A rather large assumption

Last night my family and I sat down to try to watch the movie The Tale of Despereaux on DVD, which we'd rented from the library. It was the weirdest thing: the characters' mouths were moving, but even with the t.v.'s volume cranked all the way up, all we could hear was a dull mumble. But we could hear the narrator just fine (as long as the volume was cranked).

Turned out that the DVD's audio was **only** available in 5.1 surround: no stereo option. And we were trying to watch it on just a regular t.v. -- so we were losing the bass subwoofter (the ''point-one''), plus the surround sound: the only time we could hear anything was when the sound was supposed to be coming from front-and-center.

We turned on the subtitles and watched most of it -- which was fine for my wife and I, but our children (all 5yo and younger) were bored.

That's a pretty big assumption of Universal Pictures -- that everyone has them surround sound speakers set up. But maybe there are **non**-surround sound versions of the DVD available, and that's just what the library neglected to pick up.

Whatever the cause, **someone** was making a pretty big assumption.


--GG