Dolby Laboratories Supports HDTV Standards In Australia

Dolby Laboratories, the world leader in multichannel sound, Friday announced the company strongly supports Australia's 1998 decision to move to the globally accepted high-definition television (HDTV) standard with Dolby Digital audio technology for digital television broadcasts.Dolby supports the DVB-T transmission standard that the Australian industry and Federal Government has adopted and is supporting HDTV with Dolby Digital audio. Dolby considers that a proposed alternative, triplecast of analog, HDTV and digital standard-definition (SDTV) television signals (analog/SDTV/HDTV triplecast), will severely compromise the audio and video broadcast quality of both HDTV and SDTV.In 1998, Australian broadcasters chose Dolby Digital multichannel audio technology as the standard and put plans in motion to introduce HDTV broadcasting to Australia in January 2001. Like other countries around the globe, Australia chose Dolby Digital format because of its significantly better audio performance, rich feature set, and superior spectrum efficiency compared to the older, less spectrum-efficient MPEG audio technology.""We believe that using the HDTV format and Dolby Digital audio will help provide Australians with the best available digital television service,"" said Mr. Tony Branigan, General Manager of the Federation of Commercial Television Stations (FACTS).""The Australian digital television standard must withstand the test of time. Australians would be cheated out of quality and flexibility if a spectrum-wasting redundant SDTV picture is required to be broadcast in parallel with any HDTV pictures. This would be a short-sighted attempt to lower equipment costs that, left alone, will rapidly trend to insignificance,"" stated Mr. Craig Todd, senior member of the technical staff at Dolby Laboratories. Mr. Todd is in Australia this week to meet with the Federal Government and appear before the Productivity Commission.About Dolby LaboratoriesDolby Laboratories is the developer of signal processing systems used worldwide in applications that include motion-picture sound, consumer entertainment products and media, broadcasting, and music recording. Based in San Francisco with European headquarters in England, the privately held company also has offices in New York, Los Angeles, Shanghai, and Tokyo.