DTS ON DVD IS COMING
Titles soon to be announced
by Joseph Palenchar
LAS VEGAS, January 9, 1998 -- Digital Theater Systems will announce later this month the titles of the first DVD discs that will be available with DTS 5.1 Digital Surround soundtracks, said David DelGrosso, marketing director of the company's DTS Technology division.
"Several" discs licensed to DTS and produced by the company will be commercially available in April in North America through software distributor Image Entertainment, he said. Depending on the titles, some of the April discs might be replicated by DTS, and others might be replicated by Image.
As the installed base of DTS decoding equipment and DTS-enabled DVD players grows, studios will opt to produce and market their own titles directly, DelGrosso predicted. But for now, DTS "will produce and market the software ourselves."
DTS's marketing plans include a "co-funded marketing campaign" targeted to begin in the summer in conjunction with such hardware suppliers as Kenwood, Panasonic, Sherwood, Technics and Yamaha, DelGrosso said.
The promotions will take the form of "special purchase opportunities" for DVD-encoded CDs, laserdiscs and DVDs. All told, details of 15 new promotions will be announced in about three weeks.
By the end of December, 37 DTS-encoded CDs and 39 DTS laserdiscs were available. This year, said DelGrosso, several studios -- including Fox, Universal and Warner Bros. -- will license movie titles to DTS. But it hasn't yet been determined which studios' titles will be available for the April rollout.
DelGrosso promised that the first discs will be "competitively priced" with their Dolby Digital counterparts, but in the future, special-edition and collectible discs would be available at premium prices. The goal of all DTS-encoded DVDs, however, will be to deliver "the best picture quality possible," which "in many cases will be better [than what's currently available]."
"Many DTS titles will fit on one layer on one side of a disc," despite the higher bandwidth requirements of DTS 5.1 soundtracks, he explained. "Movie length is the number one determining factor" of how many layers or sides will have to be used. We can do one DTS soundtrack in one language in the same space as three Dolby Digital soundtracks in three languages."
Many consumers will prefer a single English-language DTS soundtrack to multiple Dolby Digital soundtracks in different languages, DelGrosso said. "Why make an American disc with French and Spanish soundtracks when you have regional coding?"
Nonetheless, using dual-layer or dual-sided discs are "options available for the April releases," he said. "To date, no disc [under discussion for a DTS soundtrack] requires two discs."
To listen to the DTS soundtracks, consumers will need one of the new DTS-capable DVD players being introduced at CES by such companies as Marantz, Panasonic, Theta Digital and Yamaha. The players will also have to be connected to DTS decoders, which are appearing in more products at CES.
Forty products incorporating DTS decoders are currently available. All DTS-encoded DVD discs, nonetheless, will be compatible with any DVD player because the discs will also feature a two-channel stereo soundtrack, either PCM or compressed two-channel AC-3, depending on the space available after the video and 5.1 audio portions of a DTS disc are produced, DelGrosso said. |
