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Topic: Auro 11.1 - Its Rollout & Marketing

Harold Hallikainen
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 906
From: Denver, CO, USA
Registered: Aug 2009

posted 01-30-2014 03:26 PM

In a discussion at ICTA, exhibitors seemed to want to brand and sell the overall premium experience instead of the bits and pieces of that experience (superior sound, superior image, superior seats, legroom, food, etc.). So, as part of branding, they take a spoonful of alphabet soup and see what they get.

Harold

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Sam D. Chavez
Film God

Posts: 2153
From: Martinez, CA USA
Registered: Aug 2003

posted 01-30-2014 06:37 PM

I think this a continuation of the design effort of the DCI specification to ensure these was no IP for the audio bitstream for Dolby Labs or anyone else.

Now that we've moved on to multi-dimmensional audio and Atmos looks like the most elegant idea, competitors don't wish to see Dolby run off with the prize again. NATO and its members want this open "standard" to spare them the painful choice of having to decide which system to buy. (Socialism for Theatre owners?). The last time around some ended up buying CDS, DTS, and SDDS, all for the same screens and we all know how that worked out.

Dolby won because it was practical, robust and agnostic. CDS was an engineering disaster, DTS had inherent limitations, SDDS was a mess, expensive when was not part of some film deal co-op deal, proprietary, and tied to Sony Studios.

Ought to be great fun.

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Harold Hallikainen
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 906
From: Denver, CO, USA
Registered: Aug 2009

posted 01-30-2014 08:20 PM

And, of course, people are invited to join the SMPTE working group on interopable immersive sound.

Harold

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 01-30-2014 09:31 PM

All I can do is wish DTS the best of luck in getting SMPTE, NATO, and several other interested parties in North America and Europe to agree on the specs of an open standard quickly. The problem with committees, particularly multiple committees, is too many cooks in the kitchen. Disagreements and ego slow progress down to a crawl.

As of now, nearly 300 theater locations worldwide have Atmos. Some of these multiplex sites have 2 or more screens equipped (something I wish Dolby would track on its installations map). Atmos is way ahead of Auro both in terms of movie titles and theater installations.

The "open standard" approach, if it can work, won't be available in hardware for nearly two years. There's no telling how many screens might be equipped with Dolby's own Atmos-specific hardware by then. And Dolby might even have a 2nd generation Atmos cinema processor already shipping by then.

IMHO, the powers that be need to just stay out of it and let the market sort out whether Auro or Atmos will "win" (or if they end up having to co-exist with each other). I don't expect a format like Dolby Atmos to take over all screens in a regular multiplex theater. I expect regular 5.1 and 7.1 LPCM to remain the most common formats, with Atmos and perhaps Auro reserved for the biggest rooms.

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Harold Hallikainen
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 906
From: Denver, CO, USA
Registered: Aug 2009

posted 01-31-2014 06:38 AM

Committes do take time. Note that QSC, Doremi, and USL can
play MDA today. Firmware changes required to play a SMPTE bitstreams should not be major.

Harold

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Carsten Kurz
Film God

Posts: 4340
From: Cologne, NRW, Germany
Registered: Aug 2009

posted 01-31-2014 07:08 AM

The idea of an open standard is that Auro installations can be upgraded to MDA (or whatever the future standard may be). This is no longer a 'who wins' issue. It is clear to me that the existing Auro 3D will disappear at some time, being replaced by something like Auro MDA, and Atmos will stay. But there will be more choices for MDA systems and Atmos being only one of them (maybe the best).

The standard Auro decoder now is a modified Datasat AP20. No big deal to upgrade it to accomodate MDA, by hardware and software.

BTW - Germany has a single Auro 3D installation, and about 10 Atmos installations.

- Carsten

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 01-31-2014 08:52 AM

I think it's going to take more than a firmware update for Auro-equipped theaters to play object-based audio that's in any way like that of Dolby Atmos. Surround speakers will have to be wired to a lot more amplifiers. Auro in its present form supports no more than 3 screen channels. Adding a level of height enhancement does nothing to change that. Atmos can support five stage channels.

My greater concern is the results of this multiple committee effort will reduce the quality of Dolby Atmos. The DTS MDA format aims to strike a balance between Auro and Atmos, but that also could mean compromise and watered down effectiveness between the two systems. It means Dolby Atmos not working nearly as well as it would playing its own native sound format. I know achieving "Best of Both Worlds" results is the goal. Unfortunately committees rarely ever deliver that.

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Sam D. Chavez
Film God

Posts: 2153
From: Martinez, CA USA
Registered: Aug 2003

posted 01-31-2014 09:57 AM

I'm predicting Atmos will slowly pull away as Dolby seems to have the ability to sign and service more titles.

The most elaborate sound track gets mixed first in post and the other, perhaps lesser sound formats get mixed from the stems or elements of the track mixed first.

MDA will always be the alternate soundtrack if the format survives.

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Lyle Romer
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1400
From: Davie, FL, USA
Registered: May 2002

posted 01-31-2014 10:23 AM

quote: Sam D. Chavez
I'm predicting Atmos will slowly pull away as Dolby seems to have the ability to sign and service more titles.

It will probably be similar to Dolby Digital during the 35mm format war. If Sony didn't practically give AMC the systems, Dolby would have "won" sooner since it appeared AMC was going to go with SR-D in the months before the SDDS deal.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 01-31-2014 10:36 AM

The problem is SMPTE, NATO and a few others only want Hollywood studios feeding these Auro and Atmos installations the same sound format file. They want movie productions making only one kind of immersive sound layout and distributing only one "deliverable" on a DCP. It has to play on both Auro and Atmos hardware. I'm not sure that can be done without messing up something. And I wonder if the effort violates certain laws.

A crude example of this: imagine a few interest groups persuading Google and Microsoft to dump their existing operating systems and center on a single OS -regardless of all the hardware differences both ecosystems have. And then, in the vain of having just one deliverable, they force Apple to dump its OS and replace it with their thing. That wouldn't seem right.

quote: Lyle Romer
It will probably be similar to Dolby Digital during the 35mm format war. If Sony didn't practically give AMC the systems, Dolby would have "won" sooner since it appeared AMC was going to go with SR-D in the months before the SDDS deal.

Prior to the AMC deal with SDDS, DTS was installing thousands of DTS-6 machines. They had a very commanding lead in terms of screen count. SDDS made deals with other chains too, like UA and Cinemark, just to get the hardware into more theaters. I remember in late 1995 through 1996 the Dallas-Fort Worth market had DTS and SDDS installations all over the place. There was only a handful of places in DFW that had Dolby Digital. The one area where Dolby Digital did lead was in movie titles.

When Dolby released the CP500 the situation changed entirely. They started catching up fast in screen numbers. It didn't take long for them to pass SDDS. It took a little longer for them to pass DTS (end of the 1990s or early 2000s, I forget which).

With immersive sound Dolby is in the lead in both areas, screen numbers and movie titles. Technologically it's clearly the better system too.

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Sam D. Chavez
Film God

Posts: 2153
From: Martinez, CA USA
Registered: Aug 2003

posted 01-31-2014 01:15 PM

I was with Dolby during those days. I visited UA/Crest Sales in Englewood, CO and was surprised to find out they had hundreds of SDDS units sitting in the warehouse and here I'm trying to sell a few DA20's.
Despite a major price advantage DTS (lowere cost) and SDDS (essentially free to the big guys) lost out. Lots of reasons but it could all happen again and Atmos get the prize. IMHO, if it were not for the hassle of ceiling speakers, Dolby would have run away with the prize already.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 01-31-2014 02:22 PM

In the digital sound on film segment I wouldn't characterize the final results as anyone winning or losing. I think the contest wound up in a stalemate due to most major studios shifting away from using only one or two digital formats to supporting quad format prints.

Even after Dolby Digital overtook DTS in screen numbers DTS was still selling new systems and getting movie studios to include its sound format in their releases -even after the spin-off/name change to Datasat. SDDS was the only real loser out of the three and that was due to Sony abandoning production and further development of SDDS. Amazingly, some movies are still being released with SDDS tracks roughly a decade after that format "died." I guess SDDS is a zombie of sorts now.
[Razz]

quote: Sam D. Chavez
Lots of reasons but it could all happen again and Atmos get the prize. IMHO, if it were not for the hassle of ceiling speakers, Dolby would have run away with the prize already.

At first I thought the idea of ceiling surround speakers was a pretty gimmicky thing. Having heard a couple movie mixes that properly utilize Atmos (Gravity and the second Hobbit movie) I'm sold on them. Atmos provides a complete hemisphere of sound rather than something that works on a more conventional 2 dimensional plane.

My only complaint about Atmos is really more a complaint about stadium seated theaters. Dolby recommends the addition of sub-bass speaker cabinets in the rear corners of the room (in part to improve timber-matching between stage & surround speakers). Some stadium seated theaters are placing their sub-bass surround speakers above the auditorium entrances in the narrow corridors formed by the walls and stadium riser. How are the sound waves from those speaker cabinets going to do any good being stuffed down there like that? The stadium riser puts a big, solid, diagonal shaped wall right in the way of the sound waves.

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Terry Lynn-Stevens
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1081
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2012

posted 01-31-2014 02:44 PM

quote: Bobby Henderson
When Dolby released the CP500 the situation changed entirely. They started catching up fast in screen numbers. It didn't take long for them to pass SDDS. It took a little longer for them to pass DTS (end of the 1990s or early 2000s, I forget which)

The CP500 is not what allowed Dolby to win with the 35mm discrete digital wars. For a significant period of time, if you wanted to show such movies from SONY or Universal Pictures and present them with discrete 5.1 sound you were forced to use SDDS or DTS.

It was when the studios went to quad format releases that Dolby simply made the most sense for anyone building new theatres or upgrading their sound systems and at this point the CP500 was the smartest move [Wink]

Once quad releases happened it was either Dolby or DTS for most with Dolby clearly being the better option.

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Sam D. Chavez
Film God

Posts: 2153
From: Martinez, CA USA
Registered: Aug 2003

posted 01-31-2014 03:15 PM

I am not against ceiling speakers as used by Atmos nor do I think it's a gimmick, just saying it is very expensive to do properly in a retrofit, and given an out, cinema owners might take the easier, cheaper path provided by Auro, or MDA.

The subwoofers in the tunnels thing is very tacky and I've done this with extra subs behind the screen in difficult circumstances. Dolby will pass it if need be.

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Gordon McLeod
Film God

Posts: 9532
From: Toronto Ontario Canada
Registered: Jun 99

posted 01-31-2014 03:24 PM

Actually the CP500 was the key to dolby success in the digital war if the DTS 6AD had come out sooner (and was sonically and reliably better) then they might have kept their market share the all in one box was an important consideration to most circuits

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