In what is hopefully one of many new announcements about
Windows 7 leading up to its launch, Microsoft has added support for
Dolby Digital Plus in most versions of Windows 7. This is good news indeed, as the Plus version of Dolby Digital not only supports higher bit rates than the classic Dolby Digital, but it also offers better sound quality than its older brother at the same bit rate -- it is not lossless like Dolby TrueHD though. The other key reason why this is essential to Windows 7 from the Media Center perspective is because premium content providers around the world use it (like France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom). Dolby also confirmed that this support includes
Extenders for Media Center which makes it all the more useful.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Alton @ Aug 18th 2009 2:22PM
Will this require special hardware, or is it just software?
Wes @ Aug 18th 2009 9:45PM
A little bit of both Alton. Its supported by Media Center Extenders. So in theory if you have an xbox 360, we'll this is great news since the Xbox 360 is a Media Center Extender AND supports Dolby Digital Plus.
Now, on the other hand, if you have no media center extenders in your house hold the fact that Dolby Digital Plus is avaialble for Media Center and includes support for Media Center Extenders is well...pretty useless.
Similarly, if you have your pc hooked up to a receiver like a Pioneer Elite, Onxyio or whomever with its own stereo system and you receiver supports Dolby Digital Plus and you have a sound card cable of passing through software encoded Dolby Digital Plus signals to your receiver then poof. You would have access to higher bit rates(for more clarity supposibly/channel separation) than you would with Windows XP/Vista.
However, if you have no receiver cable of decoding a Dobly Digital Plus signal or are just doing a 2.0 speaker system, there's no real benefit at all. So its partially software related in that the pc/software side now supports Dolby Digital Plus but you need either a media center extender or receiver cable of decoding the signal your pc can output. The benefits are basically better clarity or sounding audio leaving your pc(assuming your source is of enough quality, ie not 80s mono midi files).
Dragonwyntir @ Aug 18th 2009 2:51PM
I'm pretty sure Extenders support this. I'm running the Windows 7 RC build, and I have my Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600 doing ClearQAM recording/TV viewing in Media Center. When I tune into a digital channel (just the locals with Time Warner here in Austin, TX), I get the Dolby Digital Plus logo in the channel info when I tune to it, and it plays through the Extender just fine. This MIGHT just be the guide info that downloads that info, but I do get Dolby Digital stream through my receiver.
aaron @ Aug 18th 2009 2:38PM
you need to find out about about the extenders.... that would be the key. Getting wtv working with DD+ would be a nice alternative to a bluray carousel.
Dash @ Aug 18th 2009 3:08PM
"premium content providers around the world use it"
Such as? BD doesn't count as 7 doesn't support it.
My guess, it cost the same to now license DD+ as it does DD and when MS had to pony up more cash Dolby sold them on DD+ for the same cost as DD. Worthless press release used to generate hype.
squiggleslash @ Aug 18th 2009 3:32PM
DD+ is barely used though it might make for a half decent Internet codec. While HD DVD supported it as is, Blu-ray only supports it as a way to graft additional channels onto a regular AC-3 stream (in BD the core audio for the front three channels and SW is stored as regular AC-3, with E-AC-3 replacing two the surround channels for receivers that support it), so it doesn't actually have any proper backing at the moment - that is, nobody's releasing content with the audio in actual E-AC-3.
It is a semi-open format, it's an official ATSC codec (and fully documented), but right now, in practice, it has a lot of rivals and it's not clear to me what advantages it has over anything else. It's not capable of doing 96kHz audio, though it does do 24 bit (which I don't believe regular AC-3 does.) E-AC-3 is capable of doing more than 5.1, but that only makes it "better" than AC-3 and classic DTS, pretty much everything else does more than 5.1 (and the jury's out as to whether 7.1 is really any better than 5.1 anyway.)
Meanwhile users have to pay royalties to use it, just as they do with AC-3. By comparison, AAC, WMA, and the various DTS codecs only require patent royalties on the encoders and decoders, not the content makers. Only MP3 has similar limitations.
This isn't something to get overly excited about. I don't see E-AC-3 as being used outside of its limited Blu-ray implementation in future.
xemumanic @ Aug 18th 2009 10:14PM
I think you're right on both counts. Its a better choice for them to support DD+ for online, and for OTA. That's probably the reason Windows 7 supports it in the first place. This isn't for Blu Ray.
All this talk about hating on Sony/Blu Ray more than likely has nothing to do with this.
However, this seems old news to me, didn't anyone notice the DD+ logo in WMP 12 before now? Its been there as far back as the public beta if I'm not mistaken.
squiggleslash @ Aug 19th 2009 8:41AM
Yeah, I'm surprised to hear it's being used OTA - and I'm not even sure I'm happy with that given the AC-3 track has to be broadcast anyway (so it's not saving bandwidth) and thus all that's happening in practice is a reduction in quality of the video signal so that a minority can get a 7.1 track that probably isn't noticeably different from the basic 5.1 version. Well, to each their own I guess, I'd prefer a decent digital subchannel if they have video bandwidth to spare...
I sorta like the idea of DD+ being an online codec on a technical level, but on a practical level Dolby really, badly, needs to change their royalty structure. Yes, H.264 is doing the same thing, but that's one reason why there's a huge argument at the W3C about the "video" tag.
Tara @ Aug 18th 2009 5:23PM
go TrueHD or don't waste our time.
Microsoft should have Win7 work flawlessly with Blurays using TrueHD and DTS-HD. They just hate Sony because HD-DVD lost the format war.
squiggleslash @ Aug 19th 2009 8:45AM
TrueHD was/is a mandatory HD DVD codec. If this had anything to do with playback of optical disks, TrueHD would also be in Windows 7.
I'm not entirely sure why E-AC-3 is going to be built into 7. I think it's very possible Dolby is replacing AC-3 licenses with combination E-AC-3/AC-3 licenses (and probably mandating support for E-AC-3 decoding to anyone licensing AC-3 decoding) - as Dolby has about five years on its AC-3 patents before the standard enters the public domain, they're probably trying to get people to switch.
The other possible reason, as others have pointed out above, is that this is about ATSC's E-AC-3 support. Apparently some TV stations do broadcast an E-AC-3 audio track. Seems less probable than the above, but it's possible.
zim2411 @ Aug 18th 2009 6:03PM
Is this new news?
I just fired up Windows Media Player for the first time on my 7 RC 64-bit install, and poked around the settings. In the Dolby Digital Settings page, there is a Dolby Digital Plus logo.
Richard @ Aug 18th 2009 7:25PM
Digital Plus was last use in HD DVD, but is R.I.P. they should had get the HD one instead.
Lazarus Dark @ Aug 18th 2009 8:06PM
*rolleyes*
Maybe next they will add support for 3.5 floppies or even Zip drives!
/sarcasm
Multi-format-mayhem @ Aug 19th 2009 4:53PM
Too many people seem to be harking back to HD DVD on this one and trying to tie in some (very inappropriate) Blu-ray blow-harding.
That is to completely miss the point, disc media stuff has got nothing to do with it.
As well as PC media and on-line DD+ is making advances in broadcast media (and loss audio of whatever format is simply a non-starter there as the bandwidth demands are simply far too great).
France is the 1st I've seen move on this.
Surely has to be welcomed as a major step-forward in the quality of broadcast media?
"The French HD forum specification requires that by December 2008 HD-ready TVs for sale in France must include Dolby Digital Plus and High Efficiency AAC (HE AAC) audio, emphasizing the importance of surround sound."
h**p://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/First-Implementation-Dolby-Digital-Plus/story.aspx?guid=%7BB97C6729-A5D0-4F8C-B900-008C667185FF%7D
Suigi @ Aug 26th 2009 5:16PM
Seriously, where on earth is the DTS support?
It's the only problem, however minor, I have with Win7 to date.