Breaking - Dolby has just announced that it has filed patent infringement lawsuits in the United States and Germany against BlackBerry maker Research In Motion.
The lawsuits seek recovery of financial damages and injunctions to halt sales of “many RIM products” that Dolby claims infringes its patents. → Read More
Do you still go see movies in the theater? Well you’re in luck. Dolby just announced lighter 3D glasses for you and yours that included anti-theft measures as well as a little RFID tag for inventory control. The new glasses have thinner lenses and can be washed and reused hundreds of times. The new glasses will cost theater owners $12 each, less when purchased in bulk.
* Not really → Read More
Netflix is one step closer to dominating the movie watching experience with the addition of Dolby Digital Plus. Starting Monday, Netflix movies streamed via a PS3 will be in the 5.1 surround sound mode. Other Netflix streaming devices will get the ability “over time” as well. This addition brings DVD-quality sound — which is probably good enough for most people — to the PS3 and makes Netflix a viable option for those that actually care about audio quality.
Update: Oh, and Netflix is going disc-free on the PS3 as well. → Read More
We had huge response yesterday and I’m pleased to report that it was a rousing success. Today is the final contest and it’s a big one. It’s open to entrants worldwide, so even if you live in Brussels or Burkina Faso, feel free to enter. The details, again: HP and Dolby would like to give you one of three HP Pavilion dv6t Select Edition laptops complete with Blu-Ray player and Dolby Advanced Audio. Here are the details: To celebrate HP’s recent launch of its new Pavilion laptops all of which include Dolby Advanced Audio for providing stunning audio, Dolby is giving away three Ultimate Dolby PC Entertainment Packages for enjoying surround sound entertainment. Included in each package: · HP Pavilion dv6t Select Edition with Dolby Advanced Audio and Blu-ray playback · The Hangover and Star Trek on Blu-ray featuring Dolby TrueHD loseless audio · Magix Movie Edit Pro Plus with Dolby Digital 5.1 Creator – the ultimate tool for creating the perfect movies and videos Dolby Advanced Audio gives new Pavilion users a personal surround sound experience with any set of headphones and will enhance their music, movies and games with a suite of technologies designed to provide the best listening experience from their PC. What do you do to win? It’s so simple even a child to could do it. → Read More
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any better, we spring this on you. HP and Dolby would like to give you one of three HP Pavilion dv6t Select Edition laptops complete with Blu-Ray player and Dolby Advanced Audio. Here are the details: To celebrate HP’s recent launch of its new Pavilion laptops all of which include Dolby Advanced Audio for providing stunning audio, Dolby is giving away three Ultimate Dolby PC Entertainment Packages for enjoying surround sound entertainment. Included in each package: · HP Pavilion dv6t Select Edition with Dolby Advanced Audio and Blu-ray playback · The Hangover and Star Trek on Blu-ray featuring Dolby TrueHD loseless audio · Magix Movie Edit Pro Plus with Dolby Digital 5.1 Creator – the ultimate tool for creating the perfect movies and videos Dolby Advanced Audio gives new Pavilion users a personal surround sound experience with any set of headphones and will enhance their music, movies and games with a suite of technologies designed to provide the best listening experience from their PC. What do you do to win? It’s so simple even a child to could do it. → Read More
Dolby Laboratories, longtime industry leaders in theater and film audio, have set their gaze upon the PC entertainment side of things. Specifically, getting surround sound from a laptop or netbook. I got a demo of some of the new tech they’ll be releasing in the coming months. Some super cool stuff. → Read More
Just think, soon you’ll be able to enjoy the full surround sound experience on a 3-inch screen! All because Dolby is bring the magic of Dolby Digital Plus to cell phones sometime real soon. How exciting. → Read More
A high-def picture is nothing without high-quality audio and a French TV station is the world’s first to broadcast a Dolby Digital Plus track over a terrestrial signal. The Dolby system is ideal for limited bandwidth applications like terrestrial broadcasts, as the original Dolby Digital bitstreams are maintained and can still be decoded. The French TV station, TNT, is broadcasting three digital TV stations, including one with the 5.1 audio track, within the 24Mbps limitations and without the efficient Dolby codec, this would not be possible. We just hope that we here in the States will hear the 5.1 audio Dolby tracks sometime soon. Think about it; how sweet would Lost and Monday Night Football be in true Dolby 5.1 surround sound? → Read More
I talked with Dolby a bit at PAX and they seemed pretty excited about this stuff. They asked me what I thought needed to be improved about voice communication in a game. Essentially I told them that the voice needs to take place in the game and not in a sort of meta-layer where you can hear everyone perfectly and sound quality is universally low. They said that was exactly what they were working on, and today they’ve announced their new voice communication technology Axon at the Austin GDC. I hope this gets picked up by a lot of games because it addresses all the problems I have with voice comms in games. It adds 3D positioning, occlusion, environmental factors, and basically optimizes and modularizes the system so that it’s not some half-assed walkie-talkie tacked onto your game. → Read More
These look like very old-school flying saucers, the broken down wobbly ones that low-income aliens fly. To be fair, such technology is still far more advanced than tooling around in a Honda Element all day, so let’s cut poor Zanzork some slack. Anyway, in a desperate attempt to get back on track I’d like to tell you that the devices listed above are not spacecraft. They are external USB audio devices that eliminate surrounding electromagnetic interference and use a digital to analog converter to clean up whatever sounds or music emanate from your laptop. → Read More
Laptop speakers generally need all the sound-quality help they can get. Thankfully Dolby Laboratories is lending some audio technologies to Acer’s Aspire notebooks, which will now feature the Dolby Home Theater suite offering “advanced home theater audio features and premium surround sound experiences.” Acer Aspire notebooks featuring Dolby Home Theater will be available worldwide and will support all of the technologies in the suite. This includes Dolby Digital for 5.1-discrete channels of digital surround sound, Dolby Digital Live, which converts any audio signal from the PC into Dolby Digital, Dolby Pro Logic II for simulated surround sound experience from any stereo audio source, Dolby Headphone, which does 5.1 for headphones and last, but probably most important, Dolby Virtual Speaker, which delivers a surround-sound experience from a 5.1-channel soundtrack to stereo speakers. Not huge news, but kinda exciting. The last Acer Aspire I tested had some weak speakers and they could’ve used any bit of help to make them sound beefier. → Read More
JVC just dove into the home media center market and its latest offering is the Sophisti DD-3. Aside from an odd name, the DD-3 system is based upon speakers and a main unit. The main unit acts as a network media player, as well as a DVD player, AM/FM radio, CD player, and can stream audio from another PC. But one of the cooler features that makes the DD-3 stand out is the dedicated USB host port, which allows you to hook up an iPod, Zune, or whatever up to the system for playback. It’ll also stream music, video, and pictures from your home PC to a TV. Of course, with JVC, you’ll be getting big names with big quality on the inside. Dolby Digital, DTS, and Pro-Logic II decoding are built-in and the total system’s power is a sweet 220 watts. I saw the speakers used on the DD-3 during CES and boy do they sound incredible. Maybe that’s why the price-tag for the whole Sophisti DD-3 system is $1000. Ouch. Better start saving your pennies real quick, because it’s available now. Press Release → Read More
