Like the reports have said, when you play one of the new Paramount DVD titles it always defaults to Dolby Surround, unless you manually selected 5.1 from the setup menu every time.

Well, it got me thinking - in the Paramount titles, it always defaults to the Menu screen, rather than just starting the movie like other films.

There's also no way to skip the FBI Warning, etc, so your basically forced to do it their way. Now, when you hit PLAY MOVIE in the Menu screen, I figured that opposed to simply issuing the PLAY MOVIE command to the player, where the player would auto-detect the soundtrack, it was also issuing the default settings in the setup screen along with the play command, ie. PLAY MOVIE, AUDIO TRACK 1, NO SUBTITLES. So, even if your DVD player could auto-detect the 5.1 track, it was specifically being given the command to use the 2.0 track.

So, here's a workaround for the Sony players, or at least the S500D. It may be debatable whether it's faster, but it does show that our players are indeed working properly.

While in the Menu screen, hit SEARCH MODE. In my player, the first mode is TITLE SEARCH. Press 1, then hit enter. The movie will start playing - with 5.1 sound!