Audio Video News

Following a late September announcement from Dolby Laboratories that its audio technologies would be included in specifications for the new high-resolution/high-capacity optical disc formats, Agoura Hills, CA–based DTS announced that its "DTS Coherent Acoustics" coding system also had been selected as "mandatory audio technology" for both the Blu-ray disc and High Definition Digital Versatile Disc (HD-DVD).

The two competing disc formats will also accommodate DTS' extension technologies ("DTS++"), said to offer "higher data rates, lossless operation and additional channels." DTS++ was described in a company announcement as "the only lossless audio technology selected for both disc formats."

The extra bandwidth afforded by Blue-ray and HD-DVD will allow encoding DTS audio tracks at data rates greater than 1.5 Mbit/s, rendering soundtracks that are "bit-for-bit identical" to the master recordings. The disc formats provide for up to 7.1 audio channels, while retaining compatibility with all existing DTS decoders. Such backward compatibility provides advanced features and supports the large population of existing multichannel preamps and receivers, DTS claimed.

The move by Blu-ray and HD-DVD organizations means that "a DTS decoder will be built into every next generation player that incorporates either HD-DVD or Blu-ray Disc, therefore allowing content providers the freedom to choose the audio technology best suited for their needs," stated DTS president and CEO Jon Kirchner.