Apple Movie Junkie

All evidence is pointing to Apple beginning to add Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound to Standard Definition Movie and TV content. Previously DD 5.1 SS was only available on select HD Movie and HD TV Show content. Earlier in the week I discovered that Apple had added DD 5.1 SS to the new release movie Step Brothers, and around the same time a group of ATVJ visitors also noticed DD 5.1 SS showing up on some SD TV content.

To test the TV Show theory out myself I downloaded two different TV Shows which are available in HD and with DD 5.1 SS. And since downloading HD TV content gives you an SD version, I only had to purchase once. My conclusion is that yes indeed Surround Sound does exist on some SD content. As you can see in the few screen shots below, I downloaded an episode of Heroes and an episode of Battlestar Galactica, both in HD and both HD version containing Surround Sound. What I found though is that only the Heroes SD version contained Surround Sound. One angle I didn’t test out is wether or not a stand alone SD download version contained Surround Sound.

There is no official word on this from Apple and Apple’s website still states that 5.1 Surround Sound can only be found on HD content, wether it be Movies or TV. It was only last week that I had noticed that Apple had removed any sign of 5.1 Surround Sound from all movie content, only to have it return a few days later. Hopefully this is just the start of more positive changes to come to Apple’s digital download content.