Why The Animosity Toward DTS DVD?
Dear Gary: While I used to really love your magazine, about two to three years ago I quit buying it. Why? Your constant beating of a dying horse. I’ve been with LaserDiscs for well over a decade, and yes, I have bought DVD also. I have worked at a LD/DVD specialty store in northern California for nearly five years. In these past few years, I have never seen a product so highly touted (DTS) by you and other “converts,” that really doesn’t matter. Before you think I’m going to totally bash DTS blindly, I’ll state this. I’m very impressed with DTS CDs. I haven’t heard anything like it since the old quad days in the late seventies. Considering I’m only in my late twenties; I wasn’t able to hear much of it, but from what my parents owned, it was impressive. Their CDs may make me buy a new receiver. I have also listened to DTS LaserDiscs, and I’d have to say with mixed results. While they definitely sound different from the Dolby Digital counterparts, I don’t personally feel they sound that much better. Not for the need to upgrade my receiver, DVD player or spend $5 to $20 dollars extra for the LD, which I can most likely buy in Dolby Digital, or if all else fails, their DVD counterpart. I am not alone in this position. Our current customer base is about 200 frequent customers, and only about 15 to 20 even have DTS. Of these 20, I believe half are just waiting for the DVDs and CDs; they don’t care about the LDs anymore. In the LD grouping, I can break it up fairly simply: a few are grounded in their position, DTS or nothing. The rest are now at the point of, prove it DTS, you’ve led us along for this long, I don’t believe you. These customers will opt for the Dolby Digital LD or DVD instead of waiting another six to who-knows-how-many months before a real DTS DVD shows up. Why is there the animosity towards DTS DVD? It is the lies DTS keeps feeding to the consumer. First, the DVDs were supposed to arrive in March 1998, then it was Fall 1998, then December 1998. Now it looks like the first quarter of 1999. I’ll believe it when I see it. Does this pattern sound familiar? It should. It’s the same thing DTS pulled on the LD side, and now they are starting to abandon the format people can actually use right now. I know you write your articles at least a month in advance, so I can’t fault you for having the wrong information at the time of publishing, but as of my writing, here are the LD facts. All pending DTS Universal LDs, except The Boxer and Blues Brothers 2000 have been canceled. All pending Fox Video DTS LDs except for The X-Files have been canceled. Every pending LD scheduled for release, except for Lost In Space has been postponed. This is the end for DTS on LaserDisc. Everyone in the industry knows LD, barring a miracle, is on its last legs, so DTS is rightfully concentrating on getting some DVDs ready for release, probably for the CES show in January so they have something other than their demo DVD to show to death. But showing a product won’t be enough to survive on DVD. Price will have to be on par with normal DVDs ($20 to $25, for now). Film will have to be on one disc; this is an issue. I went to Dave’s Video in L.A. for the Studio Day on November 14, 1998 and ran into someone who was boasting about how he was an average Joe, and went and spent $2,500 on a DTS receiver after reading all the reviews in home theatre magazines. I asked him if he knew that most DTS DVDs will be $10 to $20 dollars higher than their Dolby Digital counterparts, he answered no. I told him that DTS DVDs would not have the same special features of their same-priced counterparts (i.e., Daylight and Dante’s Peak). I also mentioned that Dances With Wolves will be a double disc set, because it was too long. You know what his answer was? “What’s the point, I bought DVD so I wouldn’t have to have extra discs for a movie.” This is why there is animosity toward DTS on DVD. Not to mention the titles will be consistently behind, and many early adopters will have to buy new DVD players because they’re not DTS compatible. DTS has blamed the DVD manufacturers for not waiting for DTS to have their code scheme ready. Considering that DVD was already two to three years behind schedule, do you think the manufactures wanted to waste more time waiting? I doubt it. One last think about the future of DTS’ survival that does not bode well: One of my customers who jumped with both feet into DTS and Dolby Digital asked me this. “How many times do I have to buy a title before I get the best one?” This customer also doesn’t believe we’ll ever see a real DTS DVD. Thanks for listening... and being amazed.
Dan Linzmeier
Editor Gary Reber Comments:
I am as frustrated as you are concerning the DTS situation. Let’s begin to dissect the issues. You state that “In these past few years I have never seen a product so highly touted (DTS), by you and other ‘converts,’ that really doesn’t matter.” To those who think DTS Digital Surround discs sound better than the highly compressed date reduced alternative, it does matter. Subtle increments in advancing sound quality have always mattered to artists, filmmakers, producers, engineers and enthusiasts who are described as “audiophiles” and “videophiles.” Those who favor DTS sound quality see with DTS a choice, that to them is worth paying a premium for, if necessary. We could debate the subtle and not so subtle differences between the DTS Digital Surround and Dolby Digital lossy coding schemes endlessly. The bottom line is, if you hear no difference in sound quality or you don’t think the differences are substantial enough to justify purchasing a DTS-enabled DVD player or digital controller, then Dolby Digital will always be there for you. After all, this is a pro-choice issue, not a must-accept-or-else scenario. Over the course of decades as a practicing audiophile and videophile; producer and engineers, I have always sought to better the performance quality of both record and playback, no matter how subtle the improvement or whether I could afford the products embodying the advancing technology. We will soon have high bit-rate/high sampled linear PCM and Direct Stream Digital audio technologies to contend with as the backers of these technologies will try to convince you that this is “the best that it can be.” Dolby Laboratories has effectively promoted the idea that the decoded Dolby Digital-bitstream is transparent (identical in sound quality) to the original recorded masters of soundtracks and music. I wonder what the proponents of linear PCM and DSD will say to counter the Dolby position. DTS, with its scalable high bit rate codec scheme seems to sit somewhere in between—not restricted to low bit rate data reduced compression as is the Dolby limitation of 484 kilobits per second for 5.1 channels (which, by the way, sounds superb). You can be certain that the argument will be to cast Dolby Digital (and DTS, or for that matter, any data-reduced compression scheme) as not good enough for pure audio (filmmakers, are you listening?). Will DTS be able to survive in this coming new world? I don’t know. I do know that high resolution non data-reduced linear PCM and DSD are the formats that will challenge DTS and Dolby Digital. The politics in this war will be interesting to observe as patent holder/licensees and manufacturers battle for market dominance just as Dolby is out to retain their two decade dominance in surround sound. DTS has had to break a lot of barriers to earn the acceptance of electronics manufacturers, who have all just about introduced or are about to introduce DTS-enabled DVD players and processors. Given the formidable resources of Dolby Labs to prevent an advance by DTS, the fact that DTS has endured is one of the truly remarkable success stories in electronics history. But while the manufacturers have decided to jump on board offering DTS-enabled products the studios have not—yet. I point the finger at the studios because they are the owners of the content. It is the studios who determine what audio format their movies and music will be released in, not DTS. At best, DTS can put forth to studio executives arguments and use persuasion to gain support and commitments to release their content in the DTS format. The delays, in large measure, have been imposed by the studios/distributors. And I am sure that the normal problems associated with gaining experience in the initial authoring stages have contributed to the delays as well, which DTS must share responsibility for. And yes (as previously reported in Issue 29), December 1998 (probably a CES premiere) will mark the release of the first feature motion picture on DVD encoded in DTS Digital Surround at 1536 kb/s 20-bit/48kHz resolution. The title is Dances With Wolves. I am looking at a copy of this anamorphic widescreen two-disc DVD with full 4-panel gatefold artwork as I write this. The full comparative review of the DVD DTS and Dolby Digital versions of this movie is contained in the DVD reviews section of this issue. I need to expand on one of your statements about the Dances With Wolves DVD. The reason the DVD extends to two discs (one dual-layer) is not because of the 1536 kb/s DTS coding but because DTS convinced Orion Home Video and Image Entertainment, the distributor of Orion DVDs, to code the video at an almost constant 7 plus megabits per second data rate rather than use the 4.5 mb/s average bit rate master that appears on the single disc DVD release (now available) with the soundtrack encoded in Dolby Digital at 448 kb/s at 16-bit/44.1 kHz resolution. A single disc solution will not sustain that high of a video bit rate with a movie 181 minutes long. The parties thus opted to go with two discs. Normally, however, there will be no problem supporting a two-hour or so movie on one dual-layer disc with 1536 kb/s 20-bit/48kHz resolution DTS coding. Personally, I would like to see DVDs encoded with both DTS Digital Surround at 1536 kb/s and Dolby Digital at 448 kb/s on the same dual-layer, dual-sided disc (did I hear that James Cameron’s Titanic will be the first such release?). You state that “It’s the same thing DTS pulled on the LD side, and now they are starting to abandon the format people can actually use right now.” Once again, the fault does not rest with DTS, but with studios/ distributors. All the DTS LaserDisc titles you mention that have been canceled are distributed by Image Entertainment under exclusive license from the various studios. The reason the DTS titles have been canceled is due to insufficient pre-orders, of which a minimum 1,500 units are required to sustain the marketing expenditures and produce a small profit. You better believe that it is not just you and others, as well as ourselves, who are disappointed and saddened, but also the good people at DTS who have worked so hard to bring their technology to this point. With LaserDiscs definitely declining in market demand and numerous previously announced titles other than the DTS ones being cancelled, film enthusiasts who support the LaserDisc format will suffer a significant loss for years to come. Don’t expect anytime soon on DVD as many of the lesser boxoffice movies you have come to appreciate as part of the wide title selection offered on LaserDisc. It will probably take at least a year or more before the in-home DVD player penetration surpasses the LD player penetration to justify the DVD release of a wide selection of less profitable small run titles. I too believe that pricing of DTS DVDs needs to be on a parity with Dolby Digital DVDs and include “everything” supplemental to the titles released on Dolby Digital DVDs. But the decision on pricing is not one made by DTS, other than the per-disc royalty fees paid to DTS. Once again pricing is set by the studios/distributors. If they believe they can charge a premium for DTS Digital Surround, they will try to do so, as apparently they are. I personally think this is a mistake and will further impede DTS’ success. The Dances With Wolves DTS DVD has the same supplemental features as the Dolby Digital version, but is priced $5 more, or $34.99, due to the added cost of two discs. I think that the typical price differential is expected to be more on the order of $5 as announced by Image Entertainment some time ago and reported by us, but it may actually turn out that there will be no price difference. Well, once again I have written much more than I anticipated, but there is so much misinformation circulating out there in Home Theatreland that I thought a response to your letter was necessary. But then there is so much to this saga that should be put forth to dispel the rampant misinformation and accusation. So now I ask you: Why is there the animosity towards DTS DVD? Is it the supposed lies DTS keeps feeding to the consumer or is it false and misleading accusations against DTS with the obvious purpose to discredit their efforts to become a viable alternative format choice for audiophile enthusiasts wanting better performance, albeit just a little bit better or dramatic depending on one’s own listening experience?
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