Airtel Digital TV Will Bring Dolby Digital Plus to Indian Broadcast Television

[ItsMe]

Dolby Laboratories announced that Airtel digital TV, the Direct-to-Home (DTH) service from Bharti Airtel (one of India’s leading integrated telecom services providers), has declared its selection of Dolby Digital Plus as the surround sound format for its new HD DTH service and set-top boxes. Using Dolby Digital Plus, Airtel digital TV plans to offer customers HD content with up to 7.1 channels of surround sound.

Dolby Digital Plus has been adopted by many of the world's leading TV and set-top box manufacturers and broadcasters providing consumers with full digital surround sound and stereo sound in a single audio stream, making it ideal for bandwidth-constrained environments such as HD DTH broadcasting.

Dolby Digital Plus is a sophisticated audio system based on Dolby Digital. It is designed to adapt to the changing demands of future entertainment delivery while retaining compatibility with existing Dolby Digital 5.1-channel home theater systems.

Airtel Digital TV Will Bring Dolby Digital Plus to Indian Broadcast Television > News on TVs HiFi & TV > Tech2.com India

 

[Jignesh]

Posted long time back and this is all marketing nonsense. The DTH operator has no control over how many channels are encoded in the Dolby Digital bitstream. MOre precisely the DTH operator cannot give more thanthey receive. Thus if the original programming is in 5.1, Airtel cannot make it 7.1. For all practical purposes, atleast for the near future, 7.1 channels is just a figure and holds no real advantage for the customer. In fact 3D will arrive a before 7.1 audio becomes available. Thus all these new HD set-top boxes are already obsolete before being launched, considering that 3D has already started in the US, Europe and some Asian countries.

 

[ItsMe]

Thats why I am still stuck with my good old cable STB. Will shift only when I get HD, 7.1 channel, 3D PVR STB from some DTH operator. Oh I forgot, I need to buy the 3D TV as well before that.