Having gone to the effort of ensuring I bought a 6.1 surround AMP a few months ago I've yet to find a DVD that has anyhting more than 5.1 on offer.

Does anyone know of a film that has it's sound in 6.1 ?

Films with Dolby EX, or DTS EX have the the extra channel to create true 6.1 I believe.

The only titles i know of (as i own them) are Blade 2, 3 and Top Gun special edition with DTS:ES (6.1) soundtracks... all bought from play.com

The Top Gun one sounds amazing... but right at the end of the movie when the credits start rolling it still says...

Available in Dolby Stereo in selected theatres

I'm still waiting for some movies in 7.1 so I can test my setup out properly

Films with Dolby EX, or DTS EX have the the extra channel to create true 6.1 I believe.

Ahhh, this stuff is my forte. Just to clarify, there are three formats for 6.1 channel sound:

Dolby Digital EX

DTS ES Matrix

DTS ES Discrete

The first two are 'matrixed' formats that interpolate and phase shift the signals from the standard 5.1 channels to create a psuedo sixth channel at the rear. The last one is a true 6.1 format as a discrete sixth channel is encoded into the bit stream.

There are a number of discs out there which specifically benefit from 6.1 channel amplification. Take a look here,

http://www.spannerworks.net/reference/10_9a.asp

Any movie that was originally filmed and recorded in these formats for the cinema will also benefit through to the DVD soundtrack. This is certainly the case for the matrixed formats but may require additional work for DTS-ES Discrete.

The two main examples of 6.1 sound that I am fond of the most are Star Wars Episodes I - III in Dolby Digital EX and the Lord Of The Rings Trilogy. The extended editions of these movies are in DTS-ES Discrete and rank as the best sounding movies ever in my opinion. The spatial effects and clarity of direction, depth of bass and ambience are astonishing .

There are no 7.1 channel soundtracks on DVD because there is no suitable audio format to carry it. Any rear centre sounds will be spread across the two rear back speakers to create a more diffused sound than with just one rear centre.

The new high definition media of HD-DVD and BluRay does cater for 7.1, 8.1 and other surround sound formats with use of Dolby True-HD and Dolby Digital Plus but they are another matter all together.

I hope I haven't bored you too much with all this information. I agree that Top Gun sounds very good indeed with plenty of rear to front jets flying by

Sounds like I need to get a copy of Top Gun

Thanks for the very informative post, Orinj.