Watching sports in 5.1 audio - Does disabling the centre channel mute the announcers?

[gottabekd]

I've heard that in some cases, when watching a broadcast with 5.1 audio, if you unplug (or otherwise disable) the centre channel, you are left with the game/arena audio, but no annoying announcers. Is this actually the case?

1. Would CBC OTA have 5.1 audio for which the centre channel could be disabled in this way?
2. What about broadcasts on Shaw Direct?
3. Would a soundbar have this functionality? To enable/disable certain channels? Or would I need 5.1 speakers that I could physically unplug a cable?

Thanks for any info you can provide. Would greatly appreciate any info before 8:07 PM Friday. Thanks.

[White Out 403]

it does for me

[Galakanokis]

If mixed properly disconnecting the center channel will kill the dialog.

[HotHotHeat]

Yes

[TorqueDog]

The anti-Jim Hughson mod?

[McG]

what a great idea disable the centre and play fan960 audio.

[gottabekd]

All right, thanks for the info. After quite a bit of effort, and learning way more A/V initialisms than I ever wanted, I found that what I was originally trying to do just won't work. The audio out from my TV's OTA NTSC tuner is PCM, not DTS, AC3, PL2, meaning it would only ever have 2 channels, so there would be no centre channel to disable.

However, I found an arguably better solution. I found this little program called Radiodelay.

It worked perfect the first try. Select the input (e.g. line in from a radio tuned to 960 AM), a slider to choose a delay (0-20 seconds), then the output device.

It might take a little tweaking to get the audio delay just right, but i think it will be worth it so I never have to listen to Hughson/Simpson call a game ever again.