Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Dolby Digital+ on Netflix streaming aweful quality

Yep. DD+ is just a more efficient coding that allows for 7.1 discrete channels in the same space that held 5.1 before. Following that, you're right they can squeeze 5.1 into not much more room than 2.0.

Even on BDs, DD+ is mostly used as a back-up for the lossless codecs, or additional languages. It allows those "extra" tracks to not take up as much room as they would in the old coding. But the goal in using it in this fashion is to keep the quality the same. Only when there is no lossless track do you see the higher bitrate mode of DD+ being used.