Noiz2
Sound Ninja
That is a semi legit situation. It however only applies to a really old set up. At least in the US you are not going to find many/any TV's (that are not old tube boxes) that are connected that way. I have one of those old boxes but it still has composite inputs. Even the cheapest "toss-away" digital converter boxes go out at least stereo. So what are we talking? Potentially 1%-5% at most.
That isn't my experience (again in the US YMMV). It would be hard for any cable company around to be down converting to mono and still have customers. The US is all digital broadcast and that caries 5.1 (whether the show uses them all or not).
Not a valid point at all because from a perception point your are correct but the channels are not going to be summed so there won't be the cancellation issue.
A somewhat valid point but you can't base your decisions on the worst case scenario of idiots trashing your deliverable. If you did you would need to go mono and B&W, and close caption everything incase the sound went out and describe everything incase the picture went out. I'm not sure how you cover when they both go out ;~)
In short if you ASSUME your audience is going to have equipment less than say ten years old and that they haven't totally botched the setup. And you assume your audience is not out in the backwoods of??? where the cable is still at 1970's standards. THen you don't need to worry about mono compatibility.
Now this was about a documentary on a chamber orchestra. And it's shot in the US. So it's primary audience is probably film festivals, art houses and PBS. You don't need to worry about mono compatibility. Yes some idiot may trash your show, but that is the case anyway. There are a million ways your show can get trashed in the chain, mono compatibility is VERY low on that list.
To use your example IF that show had been in mono you would have had total cancellation and no sound at all. So making it more mono compatible would have made the situation, if anything, worse. Ironically that show must have been very mono in the first place if the music cancelled. The phase inversion probably happened in that chain where the idiot collapsed the signal to mono, it certainly would not have left and mix stage like that.
Know your market and act accordingly. For 99% of the time mono compatibility is no longer an issue, at least in the US. I don't know other markets so YMMV. If mono IS a significant part of your audience by all means go for it. In that case an omni center stage is probably your best bet, anything else is going to have some level of cancellation.
