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  1. #1
    Forum Regular Woochifer's Avatar
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    DTS selected as mandatory sound format for BOTH HD-DVD and Blu-Ray

    Wow! This is quite a coup for DTS considering that up to this point, I had heard absolutely nothing about the sound formats that would go into the new HD video formats. I guess no matter what HD disc format wins out, DTS comes out ahead. And for consumers, this means that all of the next generation HD discs will have the DTS soundtracks on board. Good news all the way around, and with the higher bit capacity of the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs, there's no longer any reason for the DTS soundtrack not to go with the higher bitrate 1.5 Mbit/s bandwidth or even bump up to DTS 96/24.

    But, actually the real story here I think is the option for the extensions. In addition to the DTS format that most of us are familiar with, DTS also has a lossless extension as well as configurations for additional channels, all of which are backwards compatible with existing DTS decoders. This opens up the door for true 7.1 and beyond, with full resolution and no data compression.

    http://www.dtsonline.com/company/pre...cID=1&yID=2004

  2. #2
    M.P.S.E /AES/SMPTE member Sir Terrence the Terrible's Avatar
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    Hey Woch, thanks for the announcement. It is high time this company get's its props from the consumer electronic industry. In 12 years this company has done more to up the ante on the quality of soundtracks than Dolby did in the previous 20 years. They now offer lossless coding(Dolby doesn't) 24/96khz for soundtracks(Dolby doesn't) 6.1 discrete(Dolby doesn't) and now have the ability(and space) to offer to the world a codec that runs at higher than 1.5mbps(of course Dolby doesn't) This company technical achievement over the last 12 years has finally rewarded them. Congrats to Terry Beard and the Dts family on this
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  3. #3
    Suspended topspeed's Avatar
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    OK, I'll bite: What's HD-DVD? Is this going to require a new player or will a progressive scan dvd player be able to handle it? When are they going to hit the market?

  4. #4
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    HD-DVD or Blu Ray

    is the new video format heading your way.. since "conventional" dvd isn't actually a high defintion medium. It was designed for conventional tv sets and is a lower res than HDTVs are capable of. So HD-DVD or Blu-Ray will be the next video medium, i guess they are fighting it out now. I guess I am rooting for Blu-Ray because HD-DVD is "owned" by MICROSOFT.

    And yeah, you're going to have get a new played to play these.

    eric

  5. #5
    Loving This kexodusc's Avatar
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    Kudos to DTS, which IMO, is usually just a bit better at everything. Of course, by the time HD-DVD and Blu-Ray become commercially accessible on a grand scale, there could be a new format.

    To be honest, I've always been incredibly surprised that Dolby hasn't come out with a new format other than PLIIx...Surely in the last 8 years or so they've been working on something bigger and better than DTS? What are they doing at the Dolby Labs these days anyway?
    I always hoped the format wars would explode like AMD vs. Intel or something, where advancements come at such a fast pace that the consumer ultimately wins.

  6. #6
    M.P.S.E /AES/SMPTE member Sir Terrence the Terrible's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kexodusc
    Kudos to DTS, which IMO, is usually just a bit better at everything. Of course, by the time HD-DVD and Blu-Ray become commercially accessible on a grand scale, there could be a new format.

    To be honest, I've always been incredibly surprised that Dolby hasn't come out with a new format other than PLIIx...Surely in the last 8 years or so they've been working on something bigger and better than DTS? What are they doing at the Dolby Labs these days anyway?
    I always hoped the format wars would explode like AMD vs. Intel or something, where advancements come at such a fast pace that the consumer ultimately wins.
    Do you really think that Dolby would come out with another format which would render the current DD format obsolete? In every receiver sold, a Dolby decoder is in it. On every DVD sold, there is a Dolby digital soundtrack. If Dolby came out with another format, that would cut into the liscensing fees charged on every receiver and DVD. I don't think they will do this at all. Would Dolby should have done is design their codec to operate at bit rates higher than 640kbps. By not doing so they have kinda back themselves into a corner. While they can make improvements to their codecs sound quality at 448kbps, there is only so much you can do. Dts was smart in that they designed a codec that is scaleable, has tremendous flexibility, and extremely wide coding rates. Dts has now ventured in to multichannel digital radio, television, and car audio.

    Dolby has been working on Dolby Headphone, and Dolby technology for multichannel (5.1)television, and car audio. They also get a cut of the liscensing fees for MLP. They are in very good shape.
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  7. #7
    Loving This kexodusc's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sir Terrence the Terrible
    Do you really think that Dolby would come out with another format which would render the current DD format obsolete? In every receiver sold, a Dolby decoder is in it. On every DVD sold, there is a Dolby digital soundtrack. If Dolby came out with another format, that would cut into the liscensing fees charged on every receiver and DVD. I don't think they will do this at all.
    But that's exactly it Sir T...With the tremendous advantage they already own in the DVD and receiver markets, what better way to introduce an even better product? If companies are already paying liscensing rights, Dolby is in a position to use that to their competitive advantage by "bundling" the next Dolby Digital codec with the current one. Hey if you could get DD,and the new DD that could possibly be as good or better than DTS for cheaper than the cost of paying for the rights of both DD AND DTS, why wouldn't you?
    Microsoft is a classic example of a company that expertly uses such competitive advantages.(almost too well)
    There's no doubt in my mind that receiver manufacturers would include the new processor for cheap.
    There's also no doubt in my mind Dolby could convince a great deal of DVD manufacturers to include a new Dolby codec with the standard DD instead of DTS.

    I think they've really missed a huge opportunity in the last few years to keep ahead of DTS and at least make life harder for them. Ideally, Dolby would have had something ready by now, too bad for them, I guess. Instead, they seem to have ignored the demand for better sound and taken the "our way is good enough" approach.

    I much prefer DTS, but if Dolby came out with something better my loyalties would change in a heartbeat...I'm not married to either brand.
    The apparent lack of progress from Dolby has me a bit peeved, the last thing I want is for one company to emerge dominant and then get lazy...

  8. #8
    Forum Regular Woochifer's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by topspeed
    OK, I'll bite: What's HD-DVD? Is this going to require a new player or will a progressive scan dvd player be able to handle it? When are they going to hit the market?
    Basically, two consortia are at work right now developing the next generation video disc. It would require new players and new discs. The DVD is 480 line resolution format, which does not count as a HD format. By comparison, the next generation disc formats are looking at 1080p resolution and beyond. The formats are still in development, and unfortunately shaping up into another Beta vs VHS format war. Sony, Matsu****a, Philips and others lead the Blu-Ray consortium, while Toshiba and NEC head up the HD-DVD consortium.

    Blu-Ray has a technical advantage in that it will use blue lasers and higher capacity discs. HD-DVD is more compatible with existing DVD hardware and manufacturing equipment, and could potentially come to market sooner. Also, the HD-DVD proposal was initially accepted by the DVD Forum. Sony though has chosen to bring Blu-Ray to market, regardless of what the DVD Forum says. Their recent acquisition of MGM and their film library pretty much ensures that they will secure a substantial number of titles for the Blu-Ray format.

    What's driving this is how quickly the DVD got commodified, and price pressures eliminated the profit margins for players and discs. Supposedly, the new formats will be licensed so that it's not as easy for low margin Chinese manufacturers to flood the market and commodify the format the way they did with the DVD (I read that 40% of the Chinese DVD player manufacturers have gone bankrupt in the past year because the margins are now so thin and sales have begun to level off)

    In a way, the DVD came out earlier than it should have because the format is not true HD. Some people viewed DVD as an interim format, but the way that it took hold in the market, it's going to take a LOT of persuading to make people accept yet another format. Forget about Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD, I see a lot of difficulty in getting the HD discs to carve out shelf space with DVD as ubiquitous as they are. It will depend on whether people perceive a big difference in the picture quality between HD and DVD. With HDTV finally gaining traction, there very well might eventually be a groundswell of demand for something better than 480p. Like other digital formats that might have gotten out before the technology was truly ready, I think the DVD will stay for a while.

  9. #9
    eqm
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    Red face

    Quote Originally Posted by Woochifer
    Basically, two consortia are at work right now developing the next generation video disc. It would require new players and new discs. The DVD is 480 line resolution format, which does not count as a HD format. By comparison, the next generation disc formats are looking at 1080p resolution and beyond. The formats are still in development, and unfortunately shaping up into another Beta vs VHS format war. Sony, Matsu****a, Philips and others lead the Blu-Ray consortium, while Toshiba and NEC head up the HD-DVD consortium.

    Blu-Ray has a technical advantage in that it will use blue lasers and higher capacity discs. HD-DVD is more compatible with existing DVD hardware and manufacturing equipment, and could potentially come to market sooner. Also, the HD-DVD proposal was initially accepted by the DVD Forum. Sony though has chosen to bring Blu-Ray to market, regardless of what the DVD Forum says. Their recent acquisition of MGM and their film library pretty much ensures that they will secure a substantial number of titles for the Blu-Ray format.

    What's driving this is how quickly the DVD got commodified, and price pressures eliminated the profit margins for players and discs. Supposedly, the new formats will be licensed so that it's not as easy for low margin Chinese manufacturers to flood the market and commodify the format the way they did with the DVD (I read that 40% of the Chinese DVD player manufacturers have gone bankrupt in the past year because the margins are now so thin and sales have begun to level off)

    In a way, the DVD came out earlier than it should have because the format is not true HD. Some people viewed DVD as an interim format, but the way that it took hold in the market, it's going to take a LOT of persuading to make people accept yet another format. Forget about Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD, I see a lot of difficulty in getting the HD discs to carve out shelf space with DVD as ubiquitous as they are. It will depend on whether people perceive a big difference in the picture quality between HD and DVD. With HDTV finally gaining traction, there very well might eventually be a groundswell of demand for something better than 480p. Like other digital formats that might have gotten out before the technology was truly ready, I think the DVD will stay for a while.
    I've been thinking about that...it seems that the major driving force in DVD purchasing decisions are not quality, but price. That being said, we still have people in this country that hold onto their vcrs for dear life, even though everyone has told them to throw it away. What happened when DVD prices came down...? The vcr pricing, which had been fairly stable for years, fell through the floor and a whole new crop of people shored up their vcr supplies at home. The main issue, seems to be imo, that anyone can show a picture difference between a dvd and a vhs on a big tv, but how many of us, even on this forum, have that capability at home? I for one, don't want to spend a lot of money on a secondary or even less-used television. The quality gap closes pretty quickly between HD and a solid progressive scan picture on all but the largest tvs. DVDs got cheap enough that people could put them on the bedroom tv, or the kids' playroom tv, and not just on the big tv in the basement. HD dvds will have to do much of the same over an even longer period of time to get the same kind of response from "joe and jane public". Try explaining 2-channel SACD to one of your non-gearhead buddies...! How could you get better than a cd?!??!? I can't play one in my car?!?!? Picture is a little easier to demonstrate, but to "joe" who hooks his up to no surround sound and with a skinny yellow cable through a rf modulator to his GE 25" he got during the day after Thanksgiving sale at Wal-Mart, it had better be revolutionary; and I don't, as of yet, see that coming from the good people at the HD consortium...

    juss my $.02

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Woochifer
    Wow! This is quite a coup for DTS considering that up to this point, I had heard absolutely nothing about the sound formats that would go into the new HD video formats. I guess no matter what HD disc format wins out, DTS comes out ahead. And for consumers, this means that all of the next generation HD discs will have the DTS soundtracks on board. Good news all the way around, and with the higher bit capacity of the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs, there's no longer any reason for the DTS soundtrack not to go with the higher bitrate 1.5 Mbit/s bandwidth or even bump up to DTS 96/24.

    But, actually the real story here I think is the option for the extensions. In addition to the DTS format that most of us are familiar with, DTS also has a lossless extension as well as configurations for additional channels, all of which are backwards compatible with existing DTS decoders. This opens up the door for true 7.1 and beyond, with full resolution and no data compression.

    http://www.dtsonline.com/company/pre...cID=1&yID=2004
    Both DD and DTS were selected as mandatory formats for HD-DVD and blue-ray . . .

  11. #11
    Loving This kexodusc's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by IsmaVA
    Both DD and DTS were selected as mandatory formats for HD-DVD and blue-ray . . .
    If this is true, it's still quite a feat for DTS. Makes more sense, why alienate people with old, DD only receivers from purchasing a new format.

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by kexodusc
    If this is true, it's still quite a feat for DTS. Makes more sense, why alienate people with old, DD only receivers from purchasing a new format.
    It is true.
    Link to the 27th Steering Committee Meeting (September 22, 2004)

    Like you said, it is still a good feat for DTS. :-)

  13. #13
    Loving This kexodusc's Avatar
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    Good, as long as they design a way for all receivers and players to default to the highest quality format possible for each equipment combination.
    I've met more than a few people that don't know they have to manually select DTS if applicable.

  14. #14
    cam
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    I don't know if this has been answered and maybe I skipped over it but, will these blue ray players when they hit the market play normal cd's and dvd's as well.

  15. #15
    Forum Regular Woochifer's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by cam
    I don't know if this has been answered and maybe I skipped over it but, will these blue ray players when they hit the market play normal cd's and dvd's as well.
    I think wiser heads have prevailed and the next generation video players will be backwards compatible. For a time last year, both consortia actively discussed the possibility of making the new players INCOMPATIBLE with DVD, so that fewer manufacturers could control the distribution and manufacturing and thus maintain higher margins for a longer time. Basically, they're trying to avoid a repeat of the DVD rollout where as soon as the format gains traction in the market, the flood of bottomfeeding knockoffs begins and eliminates the profit margins for the more mainstream manufacturers.

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    cam
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    Thanks Wooch

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