An early predecessor to five channel surround sound appeared with the 1953
20th Century Fox film
The Robe. The studio felt the film needed a larger soundstage to match its wider
CinemaScope presentation and released it with four-track magnetic stereo sound with left, right, center and mono surround channels.
Dolby Stereo was introduced in the 1970s, which similarly featured a four channel soundtrack. A prototype for five-channel surround sound, then dubbed "quintaphonic sound", was used in the 1975 film
Tommy, however, it had no dedicated subwoofer channel and used only two surround speakers in the rear corners of the auditorium thus causing the same problems with audience coverage uniformity that had been fixed in
Fantasound (1939) by using surround arrays. There was an early Dolby application of optical matrix encoding in 1976 (released on the film ''
Logan's Run''), but it did not use split surrounds, and thus was not true 5.1. The 1977 release of
Star Wars featured a six-track stereo mix developed by Dolby called "baby boom" that consolidated vocals to the center channel, while the left-center and right-center channels were used to enhance deep bass effects. Because of the lengthy production of
Apocalypse Now,
Superman (1978) was the first film released with split surrounds. Instead of the five screen channels and single surround channel of the
Todd-AO format,
Dolby Stereo 70 mm Six Track provided three screen channels, two high-passed surround channels, and a monophonic low-frequency channel. The name 5.1 was given in a
Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) Committee on Digital Sound on Film in 1987 by
Tomlinson Holman. The first system with digital 5.1 surround sound was
Dolby Digital in 1992 with
Batman Returns, followed by
DTS in
Jurassic Park in 1993, and
SDDS with
Last Action Hero in 1993.
Kodak and Optical Radiation Corporation introduced
Cinema Digital Sound (CDS) in 1990 with
Dick Tracy, but it had no analog backup and after failing on opening day it was phased out shortly thereafter.
Tomlinson Holman built a four-channel panner in 1982 for
Return of the Jedi using parts from his earlier Apt/Holman preamplifier. It was extended to 5.1 by Sound Workshop (with proper credit) and SSL in its 5000 Series (with no credit). The console included ABCDEF channels: respectively, A left, B right, C centre, D left rear, E right rear, F bass. When digital sound was applied to 35 mm release prints, with
Batman Returns in 1992, the 5.1 layout was adopted. The ability to provide 5.1 sound had been one of the key reasons for using 70 mm for prestige screenings. The provision of 5.1 digital sound on 35 mm significantly reduced the use of the more expensive 70 mm format. 5.1 digital surround, in the forms of Dolby Digital AC-3 and DTS, started appearing on several mid-1990s
LaserDisc releases, among the earliest being
Clear and Present Danger and
Jurassic Park (the latter having both AC3 and DTS versions). Many DVD releases have Dolby Digital tracks up to 5.1 channels, due to the implementation of Dolby Digital in the development of the DVD format. In addition, some DVDs have DTS tracks, with most being 5.1 channel mixes (a few releases, however, have 6.1 "
matrixed" or even discrete 6.1 tracks).
Blu-ray and
digital cinema both have eight-channel capability which can be used to provide either 5.1 or
7.1 surround sound. 7.1 is an extension of 5.1 that uses four surround zones: two at the sides and two at the back. ==Application==