Time Warner On Demand Audio

[KryptoNyte]

I was just watching a show on Time Warner NBC On Demand (in HD) and realized almost immediately that there was no surround sound.  Why do they broadcast the original show in 5.1 channel digital audio, but then cripple it to stereo for the On Demand service?

[PONIES]

They're not necessarily crippled.

What show are you trying to watch On Demand?

A lot of NBC programming is actually native stereo and affiliates use fake 5.1 matrixing.

Examples of native stereo mixed programs on NBC include The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Last Call with Carson Daly, America's Got Talent (non live portions), reality shows, the entire NBC Kids block on weekends.

The Today Show, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and a lot of their higher budget scripted programming is native 5.1.

If you enable Dolby Pro Logic II on your receiver you can do a better job of creating 'fake' 5.1 than your affiliate does.

[KryptoNyte]

It was the show "Revolution" I believe, which is broadcast in its normal time slot in 5.1 AC3 audio.