SAN FRANCISCO—Peacock will stream Telemundo’s live Spanish-language coverage of the 2026 FIFA World Cup in Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos with Dolby AC-4.

“As the leader in live sports streaming, Peacock is known for our unmatched reliability and quality,” said David Bohunek, senior vice president of global video engineering at NBCUniversal. “Fútbol fans will love watching Telemundo’s FIFA World Cup 2026 coverage on Peacock in Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos with Dolby AC-4—it’ll be a truly stunning viewing experience they can’t get anywhere else.”

A joint team of engineers from NBCUniversal and Dolby Laboratories worked together for more than a year to fine-tune how Peacock brings Dolby Vision to live sports, combining Dolby’s latest streaming tools with NBCUniversal’s expertise in native HDR production.

All 104 matches will be delivered in Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos with Dolby AC-4, a first for the event. Peacock’s presentation of Telemundo’s World Cup coverage is also believed to be the first commercial deployment of Dolby AC-4 by a video streamer.

Dolby AC-4 delivers clear sound with up to 50% greater efficiency than traditional codecs, enabling delivery of Dolby Atmos at the highest possible fidelity.

“There is no bigger stage in sports, and now Peacock viewers will experience every moment the way it was meant to be seen and heard," said John Couling, senior vice president of entertainment at Dolby Laboratories. "From the energy of the crowd to the emotion on the field, every goal scored, Dolby helps bring fans closer to the experience."

More information is available on the company’s website.

SAN FRANCISCO & THE COLONY, Texas—Dolby Laboratories is making what it is calling a “new chapter” in its retail efforts as part of an agreement with NFM (Nebraska Furniture Mart) to launch the first-ever Dolby Home Experience, at NFM's The Colony location on Saturday, Dec. 6.

Dolby said that the Dolby Home Experience is an immersive retail destination where shoppers can see, hear, and feel how Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos transform their favorite movies, music, sports, and games.

"The Dolby Home Experience at NFM represents a new era of experience-driven retail," said Ketrina Dunagan, head of Americas marketing at Dolby. "This launch reflects how Dolby is meeting today's consumer through experiences that show, not tell, the difference our technologies make. Together with NFM, we're bringing the power of Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos to life in a way that's simple, accessible, and built for how people shop today."

Built as a dynamic, interactive environment, guests can explore the ultra-vivid picture of Dolby Vision and the immersive sound of Dolby Atmos in a setting that feels like home guided by Dolby-trained experts and surrounded by the latest TVs, soundbars, and devices from leading brands. From inspiration to hands-on demos, the space helps consumers understand the value of a better entertainment experience, no technical expertise required, the two companies said.

"We are giving our Dallas-Fort Worth customers a new way to explore home entertainment," said Robert Kincheloe, store director at NFM. "The Dolby Home Experience transforms our store into an interactive destination where shoppers can try out the latest products, get hands-on guidance from experts, and see how premium entertainment technology fits into their everyday lives."

Dolby and NFM will host a two-day grand launch event from Saturday, Dec. 6 to Sunday, Dec. 7, with interactive demos, exclusive offers, giveaways, and hands-on opportunities to explore Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos.

More information is available at the Dolby Home Experience webpage.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—Dolby Laboratories has signed on as an official signature partner of the Bay Area Host Committee (BAHC) for the 2026 Super Bowl and the week of festivities across the San Francisco Bay Area that will precede the Feb. 8 game.

“The Bay Area is synonymous with innovation, creativity and world-class experiences—values that are at the heart of our partnership with Dolby,” Zaileen Janmohamed, BAHC president and CEO. “Together, we will set a new bar for how technology can enhance major sporting events, while also investing in the people and communities that make this region so special.”

Dolby will showcase how Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos and Dolby OptiView—the company’s new cloud video and streaming platform—are enabling immersive, real-time and more interactive streaming experiences, increasing audience engagement and bringing viewers closer to sports and entertainment.

The company’s suite of live sports innovations will power key events and community events surrounding the Super Bowl, to be played Feb. 8 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.

Through the partnership, Dolby will serve as Premier Partner of the BAHC Super Bowl LX Innovation Summit Presented by YouTube, a centerpiece of the weeklong program celebrating the Bay Area’s spirit of creativity and technology. The summit will feature immersive Dolby demonstrations, thought-leadership sessions and interactive installations.

Dolby will also play a leading role as the presenting partner of the BAHC Kickoff Party, set for Dolby’s San Francisco headquarters on Feb. 5.

In the week leading up to the game, fans and visitors will experience Dolby’s innovation, creativity and community through immersive activations and events across the Bay Area.

More information is available on the BAHC and Dolby websites.

SAN FRANCISCO and BELIN—Dolby Laboratories today unveiled Dolby Vision 2, its next evolutionary step in picture quality.

Hisense is the first TV brand to announce that it will bring Dolby Vision 2 to its lineup of premium televisions, such as RGB-MiniLED TVs. French media and entertainment company CANAL+ has also announced its commitment to support Dolby Vision 2.

Dolby Vision 2 builds on the success of Dolby Vision HDR. It is designed specifically to meet the evolving opportunities of television experiences and serves as one piece of Dolby's broader mission to advance picture quality across all entertainment and devices, the company said.

“We've reached an inflection point where TV technology has dramatically changed while artists continue to demand even more innovative tools,” said John Couling, senior vice president of Entertainment at Dolby Laboratories. “Dolby Vision 2 redefines how we think of Dolby Vision to unleash the full capabilities of modern TVs while giving artists unprecedented opportunities to push their creative boundaries further than ever before.”

Dolby Vision 2 is powered by a redesigned and more powerful image engine. The new engine, when combined with Dolby Vision’s content ecosystem, unlocks more from TV. This is fueled by a content pipeline spanning today’s most popular movies and TV shows, weekly live sports broadcasts and an expanding library of games in Dolby Vision. With new tools coming to the creative community, content in Dolby Vision will look even more astonishing when enjoyed on a Dolby Vision 2 display.

Dolby Vision 2’s Content Intelligence introduces new tools to bridge the creative suite to the viewer’s living room. This foundation allows Dolby Vision 2 to optimize TVs authentically and automatically to deliver a more captivating picture based on what is being watched and where.

With AI capabilities, Dolby Vision 2 will intelligently adapt to give the best presentation of the content fine-tuned for your device and viewing environment.

Content Intelligence includes:

• Precision Black, which reduces consumer frustration that the image is “too dark” by making it crystal clear and improving clarity in any viewing environment without compromising artistic intent.
• Light Sense, which fine-tunes picture quality through advanced ambient light detection and new reference lighting data from the content source to optimize the TV for the best
  viewing experience.
• Sports and Gaming Optimization, which introduces new enhancements, such as white point adjustments and motion control designed specifically to address the needs of live sports and gaming.
  

Building on Content Intelligence, Dolby Vision 2 introduces new tone-mapping that takes advantage of modern TV improvements. Today's TVs are brighter and more colorful than ever. With bi-directional tone mapping, creators now have new controls that let them make the most of these enhanced displays.

This allows high-performance TVs to deliver higher brightness, sharper contrast and deeply saturated colors while preserving the artist’s creative vision. Dolby Vision 2 expands the capabilities of Dolby Vision beyond HDR. This includes features like
Authentic Motion, a creative-driven motion control tool to make scenes feel more authentically cinematic without unwanted judder on a shot-by-shot basis.

Dolby Vision 2 will be available in two product tiers from TV manufacturers.

• Dolby Vision 2 Max, which delivers the best picture on the highest performing TVs, adding premium features designed to use the full capabilities of these displays.
• Dolby Vision 2, which brings improved picture quality to mainstream TVs,
  delivering the core capabilities made possible through the new Dolby
  Image Engine and Content Intelligence.

Hisense will be the first TV brand to introduce Dolby Vision 2 to its lineup. These TVs will be powered by MediaTek Pentonic 800 with “MiraVision Pro” PQ Engine, the first silicon chip to integrate Dolby Vision 2.

More information is available on the company’s website.

BURBANK, Calif.—Advanced Systems Group has opened a 5,000 square-foot-facility in Burbank with a Dolby Atmos demo theater, a video production space with a hard cyc wall, a large video conferencing room, staging space, equipment inventory and offices.

Designed as ASG’s anchor space in Los Angeles for testing, demonstrating systems and an industry gathering space, the company recently held an open house to introduce the new facility to clients and vendors.

“The space is far more than a typical office,” said ASG president Dave Van Hoy. “This new space is set up for staging, storage and integration of all types of systems we build, as well as a curved cyc to shoot video and stills. The Atmos demo room with HDR video monitoring will allow us to help our clients work through their transitions to immersive audio and HDR video. Our audio team is leading the charge in Atmos post-production facility design. We believe it’s a technology that will continue to evolve and gain popularity.”

All of ASG teams have a presence in the Burbank office, using the space to facilitate projects with clients and vendors. Several large systems for Los Angeles-based clients have already been pre-staged in the facility. The facility is well suited to new technology training and large meetings.

Located at 2152 North Lincoln St., Burbank, CA 91504, the facility is a few blocks from the Hollywood Burbank airport.

ASG partners V2 Marketing, IMN Creative, Insomniac Games, JBL, Genelec, Harman Pro, Create LED, Stewart Filmscreen, Sony, Storm Audio and Forecast Consoles supported the company in opening the office.

More information is available on the company’s website.

SAN FRANCISCO—TCL and Dolby Laboratories today saod support for Dolby Atmos FlexConnect is coming to TCL’s 2025 QD-Mini LED TVs in its Precise Dimming Series, including the QM8K, QM7K and QM6K models.

Dolby Atmos FlexConnect lets viewers place speakers anywhere they choose while optimizing the sound experience to fit any room layout or speaker configuration, Dolby said.

TCL will also introduce the Z100 smart panoramic sound speaker, designed to pair with TCL’s lineup of Dolby Atmos FlexConnect-enabled TVs. Starting this summer, customers can connect up to four Z100 speakers working alongside the TV speakers to create a tailored Dolby Atmos experience, TCL said.

“The launch of Dolby Atmos FlexConnect across TCL’s Precise Dimming Series marks a new chapter of personalized home audio experiences,” said John Couling, senior vice president of Entertainment at Dolby. “With Dolby Atmos FlexConnect, consumers can unlock even more flexibility and adaptability in how they design their home entertainment systems, while removing the stress of whether their speakers are in the right location to get an incredible Dolby Atmos experience.”

Dolby Atmos FlexConnect enables viewers to place one or more wireless speakers anywhere in a room without worrying if they are placed perfectly. The solution is easily adaptable as more devices are added, regardless of where they are placed, intelligently optimizing the Dolby Atmos rendering of each speaker and the TV to create the best possible experience, the companies said.

“TCL and Dolby share a long history of redefining home entertainment,” said Chris Hamdorf, executive vice president at TCL North America. “TCL’s entire 2025 4K TV lineup sport[s] Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. All of our full-feature sound bars use Dolby Atmos, and soon we’ll have Dolby Atmos FlexConnect. FlexConnect empowers customers to enjoy a premium immersive audio experience that’s tailored to their unique preferences and spaces.”

More information is available on the Dolby and TCL websites.

A new case study looks at NBC-owned stations’ NextGen TV transmission of the games with enhanced video and sound.

NBC-owned stations and some Gray Media affiliates leveraged Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos immersive audio to enhance the over-the-air viewing experience of the Paris Olympics.

The network also enhanced the visual and sound experience of cable TV and Peacock streaming viewers by offering the Paris Games in Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos or both.

A new case study examines:

• NBC and Gray’s use of Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos.
• Why HDR and immersive audio are so critical to TV broadcasting.
• The central role of NextGen TV.
• NBC and Dolby’s combined strategy to promote the Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos NextGen TV telecasts online and on-air.

Click here to read.

EMERYVILLE, Calif.—Advanced Systems Group (ASG) has announced that it worked with Evergreen Studios in Burbank to upgrade their Dolby Atmos Dub Stage. As part of the upgrade, the existing Dolby Atmos mix stage was expanded to support a broader range of clients and attract more immersive mixing clientele.

Evergreen Studios wanted to enhance the room's capacity to handle larger format work and offer a wider array of Dolby Atmos HE (Home Entertainment) and theatrical pre-dub services, in addition to Atmos Music mixes. The upgraded Dolby Atmos system provides compatibility with new content delivery standards and technological advancements.

The ASG audio team (a Dolby-certified partner) converted the existing single-operator Avid S6 console into a dual-operator system to handle more complex workflows. The ASG team also redesigned and rewired the machine room to integrate both new and existing equipment. The expanded room can now support any format from stereo to Dolby Atmos.

“The Dolby Atmos stage is a versatile space for a wide range of projects, designed to support both music and audio post-production. We wanted to support the most recent standards, offer a greater immersive and natural sound environment, and continue to provide cutting-edge audio production facilities for our clients,” said Laurence Anslow, chief engineer of Evergreen Studios.

“Audio standards continue to evolve, and by scaling Evergreen Studio’s dubbing stage to a dual operator setup, its facility can now accommodate larger, more complex productions,” added Gadget Hopkins of ASG. “Clients and collaborators can work together during the process. Engineers can work simultaneously on the mix for different aspects like dialogue, sound effects, and music. It meets all the requirements set by Dolby for Atmos mixing providing confidence to clients that the studio can deliver Atmos content to industry deliverable standards.”

Dolby Atmos is a scalable surround sound technology that allows audio engineers to place audio objects in a three-dimensional space, creating a highly immersive and realistic listening experience where sounds can be positioned not just left-to-right but also above and behind the listener, making it feel like the audio is coming from all around them.

“We feel like we have a pretty special space here at Evergreen Studios, uniquely designed for creating and mastering sound in Dolby Atmos’ advanced surround sound technology. The room’s transformation offers our clients even more tools to enhance the realism of their content to deliver an emotionally engaging experience for viewers and listeners,” said Anslow. “Gadget and the ASG audio team just got it. They’re professional, on time and have a great attitude. They’re so easy to work with. And most importantly, they listen.”

In its 40 years as a premier recording environment, Evergreen Studios has hosted some of the greatest performers in musical history and mixed film and television projects including Back to the Future, When Harry Met Sally, The Blues Brothers, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Simpsons Movie, Friends, and many others.

Today, it is known for its rich history in the entertainment industry, blending its notable legacy with cutting-edge technology. Evergreen Studios’ Los Angeles campus is now celebrated for its rich history in the entertainment industry, merging its distinguished legacy with cutting-edge technology. Under the leadership of Harvey Mason, Jr.- an acclaimed record producer, songwriter, and President/CEO of the Recording Academy - it has recently been revitalized with the vision of becoming a dynamic hub for music, creativity, and entertainment. In addition to the dub stage, it has a 3,000-square-foot scoring stage/live room, multiple studios, mix rooms, writing rooms, editing suites/post-production rooms, and a theater.

MELBOURNE, Australia—Mediaproxy, a provider of software-based IP compliance solutions, said Dolby has awarded it formal approval for the Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby AC-4 decoders.

This development adds support for all of Dolby's distribution codecs and the Dolby Atmos immersive audio format to the LogServer compliance monitoring software platform and Monwall multiviewer.

"Dolby is not only a highly respected brand in the professional broadcasting and audio worlds, but also a name recognized by consumers as a guarantee of high quality and exciting sound,” Mediaproxy CEO Erik Otto said. “We are extremely proud to have received approval. As the leading company in our section of professional broadcast engineering, our customers expect us to provide the highest possible standard in our product. Having attained Dolby approval underlines our on-going commitment to engineering excellence."

The Dolby Atmos immersive system is used for major feature films and is also a key element in many movies and high-end drama series streamed on Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+. Dolby Atmos is an object-based audio (OBA) format that is also a feature of Dolby AC-4, which offers a wide range of features including dialogue intelligibility, audio description and alternative languages and commentaries, all with a high degree of personalization.

The Dolby AC-4 codec is part of the approval Mediaproxy has received from Dolby, along with its other key compression technologies: AC-3 (also known as Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound) and E-AC3, branded as Dolby Digital Plus, which supports up to 15.1 audio channels. The LogServer suite of software, including its Monwall multiviewer, now provides full monitoring and analysis of all these formats and the multiple channels and audio objects that comprise them, Mediaproxy said.

NEW YORK—As the rollout of NextGen TV broadcasts hit a deployment milestone making them available in more than three out of four (76%) of U.S. households, Pearl TV is highlighting how local stations are adding new technologies offering improved audio and video capabilities as well as interactivity and other innovative features for TV viewers.  

NextGen TV broadcasts offering enhanced High Dynamic Range (HDR) started with sports broadcasts at the Kentucky Derby and this summer’s Olympic games and continues with the vast majority of NextGen TV stations upgrading to offer better video and audio experiences, the broadcaster-backed group reported. 

In addition, Pearl noted that new NextGen TV receivers are about to enter the market from Panasonic, which is re-entering the U.S. TV market, and from ADTH, which will soon introduce a tiny USB plug-in receiver to add NextGen TV to consumer’s existing screens. 

The announcements regarding new receivers, improved HDR and a new promotional campaign for NextGen TV were made just ahead of the NAB Show New York on October 9 and 10 when broadcasters from throughout the world converge on the Javits Center in Manhattan.

“Now that NextGen TV is available in 76 U.S. markets, local stations are enabling new features that deliver outstanding picture quality, immersive audio, and engaging applications designed to retain viewers on local broadcast services.," said Anne Schelle, managing director of the Pearl TV business group representing more than 800 local TV stations. "Nationwide, more than 500 services are now available on NextGen TV. High Dynamic Range is also available from broadcasters in some 80 million households to expand the breadth and depth of high-definition 1080p images with even more lifelike video. Multichannel broadcast audio is also on the move, with Dolby Atmos audio now available to some 32 million households,”

“We’re delighted that Panasonic is returning to the U.S. TV market with a full range of NextGen TV receivers that will be enabled with a software download later this year,” Schelle said, adding that "ADTH has a tiny new receiver no bigger than a USB stick, which can connect to an antenna and an existing TV to expand the reach of NextGen TV signals even deeper into American homes. These new products are just the latest consumer receivers in the market, including NextGen TV-certified receivers that are also security verified from Sony, Samsung, Hisense, TCL, ADTH, and Zinwell,”  

Pearl also announced that following November’s election, broadcasters nationwide will begin running promotional advertisements to explain the benefits of NextGen TV on nationwide stations.  

“This will be our third year running a professionally-produced NextGen TV broadcast campaign.  The effort has already reached millions of viewers on TV and online,” Schelle explained. “Those numbers and awareness are expected to grow now that several large metropolitan areas have added NextGen TV service over the past year.  Anywhere that NextGen TV is on the air, we’d like our member stations to run an informational campaign to let consumers know that they should be looking for the NextGen TV certification mark as they shop for new receivers during the holidays leading up to the big football games in early 2025,”  

Pearl is promoting HDR's benefits to consumers through explanatory sections of the WatchNextGenTV.com website and in-market TV promotion, where broadcasts have started with enhanced services.  

To learn more about HDR, Dolby ATMOS and interactive applications, visit the www.watchnextgentv.com consumer website.

In addition, Pearl is also promoting the interactivity features of NextGen TV that are made possible by the Run3TV broadcast application that works seamlessly with NextGen TV sets.

The built-in application in NextGen TV sets responds to over-the-air signals. It can enable a whole host of streamed programming  – including Program Re-Start capability- to start a show over if a viewer has joined the show midway.  Program Re-Start was introduced in selected markets this summer, along with weather information broadcast to NextGen TV sets so that viewers can get more value from their NextGen TV purchase with just a touch of a button.  

In addition, 46 U.S. markets also offer TV channels on NextGen TV that are delivered through internet connections, expanding the reach of local broadcasters and sports programming, whether those shows are broadcast over-the-air or arrive for viewing from an internet connection.

AMSTERDAM—Dolby Laboratories introduced a comprehensive range of cloud video products supporting real-time interactive streaming here at IBC 2024.

The move comes on the heels of the company’s recent acquisition of video streaming tool provider THEO Technologies.

Together, the companies’ products deliver interactive, personalized live streaming viewing experiences delivered with extremely low latency. With new capabilities, such as THEOads—also announced today, these experiences can now incorporate advertising that is optimized for the dynamic nature of live content, the company said.

“Viewers want to experience live action as it happens, but there are often lengthy delays before content reaches their screens,” said Giles Baker, senior vice president of Dolby Cloud Solutions. “Our new range of cloud video streaming products delivers content with minimal delay to create cross-platform, interactive experiences that immerse viewers in the action. We are on a mission to bring these experiences to the industry and revolutionize the viewing experience for live events.”

THEOads is an ad insertion capability that improves the quality, flexibility and targeting of advertising within THEOplayer. Using server-guided ad insertion (SGAI) techniques, THEOads takes advantage of the full intelligence and capabilities of THEOplayer to maximize viewer engagement with more personalized, non-intrusive ads, Dolby said.

The combined Dolby and THEO offering brings together Dolby Millicast, an ultra-low latency streaming solution, transcoding powered by Dolby Hybrik and THEO’s portfolio of cross-platform playback and live streaming products, which include THEOplayer and THEOlive, it said.

See Dolby Laboratories at IBC 2024 Stand 3.B60.

More information is available on the company’s website.

Missed any of our recent product news? Here is TV Tech's weekly wrap-up of new products, services and deployments we published in our newsletter between July 29 to August 2. The stories are listed from the newest on Friday August 2, day by day back to our stories from Monday July 29

JVC Begins Shipping New KM-IP12S8 Series vMix 4K Video Switchers

The latest JVC Solutions are designed for multi-camera productions of live sports and events.

Vivo Taps Harmonic to Power Caliente TV Sports Channel

Harmonic's VOS360 Media SaaS-based Solution is being used to simplify media processing, playout and primary distribution for a new sports channel in Mexico.

EVS Acquires MOG Technologies

The deal will expand its market reach and further support the extension of EVS’ MediaCeption workflows.

Ateliere Launches Its New `Connect AI’ Offering

At IBC 2024 Atelier will be showing what it is billing as the industry’s first end-to-end GenAI media supply chain solution.

VITAC To Demo Latest AI Captioning, Translation Advancements at IBC 2024

The company’s AI-powered Captivate captioning solution lowers the cost of captioning.

Sony Ships M2L-X Live Production Switcher

The switcher leverages hybrid procession and operations for on-premises and cloud production.

Comcast, Comscore Expand Cross-Platform Measurement Efforts

Enhanced partnership will allow Comscore clients to tap into Comcast Advertising’s Signal Authentication solution to increase fidelity of measurement and attribution.

Rohde & Schwarz To Showcase Latest Updates To Gallium, StreamMaster, PRISMON At IBC Show

Its Gallium and StreamMaster playout environment now runs on the latest Windows and Linus releases.

Dolby Acquires THEO Technologies

The deal will help Dolby expand its solutions for live sports and entertainment that enable viewers to interact with content while watching on different screens.

Atomos Unveils Shinobi II HDR Monitor

The new high-brightness HDR monitor is designed for vloggers, creatives and photographers.

iSpot Launches Cross-Platform Measurement Offering for TikTok

The solution enables brands to verify the audience overlap and incremental reach TikTok delivers against linear TV.

CommScope Launches STARLINE ESD 1.8 GHz Amplifiers

The ESD amplifiers offer substantial upgrades for DOCSIS 3.1 networks and an incremental path to DOCSIS 4.0.

Bahrain TV Launches Middle East’s First IP Playout System

State broadcaster tapped Grass Valley for the upgrade.

Critical Connection: Automotive ATSC 3.0

Experts discuss ATSC 3.0's role in automotive connectivity.

Comscore Introduces Comprehensive Cross-Platform YouTube Audience Measurement

Comscore measurement and video insights are now available for YouTube traffic on desktop, mobile and CTV.

Wohler Announces 3G-SDI To 12G-SDI Upgrade Path

The new module, OPT-RMOC-12G, makes it possible to migrate a 3G-SDI capable monitor to a 12G-SDI (4K) capable monitor.

Wooden Camera Introduces Accessory System for Canon EOS C400

The system integrates with a wide range of Wooden Camera, Canon and third-party accessories.

Avid Unveils Latest Version Of Media Composer

The release adds a new transcript tool, deeper Pro Tools compatibility and enhanced collaboration.

Vegas Creative Software Launches Vegas Pro 22

Improvements to the video engine enable new AI-assisted features, text-based editing and enhanced audio tools.

Dot Group Showcases AI-Driven Solutions for M&E at IBC 2024

Dot will sponsor the AI Tech Zone networking area, highlighting innovative data management solutions.

PMVG Launches NextGen TV Station in Cookeville, Tenn.

The Public Media Venture Group (PMVG), a business development consortium of 32 public stations, has launched NextGen broadcasting service on W35DZ-D, its low-power station in Cookeville, Tennessee.

ADMC Riyadh Deploys Ikegami HDK-99 HDR Camera Systems

Each system comprises an HDK-99 camera head, FA-97A fiber interface, BSX-100H base station, VFL-P700A viewfinder and OCP-300 operation control unit.

Leader Electronics of Europe to Feature New ZEN-W Series Advanced Analyzers at IBC Show

Test and measurement specialist Leader Electronics of Europe will make the European debut of its ZEN-W Series of advanced analyzers at IBC 2024, Sept. 13-16, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

V-Nova, Amlogic to Support MPEG-5 LCEVC on Amlogic SoCs

V-Nova and Amlogic have announced a partnership to support MPEG-5 LCEVC on Amlogic SoCs.

Pliant to Showcase New Compact Crewcom Radio Pack at IBC2024

Professional intercoms provider Pliant Technologies will highlight its new CRP-C12 Compact Radio Pack at IBC2024, Sept. 13-17 at the RAI Amsterdam.

Disney, NBC and NFL Among IBC2024 Innovation Awards Finalists

IBC has announced the finalists for this year’s IBC Innovation Awards, taking place on Sunday, Sept. 15 during IBC2024 in the RAI Amsterdam.

Dolby has announced that it has acquired THEO Technologies, a provider of video players, and solutions for low-latency, live delivery of sports and entertainment content.

Financial terms were not disclosed. 

The deal will help Dolby expand its solutions for creating real-time live experiences that enable viewers to interact with content while watching on different screens, and make those experiences more engaging through gamification and other innovations. The combined solutions will be particularly important for sports and entertainment, providing real-time digital experiences for live events that will increase fan engagement with interactive and personalized content and experiences, Dolby said. 

“People want to engage with their content in real-time and have a more personal relationship with their content,” said Giles Baker, senior vice president of Dolby Cloud Solutions. “With Dolby Millicast, we’ve enabled service providers to improve the audiovisual experience, and offer experiences that are delivered in real-time. Adding THEO’s suite of products creates a comprehensive cross-platform solution for sports and entertainment companies seeking to enable the most interactive real-time digital experiences.”

“Dolby and THEO have a shared vision to offer customers the best in real-time streaming experiences that drive fan engagement and interactivity. Together, we are set to transform the industry, creating streaming experiences so immersive they rival being there in person,” added Steven Tielemans, co-founder and CEO of THEO Technologies.

Combining Dolby Millicast, an ultra-low latency streaming solution which delivers less than half a second of latency, with THEO’s cross-platform playback and low-latency live streaming solutions, will allow sports and entertainment companies to deliver experiences with no perceptible difference between what fans see in-person and what is streaming on your device, Dolby said. 

More specifically, the THEO acquisition expands Dolby’s suite of cloud solutions that deliver seamless, synchronized viewer experiences. This product offering now includes: 

• Dolby Millicast: an ultra-low latency streaming solution with less than half a second of latency, that delivers seamless, synchronized viewer experiences, ensuring you never miss a beat in engaging your audience.
• THEOplayer: a leading cross-platform video player available, enabling leading media and entertainment companies worldwide to deliver advanced video experiences, efficiently and across all devices. It supports all standard delivery formats and works on all major playback platforms.
• THEOlive: a live streaming solution that delivers high-quality, ultra-low latency streaming at scale. Available as a standalone product or combined with Dolby Millicast to create a comprehensive solution with features like pause, rewind, and instant replay, catering to a wide range of customer needs.
• Dolby Hybrik: a comprehensive cloud-based media workflow management service designed to deliver optimized media experiences across a variety of platforms, from theatres to mobile devices. It makes video transcoding and QC faster, easier, and more cost-effective, so you can get the job done right — no matter how massive your workload.

More information on the expanded product offerings is available here.

PHILADELPHIA— Comcast has unveiled new details of its plans for offering enhanced 4K from Xfinity and said that its first enhanced 4K feeds will be available as part of USA Network’s 24/7 coverage of the Paris Olympics. 

Enhanced 4K combines 4K video delivered via Comcast’s network, Dolby Vision High Dynamic Range and Dolby Atmos immersive audio with ultra-low latency ensuring on-screen action lags live action from Paris by only seconds, it said.

“The Olympics is the best example of how Comcast can bring together its fantastic sports content, entertainment platforms, and innovative technology and connectivity offerings to deliver one-of-a-kind experiences to customers,” said Vito Forlenza, vice president of Sports Entertainment at Comcast. “By premiering enhanced 4K during Paris 2024, fans of the Olympics will be among the first to experience this new innovation and enjoy all the live action in stunning picture and audio quality, with significantly less delay compared to anything else in the market.”

The launch of enhanced 4K follows a successful trial of the technology during the 2024 Super Bowl.

X1 customers can find the enhanced 4K feed within X1’s Olympics destination, which features curated and personalized access to every minute of coverage across the networks of NBCUniversal, including NBC, USA Network, E!, CNBC, GOLF Channel, Telemundo, Universo, two new Paris Extra channels featuring 24/7 Olympics programming, as well as streaming on Peacock. Accessible by saying “Olympics” into the voice remote, the destination features new capabilities that make enjoying coverage of the games simple, easy and intuitive. 

The Comcast described the new capabilities as follows: 

• Personalized experience across devices. Customers can choose their favorite sports to build a custom destination that makes it simple to find live coverage, event replays and a personalized playlist of highlights. Favorites carry over to the Xfinity Stream app for viewing on the go.
• Comprehensive and interactive schedule of events. An interactive daily schedule, giving customers one comprehensive guide of all live and upcoming events airing across NBCUniversal’s cable and broadcast networks and streaming on Peacock. 
• Catch-Up Highlights on X1 enable customers to jump to top moments in recorded primetime and daytime coverage on NBC as well as men’s and women’s basketball, soccer, and golf.
• 4K, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos on Xfinity Stream. Watching via the Xfinity Stream app enables customers to view 4K picture quality while watching USA Network’s 24/7 coverage. For the first time they also will be able to unlock Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos immersive sound via the Xfinity Stream app on compatible streaming devices and TVs.
• Team Comcast Profiles of 16 Olympians and Paralympians.
• Venue Tours.
• Xfinity Sports Zone App, featuring Odds Zone, a new sports betting experience that makes it easy for customers to follow live odds and initiate wagers on the DraftKings Sportsbook mobile app.

More information is available on the company’s website.

SAN FRANCISCO—Dolby Laboratories has inked a definitive agreement to acquire GE Licensing, owner of a large portfolio of intellectual property related to consumer digital media and electronics, the company said today.

Among GE Licensing’s 5,000 patents are foundational patents in video compression. The acquisition will extend Dolby’s licensing business and complement its media patent holdings by adding GE Licensing’s portfolio of video codec technology, including patents related to High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and Versatile Video Coding (VVC).

“GE Licensing is home to a number of essential innovations that power the modern world” said Andy Sherman, Dolby executive vice president for patent licensing and general counsel. “An important part of Dolby’s strategy is providing value to our customers, partners, and the industry through open standards and collaborative pool licensing. This acquisition gives us the opportunity to continue to promote and support innovation within our ecosystems.”

GE Aerospace will retain its portfolio of intellectual property related to aerospace and defense technologies as well as the trademark portfolio of the GE brand, Dolby said.

“Dolby is a trusted leader and innovator with a long history in licensing technologies and patents through collaborative structures,” said Robert Giglietti, GE Aerospace’s CEO of corporate holdings and treasurer. “As GE Aerospace continues to sharpen its focus as a standalone company serving aerospace and defense customers, Dolby is the right partner for ensuring these innovative digital media technologies continue to serve businesses and consumers around the world.”

More information is available on the company’s website.

NEW YORK—Dolby.io and Play Anywhere have announced that they are developing a combined solution that will deliver low latency and interactive experiences for live sports streaming. This solution will enable fans to engage in exciting ways through gamification, e-commerce, and interactive ads. 

“We're eager to show fans and league partners what is possible when you combine real-time stadium video with designated data APIs to create a fan-friendly, engaging experience,” said Peter Scott, chief strategy officer of Play Anywhere. 

“The live streaming industry is evolving at the fastest pace in its history,” added Ryan Jespersen, director of product strategy of Dolby. “This is especially true as sports leagues and content owners shift to a direct-to-consumer (D2C) model.  Play Anywhere is providing significant innovation in the way these rightsholders can create new revenue streams based on Interactive rights across betting, gamification and e-commerce. This innovation aligns perfectly with our strategy at Dolby.io where we focus on providing technology that enables our customers to build Immersive, Interactive and Social experiences to engage their audiences and monetize their value.” 

Play Anywhere Holdings Inc. enables interactive services across all sports and unscripted content using its AI fintech platform, which includes a compliance engine, a clearinghouse, and a data analytics platform. Over the past several years the clearinghouse has processed over a trillion B2B transactions across more than a billion unique users.

Dolby.io is a new developer platform by Dolby Labs that puts decades of Dolby sight and sound technology into the hands of developers to deliver quality in communications, real-time streaming, and media processing solutions — at scale. 

The platform includes a powerful suite of self-service APIs, SDKs, and UI components that enable developers to easily integrate audio/video chat functionality into their apps, deploy real-time streaming services with sub-second latency, and add media processing capabilities into existing workflows to enhance the quality of audio and video files. 

SAN FRANCISCO—Dolby Laboratories has unveiled Dolby Atmos FlexConnect, a new Atmos feature that seamlessly pairs a television’s sound system with wireless speakers to make it easier for consumers to enjoy an immersive audio experience. TV manufacturer TCL will be the first to add the new feature to its 2024 TV lineup, Dolby said.

Dolby Atmos FlexConnect intelligently optimizes the sound for any room layout and speaker setup to ensure the best performance. TCL also will launch a line of wireless speakers designed to complement its 2024 TVs with Dolby Atmos FlexConnect, the company said.

“Consumers shouldn’t have to move their furniture to experience better audio, but rather audio should adapt to them,” said John Couling, senior vice president of entertainment at Dolby. “Dolby Atmos FlexConnect is an entirely new category of experience that offers consumers the freedom and flexibility to choose how they want to arrange their devices while still getting a great immersive Dolby Atmos experience.”

Calling Dolby Atmos FlexConnect “a significant step forward” on the road to immersive audio, Frédéric Langin, chief commercial officer of TCL Europe, said the new feature is consistent with TCL’s mission to deliver “great experiences for our customers.”

“With Dolby Atmos FlexConnect, users can unlock incredible immersive sound no matter how they arrange their audio devices. We can’t wait to introduce the world to this new tailored sound experience with our upcoming lineup of TVs and accessory wireless speakers,” he said.

Dolby Atmos FlexConnect enables consumers to place one or more wireless speakers anywhere in a room without having to worry about whether they are placed perfectly. It is also easily adaptable when more device types are added, Dolby said.

Once calibrated, the system combines each accessory device with the TV’s speakers to unlock the best sound performance and deliver a Dolby Atmos sound experience tailored to the consumer’s home.

Dolby and TCL will show Dolby Atmos FlexConnect at IFA 2023 in Berlin. The demonstration will be powered by MediaTek’s Pentonic Smart TV series chipset.

More information about the collaboration on the launch of Dolby Atmos FlexConnect will be available on YouTube (@TCLElectronics), Aug. 29 at 8 a.m. EDT.

More information is available on the Dolby and TCL websites.

SAN FRANCISCO—Dolby Laboratories has appointed Shriram Revankar to be senior vice president of its Advanced Technology Group, the company said today.

Revankar, most recently vice president and fellow at Adobe, founded several Adobe global research labs, including the company’s Big-Data Experience Lab and Document Intelligence Lab. His leadership of the labs helped to enable the growth of Adobe’s Experience Cloud and Document Cloud businesses, Dolby said.

In his role at Adobe, Revankar identified and built the near-term and future technology necessary for multiple businesses and SaaS-based offerings, which are reliant on data science, immersive media experiences, artificial intelligence and computer vision, it said.

“Throughout Shriram’s career, he has identified and delivered technology innovations to enable significant business growth for new and established businesses,” said Kevin Yeaman, president and CEO of Dolby. “I’m confident that Shriram’s leadership, passion for innovation and domain experience will help fuel Dolby’s future technology offerings and create more immersive experiences.”

Before his time at Adobe, Revankar was a Xerox Fellow and founded and led the company’s Smart and Adaptive Systems Lab. As chief architect of its Production Solutions business, he developed a platform that enabled integration of multiple independently developed enterprise solutions to interoperate at scale, Dolby said. 

Revankar earned a master’s degree and Ph. D. from SUNY Buffalo. Steve Forshay, who previously served as the company’s senior vice president of the Advanced Technology Group, will support the leadership transition and retire in June, it said.

“Dolby continuously innovates to deliver the best audio and imaging technologies,” said Revankar. “I’m excited to have the opportunity to build on Dolby’s strong product foundation and lead the team inventing the next generation of immersive tools, content and services.”

More information is available on the company’s website.

SAN FRANCISCO—Dolby Laboratories has acquired Millicast, a developer platform providing ultra-low latency video streaming capabilities at scale to massive audiences. Financial details of the transaction were not immediately available.

With Millicast, developers can stream the interactive events they build with Dolby.io, such as conferences and concerts, to audiences of more than 60,000 people with delays of less than 500ms, Dolby said.

The Millicast engineering team, which has developed standards such as WHIP, will bolster the WebRTC engineering expertise of Dolby.io. WHIP enables WebRTC interoperability, the company said.

"There is a growing demand to make online events as lifelike and compelling as being there in person," said Marie Huwe, senior vice president at Dolby.io. "We are thrilled to welcome the Millicast team to Dolby. Together, we expand the Dolby.io platform to make it even easier for developers and businesses to stream real-time content and immersive, interactive experiences that look and sound incredible." 

Dolby.io is focused on helping developers and businesses offer audiovisual content and interactive social communications in their applications and services. The ability to scale quality to meet the demands of high-volume streaming for virtual events is critical to Dolby.io’s mission, it said. 

The acquisition of Millicast brings consistent, field-tested ultra-low-latency so that small and large audiences can have high-quality, interactive experiences, it said.

Sample code is available from Dolby.

More information is available on the company’s website.

WASHINGTON D.C.—With NextGen TV signals projected to reach 45% of U.S. homes by the end of 2021, the Pearl TV consortium of broadcast station groups has announced that broadcasters and consumer electronics manufacturers are looking to build on the growth of the new standard by introducing a NextGen TV holiday brand marketing campaign to deepen consumer awareness and engagement.  

The campaign will begin in late November and highlight Dolby’s Sound Decisions campaign, which focuses  on the new audio features consumers can only experience with NextGen TV. 

“Delivering unprecedented entertainment, information, and engagement opportunities to  consumers, NextGen TV is revolutionizing viewers’ interactions with their screens,” stated Anne Schelle, managing director of Pearl TV. “With NextGen TV today and in the future, their experience is more immersive, visually and audibly better, and will continue to be enhanced as  more features from broadcasters and set manufacturers become available. The traction garnered in marketplace adoption has been remarkable in a relatively short time since the first  commercial launch in early 2020.” 

The Pearl TV group, which includes 750 network-affiliated television stations, and its U.S. major network partners, has been playing a central role in the rollout of signals. 

These broadcasters  and their stations are now planning to use the busy holiday season as an opportunity to promote and engage with local viewers on the new standard through the NextGen TV holiday brand  marketing campaign, Pearl TV said. 

This nine-week, multi-channel, nationwide campaign in NextGen TV markets will help broadcasters and stations to build awareness of NextGen TV with social media and creative ads. 

The campaign will educate consumers on the Dolby audio features, as well as NextGen TV’s future-proof forward technology compatibility, Pearl TV said. 

Dolby will be showcasing Voice + and other NextGen TV exclusive features as part of the Sound Decisions marketing campaign during the upcoming  holiday season, which will air on participating broadcast stations. 

As part of that effort, viewers will see the “Future of Television” commercials and audio-specific education on Dolby features.

NextGen TV signals, powered by Dolby technologies, gives viewers Voice + dialogue enhancement so they can hear every voice clearly, every time. Dolby’s technologies also provide consistent volume as viewers flip through channels,  making excessive volume changes a thing of the past. 

Pearl TV also noted that more than 40 new local TV market deployments—including New York, Chicago, and  Philadelphia—are planned in 2022 alone and that 75% of U.S. households are expected to experience NextGen TV by summer of 2022.

In addition, Pearl TV has introduced a NextGen TV Holiday Gift Guide to highlight the growing availability of NextGen TV capable TVs and devices.

TV Tech has been tracking all the ATSC 3.0 deployments and that coverage is available here. 

LOS ANGELES—The Television Academy has announced the 73rd Engineering Emmy Awards, with awards going to Netflix’s Reed Hastings, Dolby Labs and eight others. 

The awards will be given out on Thursday, Oct. 21, at the JW Marriott Hotel, Los Angeles, at L.A. LIVE.

"Engineers, scientists and technologists are a vital part of our industry and are key to the continuing evolution of television," said Frank Scherma, chairman and CEO of the Television Academy. "These extraordinary pioneers and groundbreaking companies we are honoring have advanced the medium and elevate storytelling to a worldwide audience."

"It has been a challenging year for the television production community; but despite the pandemic, production has come back and with it a host of new technologies that are being used to help the storytelling process," said Committee Chair John Leverence. "This year a wide range of technologies are being recognized. They run the gamut from high-end, computer-generated special effects to lighting enhancements; audio tools; script-note technology; and systems that help maintain distancing protocols."

The list of awards includes: 

• The Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Award will be given to Reed Hastings. This award honors a living individual whose ongoing contributions have significantly affected the state of television technology and engineering.
• The Philo T. Farnsworth Corporate Achievement Award will be given to Dolby Laboratories. This award honors an agency, company or institution whose contributions over time have substantially impacted television technology and engineering.

This year, eight Engineering Emmys were awarded. They are presented to an individual, company or organization for engineering developments that considerably improve existing methods or innovations that materially affect the transmission, recording or reception of television. The eight awards are: 

• Recipient: Arnold Global Illumination Rendering System - Marcos Fajardo, Alan King, Thiago Ize. Arnold is a photo-realistic, stochastic, ray-tracing renderer widely used by visual effects and animation studios around the world. 
• Recipient: ARRI SkyPanel - ARRI. The ARRI SkyPanel is a family of ultra-bright LED soft lights. 
• Recipient: CEDAR Studio - CEDAR Audio Ltd. CEDAR Studio was developed specifically to meet the needs of audio professionals in the field of film and television post-production. Originally comprising four processes, it has grown to provide a wide range of tools for cleaning and restoring audio. 
• Recipient: Golaem Crowd - Golaem. Golaem Crowd helps artists to populate television shows, films and game cinematics in minutes by procedurally animating thousands of characters with advanced behaviors in real-time and with complete artistic control. 
• Recipient: Massive - Stephen Regelous. Massive is a pioneering software package that first gave artists the ability to simulate crowds using an artificial intelligence-based approach. 
• Recipient: Scriptation - Steve Vitolo, Felipe A. Mendez P., Franco Zuccar. Scriptation automates the tedious process of transferring handwritten notes, annotations and verbal comments to a script and redistributing to all departments. 
• Recipient: Teradek Bolt 4K - Nicolaas Verheem, Marius van der Watt, Dennis Scheftner, Zvi Reznic. Teradek Bolt 4K is a zero-delay, wireless video transmission system for on-set monitoring, offering high-quality wireless video integrated into the workflow.
• Recipient: V-Ray - Chaos. Chaos' V-Ray is a physically based rendering and adaptive ray tracing solution used to create photo-realistic visual effects in episodic production since 2003. 

More on the awards and award winners can be found here. 

The 73rd Engineering Emmy Awards are overseen by Committee Chair John Leverence and committee members Wendy Aylsworth; Stuart Bass, ACE; Bob Bronow, CAS; Jeff Calderon; Jim DeFilippis; Greg Gewickey; David Ginsberg; Frank Morrone, CAS; David Plakos; Jeffrey Riedmiller; Michael Ruscio; Leon Silverman; Derek Spears; David Stump, ASC; Craig Weiss; and Barry Zegel.

SAN FRANCISCO—Comcast will deliver to Xfinity subscribers the 2020 Summer Olympics from Tokyo in Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos immersive audio. 

Dolby Vision delivers ultra-vivid picture quality, and Dolby Atmos offers an immersive audio experience. Together, the technologies bring viewers closer to the action, Dolby Laboratories reported. 

Both Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos will be used to present the opening and closing ceremonies, popular sports, such as gymnastics, track and field, swimming, diving, beach volleyball, golf and tennis, at each night’s primetime show, the company said.

NBC Olympics’ primetime coverage in Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos will be available in most markets, and all X1 customers with eligible devices will be able to view re-airing of the show the next day.

For X1 customers with eligible devices, the Golf Channel will present the golf competition at the Olympics with both technologies. The Olympic Channel will do likewise for tennis and wrestling, the company said. 

The enhanced coverage will be available to Comcast Xfinity subscribers at no additional charge. Viewers will need a compatible TV and an Xfinity X1 device to experience the Dolby Vision presentation. To enjoy Dolby Atmos, they will need a compatible audio device and Xfinity cable box, such as the Xi6 or XG1v4 cable box, it said.

More information is available on the company’s website. 

PARIS, DENVER, SINGAPORE & SYDNEY—ATEME has announced that it has integrated Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos immersive audio technologies into its Titan Live solution.

Jean-Christophe Morizur, senior director of Pro Products & Solutions at Dolby Laboratories noted that “ATEME Titan’s integration of Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, and our Dolby audio codec technologies is a one-stop-shop that enables the seamless delivery of live events in Dolby. This will provide operators – like leading sport broadcasters or streaming providers – the ability to deliver incredible viewing experiences to their audiences leveraging Dolby and ATEME’s proven and efficient toolsets.”

With ATEME’s Titan Live encoding solution now providing support for Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, ATEME said its customers will benefit from reduced cost and complexity of production and distribution. The integration also gives more deployment flexibility as it is compatible with the cloud. It supports both Dolby AC-4 and Dolby Audio delivery formats, such as Dolby Digital Plus, for maximum player interoperability when delivering Dolby Atmos content, the companies reported. 

This development comes as the result of a strong and successful long-term partnership between ATEME and Dolby, with the two companies having worked closely together on numerous tentpole world events over recent years.

Thomas Burnichon, vice president of innovation strategy at ATEME, explained that “our partnership with Dolby is all about innovation to ultimately improve the quality of experience for the end user – but just as importantly, this integration now makes deploying those technologies really straightforward and cost-effective.”

BURLINGTON, Mass.—Avid and Dolby have created a joint training and certification course for the integration of Dolby Atmos Renderer and Avid Pro Tools.

The course consists of 40 hours of self-learning, 18 hours of instructor-led training, held over three days, and a professional certification exam. When the course is completed and the exam passed, participants will receive the Avid Certified Professional: Pro Tools | Dolby Atmos certification credential.

Dubbed the PT210D Pro Tools Dolby Atmos Production course, it enables Pro Tools mixers to recognize the components of a Dolby Atmos content creation studio and outline workflows for creating immersive audio in Pro Tools. The course also provides instructions on techniques for working with Dolby Atmos beds and objects, Pro Tools sessions management, Dolby Atmos Renderer configurations and final delivery formats.

“This course provides core learning opportunities to fill the need for Dolby Atmos training and validates the skills and competencies of sound technicians and engineers to prepare and deliver Dolby Atmos content,” said Rob D’Amico, senior director of Product Marketing, Audio Solutions at Avid. “For students, this course addresses the lack of formal learning related to immersive audio. Launching the Pro Tools Dolby Atmos course and certification and building it into the Pro Tools learning paths and certifications accelerates their education and career path.”

The PT210D Pro Tools Dolby Atmos Production course is available through Avid’s website. 

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., & SAN FRANCISCO—Content cloud Box and Dolby Laboratories have announced an integration that gives Box users access to automated audio enhancement tools powered by Dolby technology.

Dolby.io now provides within Box seamless, cost-effective audio enhancement tools that leverage Dolby’s decades of entertainment experience.

“Over the last year, the media and entertainment industry has undergone a massive shift to the cloud to enable secure remote work from any device or location,” said Aaron Levie, CEO and co-founder of Box. “Dolby’s best-in-class technology combined with the Box Content Cloud gives users around the globe access to higher audio quality without adding additional strain to production teams.”

Dolby.io Media Processing APIs offer automated tools, including the ability to reduce unwanted background noise, improve speech intelligibility and fix loudness problems, to enhance audio quality without leaving Box, Dolby said. Box customers can now create professional sounding content with just a few mouse clicks, it said.

Dolby.io enables businesses and developers to enhance nearly any interaction or type of media to deliver premium communications, collaboration and audiovisual experience through their apps and services.

More information is available on the Dolby website.  

NEW YORK—Social media app display (formerly Tsū) will integrate live video technology from Dolby.io, the Dolby media and interactivity platform.

Creators of content for display now have the ability to livestream and enable multiparty audio and video communications. With Dolby.io, display creators can now take advantage of HD video, advanced noise reduction and spatial audio. The tools are embedded directly in the display platform so creators do not have to buy additional hardware, like microphones and cameras, display said.

Dolby.io is a set of communications and media processing APIs designed to enable businesses and developers to deliver high-quality media content in their apps and services. The social media app also will provide high-quality metrics, audio analytics and deeper content insight, it said.

“display is a fantastic example of how app developers can harness the power of Dolby.io APIs to deliver fidelity and quality to their users,” said Philip Nicol, senior director of interactivity business at Dolby. “There are a growing number of creators, artists and influencers seeking and experimenting with new and innovative publishing channels like display, and audiences deserve to experience their passion and hard work in the highest quality possible.”

Content creators using display share in advertising and affiliate revenue. By providing built-in Dolby.io-based tools, they not only can enhance their creative process, but also grow and engage their audiences, display said. 

“With the Dolby.io integration we are putting professional tools in all our creators’ hands, helping our community deliver high-quality content to audiences around the world,” said John Acunto, founder and chief innovation officer of display. “As we prepare to launch, we are proud to share how we’ve worked together with Dolby Laboratories to make display the social media challenger we know it will be.”

The display social media app can be downloaded from Apple’s App Store for iOS devices and Google Play for Android devices.

More information is available on the company’s website.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Oct. 28, 2019 – Cobalt Digital today announced Chicago-based Weigel Broadcasting Co., which owns and operates stations in nine markets in addition to MeTV and other digital multicast networks, is using Cobalt’s software defined 9922-FS-DSP platform for openGear® frames to provide microservices for Emergency Alert System local insertion and CALM compliance for its terrestrial stations. Most recently, the company purchased five cards in March for KTLN, a Heroes & Icons and MeTV affiliate serving San Francisco (DMA #8).

“It’s one of the few cards of its kind that is flexible,” explained Kyle Walker, vice president of technology for Weigel Broadcasting. “It’s the Swiss Army Knife of cards. This card can literally do it all at the right price point.”

Weigel has deployed dozens of 9922-FS-DSP cards, which offer a combination of rich broadcast connectivity and flexible microservices that make them cost effective options for many applications. The +EAS option allows Weigel to key EAS text crawls into active video and insert station logos. Some stations also add the +TTS option, which provides Text-To-Speech conversion of EAS text.

The 9922-FS-DSP also assists with compliance with the CALM Act, which requires commercials to be broadcast at the same volume as programming. Walker said a simple addition of a microservice for the 9922-FS-DSP makes it easy for Weigel to maintain CALM compliance for new digital subchannels and other broadcast properties.

For select remote locations, where an entire openGear frame is not necessary, Weigel uses Cobalt’s BBG-1022-FS-DSP, a standalone version of the 9922-FS-DSP. For installations that require cards from multiple vendors, Walker praised the openGear modular system. “It’s a great platform that allows several different vendors to play in the same sandbox,” he noted.

The 9922-FS-DSP offers a software defined platform that supports multiple microservices such as automatic audio leveling, upmixing, Dolby encoding and decoding, automatic SAP generation, EAS insertion, logo insertion, Text-To-Speech, and more. The base platform includes advanced frame sync features with per-channel audio delay and routing, as well as audio/video offset adjustment. Presets allow custom card setup, while layered presets allow changes related only to a specific function. Access to full control and monitoring is available through Cobalt’s DashBoard™ software or remote control panels.

About Cobalt Digital
Cobalt Digital Inc. designs and manufactures award-winning edge devices that help live video production and master control clients transition to IP, 4K, HDR, the cloud, and beyond. As a founding partner in the openGear® initiative and proud member of SMPTE, Cobalt also offers a best-of-breed interoperability platform that simplifies technological adoption. Distributed through a worldwide network of dealers, system integrators, and other partners, Cobalt Digital products are backed with a five-year warranty. Learn more at www.cobaltdigital.com. 

SAN DIEGO—Following the announcement of a successful test of an ATSC 3.0 standard component on Wednesday, another element of Next Gen TV has received a passing grade during a separate experiment. Verance Corporation and Dolby revealed they conducted a test in February with San Diego station KPBS on internet-delivered dialogue enhancement, a Next Gen TV personalized audio experience.

Using the Verance Aspect watermark and Dolby AC-4, the test demonstrated that the dialogue enhancement feature of the AC-4 can be delivered as a standalone audio stream over the internet and paired with video delivered through a live linear broadcast. The companies reported that the pairing was made with precise broadband audio and broadcast video synchronization, and delivered over all MVPD paths, including cable and satellite.

After delivering dialogue enhancement over a live linear 1.0 broadcast environment, Verance and Dolby are said to be planning to replicate the test with an ATSC 3.0 broadcaster.

Aspect is designed to ensure Next Gen capabilities like personalization, interactivity and census-like audience measurement can reach 100% of ATSC 1/0/3.0-connected TVs, regardless of whether they receive content over-the-air, via MVPD or OTT. The Dolby AC-4 encoder, meanwhile, is meant to be able to power multiple personalized audio experiences.

“Together with Verance and KPBS, we have proven the value and impact Dolby AC-4 can play in hybrid broadcasts and demonstrated the growing importance of next-generation features like better audibility, also known as dialogue enhancement,” said Mathias Bendull, vice president, multi-screen services audio, Dolby Laboratories. “Not just a feature for the hearing impaired, dialogue enhancement also enables all viewers to have a better experience when dialogue is harder to hear, like a noisy room.”

KPBS Operations & Technology Division Associate General Manager Bruce Rogow says that viewers have sent complaints about background music and other sounds drowning out voices in shows, and believes the technology tested by Verance and Dolby could be a “game changer.”

Joe Winograd, CTO of Verance, said: “Broadcasters investing in the development of Next Gen TV applications can now proceed with confidence, knowing that these applications are capable of reaching 100% of U.S. households, including 80% of viewers currently using MVPD services.”

For a comprehensive source of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see ourATSC3 silo.

WHITE PLAINS, NY--The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers has announced the new leadership for the 2019-2020 term, electing Patrick Griffis, vice president of technology in the Office of the CTO at Dolby Laboratories as its new president. Griffis, who succeeds current SMPTE President, Matthew Goldman, senior vice president of technology at MediaKind (formerly known as Ericsson Media Solutions) will take over, Jan. 1, 2019.

Griffis, who currently serves as SMPTE executive vice president and has previously held roles including education vice president, secretary-treasurer, and U.S. western region governor, will serve a two-year term as SMPTE president. Goldman will continue to serve as a SMPTE officer on the Executive Committee of the Board of Governors as the Society's immediate past president.

"SMPTE is building on the success of its centennial by focusing on new initiatives across its three pillars: standards, education, and membership," said Griffis. "We're embarking on some exciting new projects that will allow the Society to be even more agile in addressing the requirements of modern media and entertainment. I am particularly passionate about expanding our outreach to the next generation of membership and becoming an even more global organization. I look forward to working with my SMPTE and HPA colleagues to ensure the Society continues to meet the needs of the individuals and organizations advancing the science and the art of next-generation media and entertainment experiences."

Other incoming SMPTE officers elected for the two-year 2019-2020 term include:

• Executive Vice President: Hans Hoffmann, senior manager, media production technologies, for the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) Technology and Innovation department;

• Education Vice President: Sara Kudrle, product marketing manager at Imagine Communications, and

• Secretary Treasurer: John E. Ferder, director of engineering at MultiDyne Video & Fiber Optic Systems

Newly elected SMPTE Governors include:

• Sylvain Marcotte, systems architect and product owner at Grass Valley, a Belden Brand, for the Canada Region;

• Marina Kalkanis, CEO at M2A Media, for the United Kingdom Region;

• William T. Hayes, director of engineering and technology at Iowa Public Television, for the USA - Central Region;

• Michael DeValue, director of technology standards and strategy at Walt Disney Studios, for the USA - Hollywood Region, and

• Rosemarie Lockwood, northeastern U.S. regional sales engineer at Belden, for the USA - New York Region.

Six Governors were re-elected:

• Masayuki Sugawara, executive engineer at NEC Corporation, for the Asia-Pacific Region; François Abbe, president and founder of Mesclado, for the Europe, Africa, Middle East, Central and South America Region;

• Gary Mandle, consultant at Outtahand Displays, for the USA - Western Region;

• Michael Koetter, senior vice president for digital media systems at Turner, for USA - Southern Region;

• James M. Burger, partner at Thompson Coburn LLP, for the USA - Eastern Region, and

• Christopher Fetner, director, post partnerships and integrations (PPI) at Netflix, for the USA - Hollywood Region.

Governors who were not up for re-election and who continue on the SMPTE Board of Governors include:

• Merrick (Rick) Ackermans of MVA Broadcast Consulting (USA - Southern Region);

• Paul Briscoe of Televisionary Consulting (Canada Region);

• Mark Harrison of the Digital Production Partnership (DPP) (United Kingdom Region);

•  Siegfried Foessel of Fraunhofer IIS (EMEA and Central and South America Region);

• Paul Chapman of SIM Group (USA - Hollywood Region);

• Renard Jenkins of PBS (USA - Eastern Region), and

• Ward Hansford of Grass Valley (Asia-Pacific Region); and Ben Waggoner of Amazon (USA - Western Region).

Officers who were not up for re-election and who continue to serve on the SMPTE Board of Governors Executive Committee include SMPTE Standards Vice President Bruce Devlin of Mr. MXF and SMPTE Membership Vice President Peter Wharton of Happy Robotz LLC.

Newly elected officers and governors will be introduced to the SMPTE membership at the Society's Annual General Membership Meeting, 8:00 a.m., Oct. 23 at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel and Suites in downtown Los Angeles in conjunction with the SMPTE 2018 Annual Technical Conference & Exhibition (SMPTE 2018). The Annual General Membership Meeting is open to all attendees of SMPTE 2018, including those with exhibits-only passes. Further details and registration are available at smpte2018.org.

The election leaves the positions of finance vice president and governor for the New York Region vacant. These positions will be appointed by the SMPTE Board of Governors and will be announced at the Annual Membership Meeting. The Board of Governors will appoint governors-at-large as well as directors of standards, education, and membership at a later date.

Further information about the newly elected SMPTE leadership is available at smpte.org/2018-society-election-results. More information about the SMPTE Board of Governors is available at smpte.org/board.

MUNICH—Rohde & Schwarz’s Prismon system has passed the tests of Dolby Laboratories for decoding Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby E codecs.

The R&S Prismon, which enables the monitoring of various media formats, was evaluated on support of all defined audio channel configuration up to 7.1, web browser user interface, input via ASI transport stream and SDI, and display of Dolby metadata.

Dolby E is a digital audio encoding and decoding technology that is used to transfer and store audio material. Dolby Digital Plus is a multichannel audio system for HDTV and for encoding multichannel media for streaming, on-demand and download services.

AMSTERDAM—Dolby Laboratories’ next-gen AC-4 audio delivery system, which was engineered to deliver high-quality television sound, along with the Dolby Atmos surround sound system dominated the company’s IBC Show stand this year.

Mathias Bendull

Mathias Bendull, Dolby’s vice president of multiscreen services audio, described AC-4 technology and some of its many benefits to members of the press in a Sept. 17 stand briefing.

“[As part of the audio encoding process] we identify the frequencies which are dialogue and put a flag there to identify these frequencies,” he said. “The decoder recognizes the flag and can boost those specific frequencies and duck the others so that you can understand the dialogue a little more clearly.” He noted that performing this speech frequency identification as part of the encoding process brought with it several benefits.

“You could do the same thing [at] the TV,” he said. “But you would have to have a stronger chip set; you would also have more latency. You want to avoid these things and [do] as much as possible upstream.

“AC-4 supports the ideal scenario where you create the dialogue as individual audio elements and allow the consumer to distinguish the ratio of the dialogue to the music. We have dialogue intelligibility in the existing workflows, so we take the existing 5.1 mixes and through an intelligent encoding process create better intelligibility on the playback device.”

He observed that it would be fairly easy for television receiver manufacturers to implement a button marked “improve dialogue.” This would instantly boost intelligibility of commentary or other dialogue for consumers who might have a hearing disability, or just want to minimize some of the music and sound effects being transmitted.

Bendull said that some of the major television receiver manufacturers are beginning to support AC-4, including Samsung and LG, and that two European broadcasters—Spain’s RTVE and France Télévisions—have been airing AC-4 audio.

“RTVE is using one of their channels [in Madrid] to deliver AC-4. The other one is in Paris, and that one has been on the air for almost a year-and-a-half now transmitting an AC-4 combination with HD, or sometimes 4K using Dolby Vision.”

SURROUND SOUND AS PART OF THE BIG (TV) PICTURE

Rob France, senior product marketing manager at Dolby, provided information about another Dolby technology, the Atmos surround sound system.

“Dolby Atmos for live sport is really about bringing [home] the passion of the game in ways that the vision alone just can’t [deliver],” said France. “Audio is the only way you can connect the fans with the crowds that are there [in the sports venue] in a really compelling way.

He explained that crowd noise, the sound from the kicking or striking of a ball, public-address audio, all contribute to a spectator’s experience when attending sports events in person and producers of such events for television employ all of these audio elements, and more, to bring the “live viewing” experience to the home television consumer as fully as possible. He added that live sports audio production differed from that in most other types of programming. 

“First, you are listening [mostly] to scene-based rather than specific individual sounds. [And] because of the time pressure and the complexity in producing a live event, you really have to look at a simpler way of producing audio,” noting that Atmos technology enables broadcasters to more easily do this and enhance the home viewer’s experience.

“[U.K. broadcasters] BT Sport and Sky Sports are producing regular football games in Dolby Atmos. BT Sport launched their Dolby Atmos broadcast as the world’s first broadcaster to do live content on a regular basis...in January of this year. Sky Sports recently launched the start of its season [with Atmos] about one month ago, and between them, they’re going to deliver about 200 events and matches through next year.”

DOLBY AND ATSC 3.0

As the audio use cases described centered on European deployments, France and Bendull were asked about U.S. broadcasting applications, specifically in connection with the pending ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard.

“You’re seeing it on Netflix and other services,” said France. “[And] we’ve see trials in the past with broadcasters in the U.S. as well. ATSC 3 will drive a lot of the content production, and it will naturally bring along all of the features of AC-4 such as the dialogue enhancement, which is absolutely key. Premium content will be mixed in Dolby Atmos…giving more features. Ultimately, ATSC 3, I think, will be one of those things that [will] cause content to be created in a better way.”

“Within ATSC 3, the U.S. broadcasters have decided to use AC-4 for the next-generation transmissions,” said Bendull. “The CTA…has followed that recommendation in their recent decision about next-generation ATSC 3 TVs as well, and we are currently engaged with a number of networks in the U.S. to launch trials in 2018 to test that, as we have done in Europe.”

(AC-4 audio has been adopted by the DVB Project and standardized by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute. It was approved on Feb. 23 this year as one of the next-generation audio transmission standards for use in ATSC 3.0.)

TORONTO—LG Electronics and Dolby Labs announced the LG UP970 Ultra HD Blu-ray player, LG’s first 4K Blu-ray player with Dolby Vision high-dynamic range imaging to be made available later this year through a software update. No prices were listed.

The UP970 also will offer support for the generic HDR format, HDR10; 10-bit color and Rec. ITU-R BT. 2020 color gamut, as well as playback of high-efficiency video coding, or HEVC. It’s also compatible with several audio formats, including Dolby True HD, Dolby Atmos and DTS-HD Master Audio.

The UP970 has two HDMI ports, an HDMI 2.0a port for Ultra HD video output and an HDMI 1.4 for audio output that can connect with hi-fi devices, such as AVRs and sound bars. With Ethernet and Wi-Fi connections, content can be streamed via Netflix and YouTube, while the USB port allows for playback of video and audio.

According to Dolby, there are more than 80 titles available through streaming services in Dolby Vision HDR.

SAN FRANCISCO—Dolby and Netflix today announced they would be adding over 100 hours of high dynamic range programming to the streaming platform by August 2016, with more than 150 hours slated by the end of the year. Upcoming Dolby Vision-enhanced titles include “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” “Marvel’s Jessica Jones,” and “Bloodline”.

Dolby Vision HDR technology is currently available in LG and Vizio TV sets, and on Netflix and VUDU streaming platforms. The Netflix original series, “Marco Polo,” illustrated here, is a current HDR offering.

SAN FRANCISCO & CULVER CITY, CALIF.—In a deal between Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and Dolby Laboratories, past and future titles from SPHE will be released with Dolby Atmos soundtracks, which is designed to deliver audio that places and moves specific sounds anywhere. This will include the first titles to be released in 4K/UHD disc format.

Among the first titles that SPHE is set to release in the new 4K/UHD format with Dolby Atmos are “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” “Salt,” “Hancock,” “Chappie,” “Pineapple Express” and “The Smurfs 2.” Additional titles will be announced at later dates.

“By adding Dolby Atmos to our home entertainment content, SPHE has the ability to offer audiences a rich, enveloping sound experience on both physical and digital formats, including the new 4K Ultra HD discs,” said Man Jit Singh, SPHE president.

SAN FRANCISCO and HSINCHU, TAIWAN—MediaTek has announced that it will go with Dolby Laboratories’ Dolby Vision 4K UHD system-on-a-chip technology for its high-dynamic range TVs, Ultra HD Blu-ray players, and digital media adapters.

Dolby Vision offers increased UHD and HD video signals for OTT online streaming, video on demand, broadcast, UHD Blu-Ray, and gaming applications. Dolby Vision’s VS10 universal HDR playback technology supports dual-layer and single-layer Dolby Vision streams and other HDR formats based on the SMPTE ST 2084 standard. This allows for peak brightness, local contrast and wider color gamut.

MediaTek is a developer of systems-on-chip technology for mobile devices, wireless networking, HDTV, DVD and Blu-ray. The company is headquartered in Taiwan.

Dolby Laboratories is a provider of audio, video and voice technology based out of San Francisco. 

SAN FRANCISCO – Dolby Laboratories has announced a collaboration with Hong Kong-based Top Victory Investments to promote Dolby’s AC-4 audio format standard in its affiliate TP Vision’s TVs for next-generation broadcast systems and streaming Internet content. Dolby AC-4 is available now for product development, but a target date of 2017 has been set for it to be available for consumer TVs.

The Dolby AC-4 provides delivery of premium consumer experiences to TVs and other consumer devices, alternate language versions, and services for hearing-impaired and visually impaired audiences. It is currently available in the DVB Audio/Video Toolbox for use in DVB broadcast systems.

Top Victory joins Sony Visual Products and VIZIO as companies that have committed to promoting AC-4.

The core elements of Dolby AC-4 have been standardized with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute. Dolby has also proposed AC-4 to be included in ATSC 3.0.

LOS ANGELES—The technology of broadcasting is due for a major upgrade once the Advanced Television Systems Committee finalizes the specifications for the proposed ATSC 3.0 standard, designed to replace the 20 year old ATSC 1.0 specification (augmented in 2013 with ATSC 2.0). At the association’s meeting last month, the record number of attendees indicated how crucial this new standard is going to be for the future of TV both over-the-air, on cable, and potentially influencing IT delivery.

MPEG-H Audio offers viewers the ability to turn up or down particular audio elements in a program--such as dialogue or sound effects--as they prefer.

“Our schedule is to get to a ‘candidate standard’ level for all the components of ATSC 3.0 by the end of the year,” said ATSC President Mark Richer. “This will then be voted on before the end of next year by our technology group and then by the whole ATSC membership for the final decision.”

AND THEN THERE WERE TWO

The industry is abuzz with speculation about the upcoming video standard in ATSC 3.0, possibly including High Dynamic Range, multiple frame rates, and wider color gamuts. But the audio component of this new standard has received far less publicity.

Yet the field of competitors for the next broadcast—and therefore production—audio standard which once included Dolby Labs, DTS, Fraunhofer IIS, NBCUniversal, Samsung, Technicolor and Qualcomm, has been whittled down to two contenders: Dolby, with its AC-4 technology, and the MPEG-H Alliance represented by Fraunhofer on behalf of its partners, Qualcomm and Technicolor.

MPEG-H is an existing international standard that Fraunhofer is proposing as the audio part of ATSC 3.0, according to Robert Bleidt, general manager of Fraunhofer USA Digital Media Technologies in San Jose, Calif., a subsidiary of Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the renowned German R&D organization. “We are trying to use the MPEG-H approach to bring three primary features to TV viewers: interactivity, greater immersion, and universal delivery.”

As Bleidt explains it, the “interactivity” capability will let viewers adjust the presence of various audio objects in the broadcast signal. This could include bringing an announcer’s voice out of the background for greater clarity, or the option of listening to either the home team or the visitor’s native broadcast mix depending on fan preference, and even the potential of hearing programs in different languages.

Robert Bleidt

The “immersive” factor is a quantum leap over Surround Sound because it adds 3D audio components such as many more channels including ceiling or floor speakers. Fraunhofer’s psycho-acoustic tests have shown this is almost as significant as moving from stereo to surround sound.

To get these sounds to the panoply of big and small screen devices that want to receive them, MPEG-H can optimize its audio reproduction to best match the capabilities of the system to which the viewer is listening.

“One of the primary advantages of the MPEG-H system is that it is designed to work with the existing equipment of today’s broadcasters,” Bleidt said. “We’ve established a four-stage process to gradually put MPEG-H into today’s broadcast workflow. In fact, we showed all four stages working live on-the-air at the NAB Show.”

Fraunhofer accomplished this with the help of some MPEG-H audio monitoring units from Jünger Audio after installing new encoding/decoding equipment to handle the MPEG-H codecs. They demonstrated that with MPEG-H there is no need to overhaul either existing control rooms or outside broadcast trucks, and it can be easily edited on the NLE timelines such as Adobe’s Premiere Pro CC.

The four stages to attain full MPEG-H capabilities start with transmitting Surround Sound using current metadata, but with a 50 percent reduction in bit rate over today’s AC-3 model. Then the broadcaster could add interactive objects to let viewers adjust the dialog or sound effects levels in the audio mix. Step three incorporates the inclusion of 3D sound with ceiling channels and the final step includes the option to introduce “higher order ambisonics” (HOA) to represent the sound environment by determining the accuracy of representation of the pressure field. A spatial encoding is performed on the HOA coefficient signals to fit HOA signals into a studio’s existing SDI infrastructure.

To enable flexible implementation, MPEG-H can use any combination of three techniques to get the audio through a broadcast system: traditional channels such as 5.1, 7.1 or more, audio objects, or HOA. 

“Even though this will require viewers to purchase all new equipment to get these advantages,” Bleidt said, “the MPEG-H Alliance feels if MPEG-H is adopted for the audio component of the ATSC 3.0 standard, it will be a great opportunity to remove the shortcomings of the prior system and give viewers the advantages of these new audio technology features.”

BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD

Dolby Labs’ candidate for ATSC 3.0 audio revolves around the company’s AC4 technology.

“For us it is all about improving today while enabling tomorrow,” said Jeff Riedmiller, senior director of the sound group, office of the CTO, at Dolby Laboratories in San Francisco. “Three years ago when we started developing AC4, we really went back to the drawing board.”

Jeff Riedmiller

As Riedmiller describes it, the vision of AC4 is based on four pillars, the first of which is to improve reach to enable efficient delivery to all types of devices.

While the Surround Sound technique found in its predecessor, AC3, provided a multichannel living room experience, AC4 offers 50 percent more efficiency, enabling delivery of 2D and 3D sound environments to a wider number of homes and mobile receivers. AC3 delivered stereo sound at 192 Kbps and 5.1 surround at 384 Kbps, but for today’s IT delivery, the market is demanding stereo bitrates at 48-64 Kbps, 5.1 at 100-200 Kbps and immersive multichannel audio like Dolby Atmos at 200-300 Kbps, which is what AC4 enables.

The second pillar is simplified daily operational aspects, such as automatic volume leveling and seamless audio for ad insertions. To comply with the CALM (Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation) Act, AC4 has built-in intelligent loudness and multiband dynamic range control without manual intervention.

“These compression curves in combination with the loudness information generated by the encoder produce in real time the dynamic range coefficients desired by the original artist,” Riedmiller said. “The decoder then has the ability to scale across the needs of various playback options ranging from mobile phones to home theater systems.” 

Pillar number three of AC4 allows the end user to choose which components of the audio tracks they want to select to enhance their listening experience, including descriptive video, multiple languages or home field broadcasts, with the ability to enhance and control the center announcer or dialog track’s presence.

Then the fourth pillar delivers immersive 3D object-oriented sound, including height dimensions and potentially speakers providing sound at floor level. 

“Just adding the height element brings us a huge leap toward engaging the senses in a more natural way,” Riedmiller said. “The next system for ATSC sound needs to shoot for ‘audio nirvana,’ sort of a ‘Stairway to Heaven’ beginning with better codec efficiency, improved loudness management, enhanced audio perspective and language substitution, and then the immersive benefits of audio objects throughout the sound field.”

Riedmiller acknowledges that any system based on ATSC 3.0 will not be backward compatible with current ATSC equipment, but added that “we needed to start with a clean slate when designing our audio proposal. 

“TV and set-top box manufacturers should be able to develop additional support capabilities to provide the audience with a satisfactory viewing experience on legacy equipment,” he said.

The proposed technologies from both contenders—Fraunhofer with the MPEG-H Alliance and Dolby Labs’ AC4—are based on years of audio technology experience. Whichever wins the competition for the audio component of the ATSC 3.0 standard will provide a quantum leap in the audience’s enjoyment of future digital audio/video communications.

Ever since audio technology made the shift from mono to stereo imaging it seems that some listeners have been on a quest for the most immersive audio image possible. Quadrophonic, Ambisonics, Dolby Surround, DTS and Dolby Digital were all born from the desire to provide a truly encompassing audible experience for listeners.

Although early developments were audio- only, it wasn’t long before multichannel audio was married to motion pictures using systems like Fantasound and Cinerama, while television broadcasts remained mono until the 1980s.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
Take a stroll through consumer electronics stores now and you’ll see a proliferation of surround systems to accompany large-screen televisions, but just as many personal Bluetooth speaker systems and plenty of high-end headphones. In fact, the trend for surround and immersion seems to be moving toward personal versus shared experiences, driven by smartphones and handheld gaming systems. However, much of the content being consumed on these devices still originates with media and broadcast production companies.

Juan Punyed, Telos Alliance director of sales for Latin America and Canada, previews a Dolby Atmos immersive audio demo in the Telos Alliance NAB booth. A number of manufacturers jumped into the immersive audio field early in the game, but now, with ATSC 3.0 seeking to bring immersion into the broadcast space, the Audio Engineering Society has stepped forward with a standard aimed at ensuring immersive audio delivery systems use the same file format for exchange of spatial audio information.

Before we take a look at the standard it is important to note that this standard promotes binaural listening as the key to immersion, which means this standard is all about the head and the space, real or simulated, that it resides in.

Binaural recording is nothing new and the typical method for making binaural recordings is to use a dummy head with microphones placed at the ears, the thought being to capture audio as a human would hear it. Unfortunately, the human head itself is another object in the acoustic space and will itself modify the audio we hear.

Depending on many variables—including where our head is in the soundfield in relation to the source—sound is likely to arrive at each ear at a slightly different time, at a different intensity and with a somewhat different frequency response depending on the shape of our head and ears, and reflections/cancelations from our body.

IT’S ALL IN THE HEAD
Fortunately our brains learn and adapt our hearing to compensate in a response called head-related transfer function (HRTF). HRTF is a key parameter of AES69 along with the help of two impulse responses: head-related impulse response (HRIR), which helps us localize the source, and directional-room impulse response (DRIR), which allows us to place the source in the room.

As with other AES standards, this one builds upon work done by other industry groups rather than establish conflicting standards and unnecessarily reinventing the wheel. In this case the work is based on ISO, ITU and IETF standards and utilizes netCDF-4 as the format for data storage.

The standard relies heavily on audio objects, a staple of the gaming audio world, which is relatively new to broadcast, and something we’ll see a lot more of as we inch closer to ATSC 3.0. The primary objects in AES69 are “Listeners,” which can consist of an unlimited number of receivers; “Sources,” which can consist of an unlimited number of emitters; and “Rooms.”

In any given AES69 file there can only be one Listener, one Source and one Room. These objects are placed within two coordinate systems that determine where they exist in space. The Global Coordinate System allows placement of sources and listeners inside the space, while each source and listener have their own local coordinates within the global system, which allow placement of emitters within the source and receivers within the listener.

Directivity patterns of emitters and receivers are defined within the local coordinate system. To assist with orientation, orthogonal “View” and “Up” vectors are defined, with View on the positive x-axis while Up is on the positive z-axis. A long list of metadata parameters are included and provide an additional method of defining variables and their characteristics, as well as important information about the data inside the file.

As one would expect, listener, receiver, room and room types are described in the metadata parameters, and provision is made for external applications to include metadata specific to their needs and requirements. Available room types are free field, reverberant, shoebox and .dae, a data interchange file providing links to 3D applications. All information gets stored in a single netCDF-4 binary data file with a .sofa (Spatially Oriented Format for Acoustics) extension. AES69-2015 goes into far more detail and depth than there is room to cover here so, as always, I encourage you to pick up a copy and dig in if you want to know more.

Binaural audio is not without its issues and detractors. Location of sources in some binaural recordings can be hard to pinpoint, with sounds to the sides being easiest to determine while sounds to the front and rear sometimes seeming as if they are located at the listening position itself.

Fortunately, the sizable list of parameters included in AES69-2015, along with built-in extensibility, likely means the standard has enough breadth to compensate for any shortcomings of binaural listening.

My one experience listening to an immersive format so far was a demonstration of Headphone:X from DTS and it was a phenomenal experience. Audio sources were played over speakers in the demonstration room; then we were instructed to put on supplied headphones and the audio was repeated.

The headphone audio sounded virtually the same as the audio from the speakers, (to the extent that most of us took the headphones off to be sure). Of course, the DTS guys had plenty of time beforehand to run room impulses and tailor the setup before we arrived, but the result was very impressive nonetheless.

If the immersive systems from other manufacturers are as impressive, and I expect they are, and AES69-2015 is used for interchange among systems, then the world of immersive audio is about to become a very exciting place to listen.

Jay Yeary is a broadcast engineer specializing in audio. He is an AES Fellow and is a member of both SBE and SMPTE. He can be contacted via TV Technology.

Audio products at this year’s CES were really more iteration than innovation, though there were some surprises. It seems as if every manufacturer has a wireless audio product of some kind now, with the main trend being multiroom systems. LG introduced their Music Flow system made up of a Wi-Fi sound bar and three Wi-Fi remote speakers while Samsung added new egg-shaped WAM7500 and WAM 6500 speakers to the Shape multiroom range they introduced last year.

The S9W television from Samsung and designer Yves Behar rests on a cube-shaped base that is actually a sound cube, proving that it’s possible for the audio system to be just as stylish as the screen. New companies SuperTooth and Nyne Multimedia also entered the multiroom speaker market and Google Cast for Audio, Google’s alternative to Apple AirPlay, made its debut with Sony on-board as an early partner.

As television sets become sleeker and sexier, their built-in audio offerings seem to sound worse, which is where sound bars come in. These systems are now available in a wide range of offerings up to 9.1 channels (somehow), with vacuum tubes and even curved sound bars to match the new curved UHD sets.

The S9W television from Samsung and designer Yves Behar rests on a cube-shaped base that is actually a sound cube, proving that it’s possible for the audio system to be just as stylish as the screen. However, the most intriguing sound bar system I’ve run across to date is the Dimension from pro audio manufacturer Focal. The Dimension addresses many of the shortcomings of standard 5.1 sound bars by having five matching full-range drivers in the box, all aligned on the same plane, with a separate subwoofer, which doubles as a stand for the television.

Networked music players are suddenly a big deal, with the CXN Upsampling Network Music Player from Cambridge Audio and the SU-R1 and ST-C700 Network Audio Control Players from the recently resurrected Technics brand. All of these devices allow the user to listen to audio from just about any source on your network, whether a stream of some sort or a local device, and all are specifically targeted to encourage low-resolution audio sources to sound better through the use of some very sophisticated technology that is likely not present in the source device. Also, although Technics is back, there is no mention so far of any reintroduction of their highly sought-after direct-drive turntables.

Networked music players were suddenly a big deal this year at CES, including Cambridge Audio’s CXN Upsampling Network Music Player. High Resolution Audio was present in the form of a couple of HR audio players. The long-awaited Pono player has the ability to handle HR files ranging from CD quality 44.1 kHz/16 bit up to 192 kHz/24 bit and formats as varied as FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, unprotected AAC, MP3 and 128 GB storage. However, the surprising HR audio announcement was the Sony NW-ZX2 Walkman, which handles the same files and formats as the Pono, but costs enough to make the Pono player seem cheap. I find myself intrigued by both of these devices, but wonder if the available storage is enough to carry a decent amount of HR audio files.

Auro-3D, Dolby, DTS and Fraunhofer were on hand to make sure people don’t forget about immersive audio, but the interesting news for this technology came from Pioneer, which showcased their Dolby Atmos home products; and from Fraunhofer, which demonstrated MPEG-H, their bid for immersive technology for broadcast. 3D immersive audio for gaming was on display by Oculus Rift in their Crescent Bay and Gear VR headsets using HRTF to modify in-game sound as the player moved their head. This seems like a technology begging for a television adaptation.

ON TO NAMM
The NAMM show usually doesn’t have much impact on television audio, but there were some very interesting announcements this year including an as yet #ff0000 partnership between Sennheiser and Apogee. However, the news most relevant to us was from Avid.

Last year’s revelation of Avid Everywhere and its upcoming subscription models was met with confusion, which only increased after support plans were introduced near the end of 2014.

The Focal Dimension addresses many of the shortcomings of standard 5.1 sound bars by having five matching full-range drivers in the box, all aligned on the same plane, with a separate subwoofer, which doubles as a stand for the television. Anyone running a version of Pro Tools prior to v11 was expected to sign onto a support plan or lose their ability to upgrade in the future. We now have a slightly clearer picture of what’s coming, now that Avid has announced Pro Tools 12. It will include Cloud Collaboration and the Marketplace, finally bringing Avid Everywhere to Pro Tools, but with no announcement about audio features other than those related to collaboration.

Surprisingly, there is also a free version of Pro Tools called Pro Tools | First, which is a great idea, though users must operate within some built-in limitations. All projects in First are stored in the Avid Cloud rather than the user’s hard drive, and users must be online to save and close the project. Only three projects are included with the software (additional projects will be available for purchase). Only the plugins included by Avid or those purchased in the Avid Marketplace can be used with this version. There is no ability to share Pro Tools sessions with other users, though all new versions of Pro Tools will eventually be able to collaborate with one another through the Avid Cloud.

One positive trend announced with this version is that iLok authorization is not required to run Pro Tools | First or its included plug-ins, though an Avid Cloud account is required in its place. Pro Tools users looking for features outside of collaboration will likely be disappointed by v12, but the move away from iLok authorization is a bright spot for everyone who has ever worried about losing their software dongle. The new subscription model—a source of irritation for many users—will hopefully provide Avid the resources it needs to address bug fixes and feature requests that users have been asking for.

Jay Yeary is a broadcast engineer specializing in audio. He is an AES Fellow and is a member of both SBE and SMPTE. He can be contacted via TV Technology.

The current buzz in the television industry is all about the promise of 4K, yet most of the talk is centered on video quality, with very little being said about the audio that supports the image.

The reason so little is being said about audio for 4K television is because it is an area that’s still in its infancy. No standards currently exist that define exactly what audio for 4K is, but organizations like ATSC and SMPTE are now tackling the technical requirements while Dolby, DTS, Fraunhofer, and other manufacturers are sorting out the creation and consumer ends of the chain. The part that is crystal clear is that the efforts of all the standards organizations and manufacturers are aimed at making the 4K audio experience both immersive and personalized, and that these goals are centered around object-based audio.

DOLBY ATMOS
Object-based (also called object-oriented) audio has been used in video games for years, but it made significant media industry news with the introduction of Dolby Atmos. This format, developed for cinema but destined for homes, was designed to create a completely enveloping audio experience for the filmgoer by placing speakers in the ceiling in addition to the front, side, and rear walls. The base 9.1 channel surround bed covers the front of the cinema while 118 individual audio objects are placed or panned everywhere else in the room. The audio objects can consist of fully mixed audio channels but are more likely to be individual or specifically grouped sounds, depending on what needs to be heard in any of the (up to) 64 addressable speakers at any given point in the film. While this creates a memorable experience in the theater, the move is now underway to bring this immersive audio experience to the home listener by adopting and implementing the NHK-developed 22.2 surround platform.

Home speaker placement for a potential “Immersive audio” experience Delivering 24 channels of audio to the home could prove to be a challenge, but not nearly as insurmountable a challenge as putting 24 speakers in a living room. The recently released HDMI 2.0 specification may solve the consumer end of the delivery chain with its support of 32 channels of audio, along with the specification for enough bandwidth in the pipe that each of those channels can pass audio at 48 kHz. Speaker-count, however, is something that all of the groups pushing immersive audio recognize to be a problem, so they’ve put forth a variety of solutions to achieve the same result without turning living rooms into speaker demo rooms. Those solutions run the gamut, from hanging speakers at ceiling height in the room’s corners, to sound bars under and sound frames around television screens, to surround headphones for personal listening. Oddly, after all of the effort that goes into making the audio immersive the end result is still expected to be downmixed to be compatible for playback on 5.1, stereo, and even mono systems.

CUSTOMIZED AUDIO
Personalization may actually be the most interesting, and most likely to deliver, promise of audio objects for television. Because an object can be any piece of audio in the program, the home listener can have as much control of the program audio as the content creator allows. Turning announce channels into audio objects means that listeners can swap the main broadcast announcers for local language or home team announcers without changing anything else in the mix. The listener can raise voice track volume over background sounds if they are having trouble distinguishing the voice, or mute the voices if they want to experience the event without commentary. Descriptive video service or special commentary programs could be delivered easily using this same method. Of course all of this customizability requires new equipment for content creators and consumers as well as some method of control, most likely to be extended metadata, which will require proper authoring and delivery to the home for the system to function.

The Traumpalast in Backnang, Germany contracted with Kinoton to install a Dolby Atmos audio system earlier this year. The system includes a total of 57 speakers. The introduction of audio objects into the production process certainly means workflow changes, with additional audio sources and new metadata to manage, but that’s not the only area where their impact will be felt. Audio rooms will need to have the physical space to hold the additional speakers required by this format and also for proper imaging from so many sound sources. This means that broadcasters and production houses will need to allot more facility space for audio rooms at a time when many audio production room footprints are shrinking. Post-production systems may require more powerful workstations, with additional DSP and output busses in order to process and deliver the large number of objects that a production may produce. We may even see the return of audio consoles to television audio post rooms just to handle the complex routing and panning of audio objects.

Creating immersion during live event production will require a completely reimagined workflow and could mean that, due to the physical limitations of mobile unit mix spaces, the onsite mixer will send a surround mix plus other audio sources to a production facility with better listening environments where the final immersive mix is actually assembled. To get all of these channels from site to production facility will likely double the number of transmission paths needed. For in-studio show productions it may be difficult to create an immersive environment without the placement of additional microphones or the introduction of pre-produced atmospheres into the program.

With television industry heavyweights pushing immersion and personalization to the forefront, audio objects seem like a technology we’ll all be getting to know better over the next few years, but how widely and to what extent it gets implemented will depend on how far creators and broadcasters are willing to go to produce content with this new technology. It also remains to be seen whether consumers will embrace immersion or personalization of the audio that comes along with their video. That decision may ultimately hinge on whether existing problems and complexities are solved or made worse by this new technology.

Jay Yeary is an audio engineer currently working with the engineering department of a large media company. He finds the concept of audio objects fascinating and dreams of some day panning sounds around 64 speakers, just for fun. He can be reached via TV Technology.

SAN FRANCISCO—Last month's article discussed the theory behind high-end audio coding. The second half of this series will define broadcast quality and tandem coding losses, and look at their effect on perceived quality. (To read part one of this article series on understanding the theory behind high-end audio coding, go to Next-gen audio coding - Part 1.)

BROADCAST QUALITY
Being familiar with standardized test methodologies and knowing how to interpret their results will significantly aid in understanding broadcast quality. Unknown to many, there is an ITU recommendation that defines the requirements for audio coding systems in digital broadcasting. ITU-R BS.1548-1 (User Requirements for Audio Coding Systems for Digital Broadcasting, Annex 2) states that an audio codec (and the bit rate chosen) requires mean values consistently higher than 4.0 on the BS.1116-1 five-grade scale at the reference listening position. (See Table 1.)

Remember, a score of 4.0 on the BS.1116-1 scale is also equivalent to a diffgrade score of -1.0. Hence, looking at the results of the two audio coding systems discussed in the revious article (at the data rates tested), only the first system met the ITU-R criteria for broadcast quality. (See Figures 1 and 2.)

For a familiar example of what broadcast quality sounds like, consider that most Region 1 SD Hollywood DVD movies provide a decent benchmark for a codec being operated at a data rate that yields broadcast quality. However, high-definition DVDs typically use audio data rates at least two times higher than the rate of standard-definiton DVDs, and some even use a lossless audio codec. Therefore, with many broadcasters and next-generation service providers under increasing pressure to lower audio bit rates, the perceived quality between some next-generation broadcast systems, services and disc-based media (such as blue-laser DVD, for example) may be quite different in the near future.

Here are a few further items to look for with a properly administered and documented listening test:

• A graphical presentation of the test results
  
• General information about the audio coding system used to process the test material
  
• A specification for selecting test subjects as well as test materials
  
• Physical specifications of the listening environment, equipment, room dimensions, acoustic properties of the listening environment and transducer types/placement
  
• Detail regarding the analysis of the processed data
  
• A detailed basis for all conclusions
  
• Details of the test design, as well as the training process (instruction to test subjects)

Be wary if the test administrator, test facility, research facility or codec manufacturer cannot provide a complete set of supporting documentation regarding the details of its test and the basis for its results.

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
Here is a high-level overview of what to listen for when evaluating a new coding system at a number of data rates.

The first thing to listen for is pre-echo, which is a type of impairment that affects (dampens) the sharpness and clarity of signals that are transient in nature. (As a side note, castanets are typically used to determine a codec's ability to handle transient signals across a number of data rates.)

Another type of common coding artifact is related to changes in timbre at higher frequencies and can sound similar to birds chirping (sometimes called birdies). This is most often caused by running a codec at too low of a data rate for spectrally demanding content.

Listen for a gritty or grainy sound quality, loss of bandwidth (typically in the high frequency region) — since many coding systems limit the coded audio bandwidth at aggressive (low) data rates — and image shifts with stereo or multichannel material. Many modern audio coding systems have a mechanism for synthesizing high frequency energy in the decoder from information that was generated and carried in the bit stream from the encoder.

TANDEM CODING LOSSES
Tandem coding losses, which affect perceived quality, occur when the coding errors in each system (used in tandem) combine to generate larger errors — that is, new errors created in addition to the old ones. These types of errors occur for several reasons, including:

• Quantization levels in one audio coding system do not map to the same levels in another.
  
• Different filter banks are used in the systems.
  
• There are time delays between the systems.
  
• There are changes in signal amplitude between the systems.
  
• Perceptual models are used.

To demonstrate the effect tandem coding losses have on perceived quality, consider Figures 3 and 4, which are both based on analysis performed in the lab with critical material. The results provide an approximation of the magnitude tandem coding losses have on perceived quality. Figure 3 shows a comparison between data rate and audio quality/relative coding error for two next-generation audio codecs available today. The x-axis indicates the data rate as a percentage of the data rate required for codec A to be at broadcast quality (as per ITU-R BS.1548-1). Codec B is more efficient where broadcast quality is about 80 percent of the data rate of codec A. If you were to operate codec B at a data rate 50 percent below the data rate required for broadcast quality with codec A, the quality would drop significantly to between “poor” and “fair.”

Many new codecs are designed for emission applications requiring the highest quality at the lowest data rate for only a single generation of encoding and decoding (that is, from the emission point to a viewer's home). These codecs are not designed for applications where different coding systems are operating in tandem (cascade) with each other (which is becoming commonplace throughout today's broadcast chain).

Figure 4 shows the effect of cascading the two different codecs versus single-generation performance. By placing the more efficient codec B in tandem with codec A (where A is being operated at a rate that is considered to be broadcast quality), the decrease in quality is significant (as shown by the curve with open circles). This is true even when both codecs are independently operating at data rates that yield broadcast quality.

As a real-world application example, consider an IPTV operator that is required to decode a broadcaster's signal that was originally encoded at a data rate that yields broadcast quality (codec A). The operator then needs to re-encode it into a more efficient format (codec B) for carriage to subscribers. Also assume that the IPTV operator chooses a bit rate (codec B) that yields broadcast quality (when codec B is in a standalone application (i.e. the source audio has never been through an audio coding system).

This data rate offers a 20 percent increase in efficiency over the bit rate that codec A needs to achieve broadcast quality. Note where each codec intersects the broadcast-quality threshold in Figure 4; codec B intersects broadcast quality at just below 80 percent of data rate required for codec A.

However, the result of both of these codecs operating in tandem with each other is described by the open circle curve in Figure 4. When codec B is operated as just described (20 percent lower bit rate than A), the net quality of both systems in tandem drops to between “good” and “fair.” Hence, true broadcast quality is no longer achievable in an application like this. Furthermore, many next-generation systems are looking to take the more efficient codecs' bit rates down to 50 percent of the data rate of codec A. Figure 4 shows that the tandem net quality when the bit rate of the more efficient codec (codec B) has been dropped to operate around 50 percent below the rate of the other codec (codec A). In this combination, yet a further drop in quality takes place to between “poor” and “fair.”

Before deciding on a target bit rate for a next-generation audio coder, consider that the realized efficiency gains of any new audio codec may be reduced in practice and will vary widely based on the application. This stems from the fact that in most, if not all cases, the new codec will be used in some portion of the distribution path to at least a portion of (or even all) of the viewers and will be in tandem with one or several different audio codecs. The advertised efficiency gains and quality some of these next-generation audio coding systems promise on paper will be different from what happens in real-world applications.

CONCLUSION
Before implementing any new coding system, audit the signal paths to quantify the number of codecs in tandem (don't forget that some broadcast servers use an audio codec too). Ask the experts lots of questions about steps to minimize tandem coding loss, and ask for suggestions on bit rates to minimize quality loss. The key: There is no substitute to the human ear. Listen carefully, and think about the level of quality your service requires. Also, does the new system cause any compatibility issues for the viewers?

Jeffrey C. Riedmiller is senior broadcast product manager for Dolby Laboratories.
Impairment Grade Imperceptible 5.0 Perceptible, but not annoying 4.0 Slightly annoying 3.0 Annoying 2.0 Very annoying 1.0
REFERENCES

• ITU-R BS.1116-1, Methods for the Subjective Assessment of Small Impairments in Audio Systems Including Multichannel Sound Systems
  
• ITU-R BS.1534-1, Methods for the Subjective Assessment of Intermediate Quality Level of Coding Systems (MUSHRA)
  
• ITU-R BS.1548-1, User Requirements for Audio Coding Systems for Digital Broadcasting
  
• ITU-R BS.1284-1, General Methods for the Subjective Assessment of Sound Quality
  
• Grant, Davidson and Fielder, “Subjective Evaluation of an Audio Distribution Coding System,” Audio Engineering Society Convention Paper 5443, September 2001
  
• “Perceptual Audio Coders: What to Listen For,” CD-ROM, Audio Engineering Society
  
• Tech 3253 - Sound Quality Assessment Material, European Broadcasting Union; www.ebu.ch/en/technical/publications/tech3000_series/tech3253/index.php