Full vs. ambient setting on 5.1 surrounds

Does the ambient vs full setting on play 1 surrounds bonded with a play around and sub affect the 5.1 with TV and movies or is the difference only applicable for music listening?

Only for music, specifically only for non-Playbar sources. If you are playing music channels on your TV, they will not be in full mode.

Thanks for the response.

Just to be clear: if I set it in ambient then the back speakers will be more quiet but if watching a movie the surrounds would still output the same volume level as would be output on full?

The ambient/full setting only applies to non-TV sources.

For the TV source the surrounds always output the discrete channels from a 5.1 mix, or synthesised ambient from a stereo soundtrack.

there is a request to also allow 'Full' setting for TV audio as well e.g. for music played via a smart TV app/ Music channel or Airplay via apple TV to playbar...

However, since TV audio can be DD5.1 or DD2.0 or plain stereo it would have to be something the user could toggle themselves to override the 'normal' decoding. Suggestion is to put a toggle on the same screen as Night Mode and Speech Enhancement.

see here
https://ask.sonos.com/sonos/topics/full-stereo-option-when-watching-tv-audio-please

I use ambient mostly. I find that it gives the music truly 5 channels where the music pan's all around where full gives more of just a stereo r and l channels.