It would mean high Quality due to the fact that if your going to have a device that support's such a set up the bit rate better be support or the sound quality would take a big hit. though it's not like that's an issue with a handheld but it does show atleast until we get more info that the sound quality for the 3DS will be better. due to the hardware being able to support .

an yes your right about it does not mean anything about 5.1 but since this does support 3D movies that may mean the sound quality is alot better. and I am pretty sure it's better than any of the previous DS's.

because this one is also set to run Movies right out of the box. that's a change from other DS hardware.

*considers putting it through the line in of my sound card so I can run it through the DSP and upscaler into 5.1*

Bizarre feature for a handheld but maybe it supports 5.1 headphones for 3 people or something or maybe you are supposed play it next to your Hi Fi.

There is no bit rate for analog sound. The headphone plug (which could theoetically multiplex 5.1 on one jack but the sound quality would suck and you'd need custom headphones/speakers to do it) is analog so there is no bit rate. The built in speakers may recieve from the sound chip digitally which would have a bit rate, but this would be stupid (when the cables are an inch long, there is no reason to separate the DAC since you need to convert to analog before playback anyway) and having 5.1 sound is not related to bit rate, I guess it means that if you took 6 channels worth of data and put it through two channels each one has three times as many bits but it doesn't really make sense. Bit rate is a measure of file size, not quality. It just so happens that higher file size means more quality with lossy codecs.

Edit - I brain failed before. It is possible that the headphone jack can do SPDIF which could do 5.1 on a single plug. It is not unheard of to have multijacks like that in the sound system of mid range PC sound cards. 5.1 still has nothing to do with sound quality though.

I also can't find a single pair of 5.1 headphones on new egg or google that aren't USB or use three separate analog connectors (the 3DS has one analog connector and no USB). So this would only be to plug the 3DS into a surround sound TV reciever or the 1 set of computer speakers I can find that do 5.1 over a single SPDIF jack.

very nice , cant wait too play the games on the system as well to watch some 3d movies as well.

PSP already supported 5.1 sound and it was launched at the end of 2004.. It would be bigger wonder if 3DS wouldn't support 5.1 sound.

I'm not sure he meant 3DS has it, maybe instead he was just talking about how videogames evolved but now you had a leap.

It is a console...

..............it is a console

Nintendo is just doing everything right with the 3DS. This handheld is going to break sales records during the week of its launch.