A digital, discrete six channel mix of Left/Center/Right/Left surrond/Right Surround/ Subwoofer mix. 5.1 is not a specific surround format tied to any particular company or codec. However, all the hardware is the same for any 5.1-based system except for the codec. It is planned that CDs, laserdiscs, and DVDs will have an ID flag to let the decoder know which codec was used, enabling decoders to recognize all incoming bitstreams and automatically switch modes and process the incoming signal appropriately. It is a listening platform and hardware concept for a surround loudspeaker system. See DTS, Dolby Digital, HDTV, CDS, LFE.