Dolby E Encoders And Decoders Ship
Dolby Laboratories, the world leader in multichannel sound technology, has announced its Dolby E encoder and decoder have begun shipping in the United States this month. European versions are expected to be available late 1999. One of the latest innovations in Dolby's arsenal of multichannel audio technologies, Dolby E professional audio coding allows broadcasters and producers to easily move multichannel audio through existing digital audio infrastructures prior to encoding into Dolby Digital for delivery to consumers. ""Since its inception over 30 years ago, Dolby Laboratories continues to be an audio technology innovator,"" said Tony Spath, Marketing Director, Technology. ""Our showcase at this year's IBC (in Amsterdam, September 10-14, 1999) demonstrates our commitment to excellence in sound and highlights the significant strides the company has made in the area of multichannel audio."" Dolby E: An End-to-End Solution for Broadcasters Dolby E is designed to ease the transition from two-channel to multichannel audio. The DP571 Dolby E encoder and DP572 Dolby E decoder enable producers and broadcasters to distribute up to eight channels of high-quality audio, as well as Dolby Digital metadata, via a single AES/EBU pair, two audio tracks of a digital video tape, digital audio tape, or video server. Designed to accommodate standard broadcast operations, Dolby E can tolerate without degradation ten of the tandem encode/decode cycles required during the contribution, post-production, and distribution stages of a DTV program. In addition, Dolby E technology audio frame rates match video frame rates, enabling precise video picture cuts without mutes, glitches, or restrictions. Now DTV broadcasters and program producers can switch, route, and perform assemble edits directly on the digital bitstream without decoding and recording. Dolby E also carries Dolby Digital metadata for final delivery to the home viewer's Dolby Digital decoder. In addition to the Dolby E technology and the DP571 and DP572, Dolby demonstrated Dolby Digital for DVD, using the DP569 and DP562; and Dolby Surround, featuring the new DP563 Dolby Surround Encoder (see separate release).