That means that more movies will offer the full 7.1 when they come to Blu-ray rather than 5.1 that is artificially sweetened.

Dolby technical marketing manager Stuart Bowling told a handful of journalists at a demo of the 7.1 Thursday at the Academy’s Linwood Dunn Theatre that producers until now have been limited to the six channels of sound that could be squeezed onto the soundtrack of celluloid film before bumping up against the sprocket holes.

(Story continues following the short video highlights below of the Dolby 7.1 “Toy Story 3″ demo.)

It’s the perfect timing for such an upgrade to enhance the expanded visual depth and perspective introduced with 3D, which Dolby also offers through its own proprietary system.

The additional sounds could be heard in several clips shown Thursday, including the first look at a scene from “Toy Story 3″ in which Ken sees Barbie for the first time. The most effective use of the new 7.1 was heard during the scene from a previous “Toy Story” movie in which the characters cross the street under orange red pylons, with the sounds of traffic and their own comments shifting perspective relative to their position on screen or as they are heard offscreen.

The same was true in a demo scene from “Up” where the dogs are chasing the old man in his balloon-flown gondola.

Pixar’s “Toy Story 3″ post-production supervisor Paul Cichocki said that the enhanced capabilities bring a new level of artistic challenges and opportunities to filmmakers. “TS3″ director Lee Unkrich was on stage at Skywalker Sound every day for six weeks of sound mixing to help determine where he wanted voices and sounds to come from, Cichocki said.

For studios, the new system will not be cheap during the transition process as they must spend an extra half-day in the recording studio creating a separate 5.1 soundtrack until all theaters are upgraded to 7.1, according to Disney’s senior vp of distribution, Gary Weaver. And that’s per language — Disney will multiply that cost 12x since they are releasing “TS3″ in 12 languages. But the superior quality of experience for the customer and the ancillary benefit to the Blu-ray experience make it worthwhile, he said.

Bowling said Walt Disney Pictures will also use Dolby’s 7.1 on upcoming 3D releases this year such as “Step Up 3″ in 3D and 2D.”

About 240 theaters have already converted to 7.1, according to Dolby vp worldwide production services David Gray, which is a minor and inexpensive upgrade for theaters already equipped with digital systems and Dolby’s Surround and EX systems. In fact, Dolby is offering a free upgrade

– By Scott Hettrick

Bagdasarian’s revelations (seen in 2 1/2-minute video below) came during a publicity event during pre-game activities at Dodger Stadium Saturday (April 4) to promote the Blu-ray release of “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.” In addition to promos intermittently filling scoreboards, signage and the public address speaker system throughout the stadium, Bagdasarian threw out the first pitch (a rare strike) and Alvin, Simon and Theodore sang “American the Beautiful” and high-fived Dodgers manager Joe Torre.
– By Scott Hettrick

“Thank God for Blu-ray,” he said following the screening of a clip from the movie on Blu-ray Disc to selected members of the media for a presentation Tuesday, March 23, in a mansion in the hills above West Hollywood.
(Story continues following the 3 1/2-minute video below of Cameron’s presentation.)

Cameron and Landau also said that all that quality is, in part, what dictated the decision to release the movie on disc without a single bonus feature — not so much as a trailer — so as not to compromise a single bit of available disc space. Their logic is that with such a long movie that barely fits on the disc, adding anything else would require reducing the bit-rate for the movie. Besides, Cameron says he can’t stand watching “crap trailers.” Somehow none of those concerns about space and quality or their objections to “extraneous” content will prevent them from releasing the movie again only seven months later in November as a presumably more expensive Blu-ray “Ultimate Edition,” as noted by Landau, with lots of bonus features. And then there is an eventual 3D edition that one would assume would require significant more disc space, if not twice as much, to allow for the second hi-def 3D angle in the movie itself. But neither gentleman mentioned anything to do with 3D on Blu-ray.

The subject of 3D did come up twice, however, the first time when Cameron described another advantage for Blu-ray over theatrical presentations. He said that because 3D theater projectors have a polarized filter that reduce the light level by half, and then viewing the movie through the required polarized 3D glasses reduces the light by another 50%, the brighter “dynamics” of TVs restore the original brightness to the film. He didn’t say how the 2D Blu-ray compares to the 2D theatrical versions of the movie.

Most encouraging for the Blu-ray format, Cameron said pre-sales of “Avatar” indicate that consumers are favoring the more expensive Blu-ray version over standard-def DVD, just as most moviegoers chose to pay a premium price to see the film in 3D instead of 2D, and at Imax 3D theaters instead of traditional 3D theaters.
If this trend holds for Blu-ray, Cameron believes “Avatar” could help drive even stronger consumer conversion from DVD to Blu-ray.

– By Scott  Hettrick

Even though the movie cannot be seen at home in 3D yet as a standard is still a short way from being announced, Saldanha said he loved his first experience working with 3D and will do all his movies in 3D in the future.

The Fox event included a demo of the BD Live feature allowing users to access customized content from imdb.com about the cast and characters and other production info about the movie. It’s the second Blu-ray title from Fox to offer the feature, along with “Wolverine.”