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.

Founded in 1965 by Ray Dolby, Dolby Laboratories specializes in audio noise reduction and audio encoding/compression technology.

According to Dolby, RIM infringes patents covering digital audio compression technologies which allow manufacturers and consumers to provide audio while using limited amounts of transmission and/or storage space for such audio.

Dolby says its technologies provide the core of HE AAC (short for ‘High-Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding’), an international standard that it says is used in a ton of consumer electronics devices such as smartphones, portable music players and tablets to play back music that has been compressed to less than 10 percent of its original digital file size.

In a press release, Dolby posits that the Canadian hardware and software maker employs its patented technologies in its Blackberry handsets and PlayBook tablet device, without having obtained licenses, adding that “all other major smartphone makers” have agreed to license the technologies that are the subject of this litigation.

Dolby recently shared financial results for its second quarter of fiscal 2011, reporting total revenue of $250 million. Licensing revenue was responsible for a staggering 86 percent, or roughly $215 million, of that revenue.

“Litigation was regrettably our last resort after RIM declined to pay for the use of Dolby’s technology,” said Andy Sherman, executive vice president and general counsel of Dolby. “We have a duty to protect our intellectual property.”

The wording suggests Dolby has been engaged in negotiations with Research In Motion for a while now, talks which have apparently not materialized in any patent licensing agreements.

One lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The other, German lawsuit was filed in the District Court of Mannheim.

We’ve reached out to RIM but haven’t heard back yet. We’ll update as soon as we learn more.

* Not really

Update: Oh, and Netflix is going disc-free on the PS3 as well.

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.

UPDATE – Congratulations to Tyler T, our last and final winner.

First, however, congratulate Tom Woolf, our second winner.

Now, on to how to win.

Answer this question of the day: What type of entertainment will you consume most on the Pavilion? Music, movies, TV or games?

Answer in comments and leave your real email address (Facebook logins don’t really work). Enter once and only once from one IP address. We will pick one winner at random tomorrow at 5pm Eastern. This contest is worldwide.

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.

Answer this question of the day: Why is having a high quality Dolby audio experience on a notebook important to you?

Answer in comments and leave your real email address (Facebook logins don’t really work). Enter once and only once from one IP address. We will pick one winner at random tomorrow at 5pm Eastern. We have three total to give away so don’t give up. The contest is limited to the US and Canada, sadly.

Dolby is working with various OEMs to include a number of new audio driver technologies. Dolby Home Theater v3, Dolby Advanced Audio, and Dolby Headphone. All three are post-processing that optimize your sound for the specific laptop you’re working on, bass and high frequency boost, and do a bit of compression repair. Unlike most “enhancers”, the Dolby algorithms don’t sound like a graphic EQ just haphazardly slapped on the signal. And they’re smart enough to not mess with your uncompressed material.

Now for all the surround sound stuff. First, you can get simulated surround sound on any pair of headphones. It may not sound as distinct as actual 5.1 or 7.1 headphones, but the Dolby software will recreate the full sound field with any stereo headphones. Not the best solution, but for the price and portability, you can’t beat it.

Also, instead of requiring separate sound cards with multiple ports, these drivers will sum the multiple channels of a surround signal to one. End result, you can run a single cable from your PC’s audio out to any surround sound receiver. Now you can hear all that pirated material the way it was supposed to.

Look for the “Approved by Dolby” sticker on various Sony, Lenovo, Toshiba, Acer, and Medion models in the coming year.

The updated codex not only works with headphones but moreover is designed to allow 5.1 audio on media streamed from the device either by Wi-Fi or HDMI. The technology should work with nearly any multichannel-audio codecs such as MPEG Surround.

The exact timetable this is supposed to roll out hasn’t been released, but Dolby’s marketing director Rolf Schmitz says “in the very near future.” Maybe ol’ Greg will see some supported handsets while cruising the halls of MWC.

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?

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.

The latest audio solution from Dolby Labs attempts to bring the Dolby experience to broadcast, mobile, PC and online mediums through the MPEG-4 HE-AAC open-standard audio codec. The sound geeks combined the advance bit-rate efficiencies of the codec with the goodies of Dolby audio. Think of 5.1 audio sound but at a lower bit-rate that mobile and broadcast platforms could support. Pulse can carry all the metadata found in other Dolby codecs, just in a more efficient, bandwidth-saving way. Expect to see Pulse applications in 2009.

PR

Today Airfonix announced their AFX-19DD051 wireless transmitter for delivering wireless audio to the home theater. The two-channel transmitter with built-in Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound and Dolby Pro-Logic II decoding delivers uncompressed, 24-bit wireless digital audio at 48-MHz transmission rate to active and passive speakers.

It features two S/PDIF coaxial/optical inputs and stereo RCA Line-in connectivity. It has three built-in 100W RMS digital amplifiers for powering front left, center and right channel speakers and a LFE channel line out for connection to an active subwoofer. The transmitter also utilizes the Airfonix Smart Channel technology, which enables the unit to search out and choose an un-congested channel in the 2.4GHz and 4.9-5.8GHz bands.

No pricing info yet, but it looks to be available in production quantities in early 2009.

From the standard fare of receivers to gaming headsets, Dolby has invaded IFA this year. Harman Kardon is going to launch the first receiver with Dolby’s touted Volume technology that ensures constant volume across all content media. Then there is the Plantronics GameCom 777 headset aimed at gamers with surround sound. PCs are getting a sound upgrade as well with Dolby Home Theater and Dolby Sound Round. Finally, thank goodness, Dolby is taking their experience on the go with Dolby Mobile. Apparently, they feel that they can make that tiny speaker sound so much better. 

Dolby has been around for a while and the label is on just about everything AV, but does it really sway your purchasing decision on outside devices. If product A has Dolby certs on the front bezel that product B doesn’t, which one are you more likely to buy? I totally buy Dolby supported receivers but I really don’t know if seeing their logo on my cell phone will move me to buy one verse another. 

PR

LG said it is the first handset maker to include Dolby Mobile in handsets geared for the worldwide market, and that it plans to begin launching phones that incorporate the audio technology beginning in the fourth quarter.

For more features you can can expect to find in upcoming LG handsets, check out MobileCrunch.

Some Dolby Mobile features you can expect to find in upcoming LG handsets: mobile surround sound, sound space expander, natural bass, high-frequency enhancer, graphic EQ, sound level control and mono-to-stereo converter.

LG said it plans to begin launching multimedia phones that incorporate Dolby Mobile technology beginning in the fourth quarter of this calendar year.

Check out the press release here

I think Matt wet himself.

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.

The internal technology is provided by a little company known as Dolby, which includes Prologic IIx support. You’ll also get EAX and DirectSound support standard as well.

Still a little fuzzy on the details but it looks like there are perhaps two headphone jacks on the front there, so bring a friend and ask if he can stay for dinner. Pricing and availability is even fuzzier but it looks like these might be Japan-only for now.

ASUS Xonar U1- Stylish External USB audio device with EAX Support [Fareastgizmos.com]

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.

]]> http://techcrunch.com/2007/06/05/acer-adds-dolby-home-theater-to-aspire-laptops/feed/ 0 tcbucket dolby.jpg http://techcrunch.com/2007/04/17/jvc-sophisti-dd-3-media-system/ http://techcrunch.com/2007/04/17/jvc-sophisti-dd-3-media-system/#comments Tue, 17 Apr 2007 13:16:02 +0000 Contributor http://crunchgear.com/2007/04/17/jvc-sophisti-dd-3-media-system/

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