Our trip to Dolby's San Francisco lab facility was mind-blowingly great, but it turns out that the company is ramping up efforts to let you get behind the "double D" logo. Things have come a long way from optically-encoded film audio and analog tape noise reduction, so Dolby just launched a campaign to bring everybody up to speed on how much higher your grin factor will be if you treat yourself to great surround sound in your home and on-the-go audio setup, no matter if music, movies or games are your cup o' tea. Fire up your browser and hit the links below -- the company is blanketing the webisphere with a microsite, special twitter activity (a little birdie mentioned the magical "giveaway" word), YouTube and flickr. Things will get really fun, however, if you push back from the keyboard, venture into the sunlight and get yourself into the Dolby truck as it makes the rounds at special events around California. Planned stops for the funhouse on wheels are in the links below; you'll see why we'd like to "borrow" this little rig chock-full-of audio wizardry to go alongside our own CES double-wide.

Read - truck schedule
Read - campaign microsite
Read - twitter feed
Read - YouTube
Read - Dolby's flickr feed

The good news is that you can finally get both compressed and uncompressed HD audio off a Blu-ray Disc and into your A/V receiver without the need of a dedicated sound card. The bad news is that at $380, the ATI Radeon HD 5870 still costs more than a stand-alone Blu-ray player and that price doesn't even include playback software. That's ok with us though, as we're used to being charged early adopter tax, and now the first video card with this ability is released, it should only be a matter of time before this feature trickles down to video cards we can actually afford.

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.

With AV software and hardware alike carrying at least one Dolby logo, not to mention the presence of that same branding on big screen cinema, Dolby is truly a household name. If you ask people exactly what Dolby does, however, you're likely to get a pretty fuzzy picture, which isn't too surprising -- the brand is so prevalent in the media space that it's kind of like asking a fish to describe what water feels like. So when Dolby invited us to spend a day with them to talk about their current goings-on in home theater, we just couldn't pass up the opportunity.

To get a look behind the familiar logo, we spent a day at Dolby's lab in San Francisco. During our time there we talked about TrueHD, Digital Plus, Dolby Volume, the new Pro Logic IIz, and even got a short peek at some current research efforts. It was a fast run over a lot of ground, for sure!

Philips may be dodging the North American sector with its flashiest of products, but it's still showing the Yanks in attendance a little love on the home entertainment front. Today in a meeting in NYC, the outfit revealed US pricing and availability for its entire 2009 family, most of which was quietly introduced in January. Starting things off are the 6000 and 7000 Series of HDTVs, which just so happen to pick right up where the previous models left off in 2008. The 6000 Series will arrive in 32-, 42- and 47-inch flavors for $799, $1,399 and $1,699, respectively, while the 7000 Series goes 42-, 47- and 52-inch for $1,499, $1,799 and $2,299, also respectively.

While checking these very sets out, we noticed that the factory settings left the colors a bit blown out and overly sharp -- though, this practice is far too common in HDTV companies anyway. Nothing like wowing those Best Buy shoppers at first, only to sear their retinas at home, right? All kidding aside, the panels looked superb, and the A-B comparison mode made tweaking the settings a breeze. Hop on past the break for the rest of the details, and give our gallery a glance for a closer look at the whole lot.

It's hard to tell if this is a coincidence or not, but just hours after the Blu-ray Disc Association granted the DRA audio coding technology approval for use on Blu-ray flicks, Dolby has come forward to proudly proclaim that its TrueHD and Digital Plus audio technologies can now be used by select Chinese firms. TCL Technoly Electronics, MIT Technology and Lite-On have all been given the green light under license to use Dolby's tech on Blu-ray Disc products, though it does seem a bit curious to us that only these three were selected. Maybe those other guys didn't pass the "apt-to-ape" test?

After several years high dynamic range LCD technology is finally ready for market, now that SIM2 and Dolby are showing off this Solar Series 47-inch screen at the 2009 Integrated Systems Europe show. Just like last year's prototype, it's both brighter (4,000 cd/m2) and has a greater contrast ratio than any flat panel currently available. The 2,206 LEDs can provide up to an infinite contrast ratio and supposedly match real world visuals thanks to 16 bit color processing. The only bad news is that even with a name change to Dolby Vision, that ugly wide bezel from the BrightSide days still remains. We'll have to wait until closer to the Q2 shipping date to find out the price, but with SIM2's high end reputation it won't be cheap.

Update: SIM2 pinged us to say that only the professional version will be available in Q2. The "consumer unit" won't be formally launched in the US until CEDIA this September.

We can't say that we've ever been utterly stoked for Dolby Volume, but we suppose it's a nice extra in TV sets and set-top-boxes so long as the cost of inclusion is negligible to the consumer. That said, Dolby's making darn sure the crowd at CES knows that it's infiltrating sets in the US and Europe as we speak, and it'll be showcasing a number of Toshiba REGZA LCDs in particular. In related news, Dolby Vision -- part of its High Dynamic Range series -- will be showcased in a SIM2 prototype LCD here in Vegas. Better still, Dolby is currently working with SIM2 in order to develop an HDR-enabled LCD display, and while we highly doubt this is the set that's coming in Q1, we are told that the technology will be available in some form or fashion this quarter. Patience, friends -- it's the only choice.

Not satisfied with battling RealD for theater 3D dominance, Dolby Labs is pushing forward its 3D solution for home viewers. Timely, since this will should be the year SMPTE picks a direction and everyone gets behind it (or not,) and Dolby apparently already made its case back in September. We'll be able to judge their offering vs. Panasonic, TDVision and all others this week and hopefully come away knowing if 3D really is ready to be the next big thing or just a useless gimmick.

Those Xtreme-loving audiophiles at Tritton are heading to CES next week and bringing with them a wireless 5.1 surround sound bar / subwoofer combo designed specifically with gamers in mind. Their presser touts how easily it connects to the Wii, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in addition to an iPod, MP3 player, PC, and that's unfortunately all the information we've got for now -- no pics, release date or price in sight. Additionally, they're also showcasing new Bluetooth accessories and Dolby 5.1-equipped gaming headsets. Hopefully we'll be able to fill in the missing details in just a few days.

Blu-ray player? Check. An AV receiver? Check. Loads of cables? Check. Knowledge of how to hook everything up for maximum impact? Uh, not so much. BigPictureBigSound has hosted up a nice how-to guide for making the most of the multi-channel audio that's just waiting to ooze out of your Blu-ray player. The writeup covers both HDMI and analog approaches, and it breaks it down in five easy-to-digest steps so that you don't get all overwhelmed. Go 'head, give it a look -- it's not that difficult, we promise.

The all-too-cleverly named Doremi Cinema has reason to celebrate today after landing a swank licensing agreement with Dolby 3D. The outfit's DCP-2000 JPEG2000 Digital Cinema Server has been "approved as a licensee of Dolby 3D Digital Cinema, giving exhibitors even more options when screening 3D content." As it stands, Doremi's DCP-2000 servers are already installed in over 5,500 screens across the globe, and thanks to its interoperability, it ought to have no qualms with the third-dimension.

You know those four French national channels that decided to recently made the leap to high-def? Yeah, well those four are the first HD terrestrial TV channels to implement Dolby Digital Plus. In fact, both Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby Digital were chosen by those broadcasters for the Television Numerique Terrestre platform, and viewers tuning into TF1 HD, France 2 HD, ARTE HD, Canal+ HD and M6 HD will be able to listen to 5.1-channels of audio so long as they have the requisite decoding equipment. Interestingly enough, 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." Atta way to be proactive, France!

Granted, we've already shown you how to actually take advantage of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD, but if you're looking for a quick and dirty breakdown of what each audio codec means, what it can / can't do and how to wire things up with your current setup, Missing Remote's latest guide is for you. For starters, it hones in on Blu-ray audio format support -- quite relevant given the state of the format war these days -- and it continues on by explaining how to wire things up for superior results with S/PDIF, HDMI, analog, etc. There's even a special section dedicated to HTPC playback, which ought to help you folks not using a pre-fab deck. If you've been spinning your wheels of late in the wide world of multi-channel audio, have a look at the read link and see if things don't clear up.

Dolby's homegrown volume controlling technology has wiggled into a few HDTVs here and there, but now the tech is finally maneuvering into devices that HT amateurs / professionals will end up seeing. At CEDIA, Dolby is announcing that it's Dolby Volume will be featured in the all new Harman Kardon AVR 7550HD and Arcam FMJ AVR600. For those that forgot, Dolby Volume is an approach to "delivering consistent volume levels across a wide variety of content, channel programming, or input sources," giving users fed up with those astonishingly loud MHD Palladia commercials a better, more lawful way to deal. Whole release is after the cut.