Audio News - AUDIOPHILE AUDITION

Network TV Embraces Surround Sound - Those of us who have been enjoying hi-res surround sound for some time now may feel superior, but the truth is we’re a very tiny minority of the public. In order to make surround sound a mass format it needs to hitch its wagon to something with more pull. And it has found it - network television. All the major networks now have parallel hi-def transmission channels that carry 5.1 audio. Many primetime drama series, sports shows, and even American Idol are now 5.1 surround. Broadcasters use gadgets such as Dolby E to digitally encode 5.1 channels of surround plus a pair of standard stereo channels onto a pair of transmission channels. Then at the local station it is decoded, encoded for Dolby AC-3 and sent out with the video. Consumers have gone in big for 5.1 surround on DVDs via their DVD players and most now have AV receivers capable of decoding both encoded Dolby and DTS. The hi-def version of TiVo will soon be built right into the digital TV cable box, and it includes advanced discrete 5.1 surround sound, which is the HDTV standard. Also, both DVD-As and the new DualDiscs are reaching the much larger portion of the public without a universal or DVD-A disc player but who do have a DVD video player cable of handling the data-reduced Dolby Digital 5.1 option on all these discs.

Computerized Consumer Electronics - The new issue of Multi-Media Manufacturer has a CES report by David J. Weinberg which focuses on how nearly everything in consumer electronics has become computer-centric. He points out that every piece of home theater equipment now has an embedded computer, that portable players include processors to decode the data and for operational control, that more digital amplifier modules are being used, there are computerized room EQ systems, music and video servers, even refrigerators with Internet access (and the Japanese have an Internet toilet). He hopes that in this paradigm shift the issues of reliability and simplicity of use are not lost even further, as they have been in the PC computer world. (Less so in the Mac world I might add. Also, perhaps our recently decrying the move to put all audio and video in the home, plus security and lighting, into a computer-based system is beside the point since it’s already happening.)

Single Format Hi-Def DVD May Be Possible - Rumors are that Sony and Toshiba are actually negotiating and working together to compromise on a single high resolution video disc instead of plunging ahead with the self-defeating separate and incompatible systems of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.