-quaking in 1978 isn’t window-rattling by today’s standards, but it’s accurate to the source and that’s what counts.

Same goes for the Battlestar Galactica - 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray [4K UHD] version:

Primary English audio is offered here in a lossless 2.1 DTS-HD Master Audio mix, which recreates the original theatrical mono with low-frequency Sensurround. (Battlestar Galactica and its compilation sequel, Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack in 1979, were the last films released using the Sensurround process). It’s the same mix included on the 2013 Blu-ray, which is fine as there’s not much that could be done to improve on that original sound experience while still being faithful to it. The mono audio has been spread out to the front left and right, with the Sensurround information directed to the sub channel for a bit of low-end rumble. Dialogue is clean and easily discernible, with a nice bit of sonic play involving com chatter during the space combat scenes.

The UHD + HD 2 disc set is available on Amazon for US $16.33.

[Douglas Meltzer]

Graham,

Does the Blu-ray have a Sensurround audio track similar to Universal's Earthquake Blu-ray? I also recall the feature was cropped for its release in theatres.

[Graham Ritchie]

As much as I liked watching Battlestar Galactica on Super8 and although sadly the print is fading away, tonight I did watch the full feature on blu-ray with both the picture and sound quality DTS 5:1 I thought were very good indeed. The projector was the Panasonic with its recently new lamp did look good.

Who remember going to the cinema to see it in 1978? I did and boy does time pass. However its still fun to take a step back in time with this one. I understand its out on 4K as well, anyway watching it on blu-ray tonight was very enjoyable..

[Brian Fretwell]

A couple of episodes of "Man in a Suitcase" the 1960's series, restored by Network including (in honor of his recent demise) the one featuring Donald Southerland.

[Steve Klare]

The night of July 3rd (In anticipation)

Shorts:

Sounds of Arizona (S8, 'scope): We get to visit Arizona in the early 1960s: Cowboys, Indians, the desert, square dancing, the Grand Canyon Suite and the Tucson Boys Choir including a bespectacled young man who is very likely an early John Denver!

Royal Viking New England, Canada Cruise (16mm): We get to join a cruise out of New York headed north along the New England coast all the way up to Montreal. (This film was cheap on eBay but may work out very expensive in the long-run. Now my wife and son want to go on one of these cruises!)

Feature:

1776(projected DVD): The 2nd Continental Congress wrestles with the issue of American Independence in the months before that first 4th of July (-at least as we now understand the date). There is a lot of singing and dancing I really doubt happened in Congress at the time!

What it does well is show the desperation of the Patriot cause at that moment and show how people who opposed Independence had a pretty reasonable case against it. In truth, there was another five years of war to come, and seven until real peace came. These were not times to rejoice for anybody for a very long, bloody time.

This movie is actually influential in my family. When I was young, I saw this movie a number of times and it made me interested in History. Decades later we had a hurricane, and it took days for cable TV to come back. In the meantime "TV" was all from recorded video and one day when 1776 was on, my son saw it and became very interested too. He's taken a number of college History courses.

-So often, history repeats, even when it's the history of History!