Dolby Digital Plus, an upgrade technology claimed to offer twice ...
Dolby Digital Plus, an upgrade technology claimed to offer twice the data efficiency of the existing Dolby Digital, will be introduced and demonstrated publicly for the first time at next week’s NAB show in Las Vegas, Dolby Labs told…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
our affiliate Consumer Electronics Daily. “We've been working on Dolby Digital to make it further extendable,” as always was the intent when it was first commercialized almost 10 years ago, Craig Eggers, Dolby Labs dir. of consumer technology mktg., told us. The Advanced TV System Committee already has selected Dolby Digital Plus as a “candidate standard” for next-generation enhanced DTV. The technology, which is about 1-2 years away from being commercialized, could find itself in future applications at least as broad as those of Dolby Digital, which is installed in nearly 40 million homes, Eggers said. In addition to ATSC audio, applications will include cable and satellite delivery and for streaming interactivity in next-generation optical discs. Advanced video codecs such as H.264 and others are designed to address the need for more efficient video data transmission through the limited-bandwidth “pipeline” than currently is possible with MPEG-2, Eggers said. “If there are going to be new efficiencies in video, we have to work on new efficiencies in audio, and we've been doing that.” Dolby Digital Plus will enable broadcasters to transmit 5.1-channel HDTV digital audio at 192 kbps -- half the current data transfer rate of 384 kbps, Eggers said. Over-the-air 2- channel HDTV audio also would transfer data at half the current 192 kbps rate, as would stereo DVD recorders, he said. “The issue with Dolby Digital Plus is we're bringing these new efficiencies to the marketplace,” but at no risk to backward compatibility with legacy Dolby Digital products, Eggers said. “We recognize that there’s 40 million AV receivers out there in the universe” with Dolby Digital, he said. “We recognize we have an obligation to the consumer when we introduce anything new around the Dolby Digital format, as receivers go.” For the consumer, the transition to Dolby Digital Plus will be “seamless,” Eggers said. He said typically, a Dolby Digital Plus signal would be streamed to a set-top box, then outconverted and sent through a SPDIF output to an AV receiver as a standard Dolby Digital signal.