DTS And Coding Technologies To Demonstrate Of Set-Top Box Technology At CES

DTS and Coding Technologies has announced the live demonstration of set-top box technology that enables delivery of the latest MPEG-4 aacPlus multi-channel audio for HDTV to consumers’ existing home theater systems at the CES, January 8-12, 2007, in Las Vegas.
The companies will hold demonstrations throughout the show at the DTS booth No. 1 21544, South Hall, Las Vegas Convention Center.
With the efficiency and audio quality of the aacPlus codec, consumers can now receive much more HDTV programming in high quality surround sound, allowing broadcasters to deliver more movies, more sports, more documentaries and more dramas in 5.1-channels than ever before. They can also provide programming with multiple language surround soundtracks, as on DVD releases. They can now do so with immediate access to the entire installed base of DTS-enabled home theater systems.
Until now, the major barrier to broadcasters implementing the latest advanced, high efficiency multi-channel audio codecs for MPEG-4 based HDTV broadcasts has been the lack of any means for consumers to decode the surround sound in the home. Working with Coding Technologies in Europe, DTS has enabled the ‘transcoding’ of that company’s advanced aacPlus MPEG-4 audio codec to DTS Digital Surround in the set-top box. With a simple SPDIF connection from the set-top box, this can now be decoded in virtually all A/V receivers.
aacPlus employs a number of advanced open standard techniques developed by Coding Technologies. This creates significant bandwidth efficiencies and reduces transmission costs for broadcasters, allowing them to provide surround sound transmissions on a greater range of programming.
Pioneering HDTV service, Euro1080 has announced that it will implement aacPlus surround sound as part of its recent switch from MPEG-2 to higher quality MPEG-4 transmissions. Several other major broadcasters in Europe and elsewhere are also planning to implement the technology.
“Euro1080 has been the leading technical innovator in implementing European HD broadcast services. We have always been ahead of the rest of the industry, and first in the world to broadcast using the MPEG-4 standard,” said Jacques Schepers, Technical Director at Euro1080. “Now we are adopting MPEG-4 compression across all of our channels, and we intend to incorporate the advantages inherent in the DTS/aacPlus broadcast solution in our service plan, going forward into 2007.”
Incorporating the aacPlus/DTS transcode, set-top boxes from several manufacturers are scheduled to come to market imminently. IC manufacturers have been producing the required chip sets for several months now.
DTS is a digital technology company dedicated to delivering the ultimate entertainment experience. DTS decoders are in virtually every major brand of 5.1-channel surround processor, and there are hundreds of millions of DTS-licensed consumer electronics products available worldwide.
(DS)