Published in News

Dolby wants to monopolise its tech

by on04 June 2018


Soon everyone must have Dobly

Sound outfit Dolby is finding itself in hot water after some apparently monopolistic style behavior.

According to Audioholics, Dolby recently issued a mandate to all of its Atmos licensee partners to restrict usage of third-party upmixers with any Dolby signals including 5.1/7.1 DD, DD+, TrueHD and Atmos.

That means if you're running a DTS Soundbar, it won't process a Dolby signal, or no dice if you want to use the Auro-Matic Upmixer for a native Dolby signal. Is Dolby doing this to protect its IP or to monopolize consumer audio like they tried to do with its patented Atmos-enabled speaker?

The copy of the mandate that was sent to all of Dolby's licensee partners has the following guidelines: Native Dolby Atmos content shall NOT be up-mixed, surround or height virtualized by any 3rd party competitor upmixer (ie. DTS or Auro-3D); Channel-Based DD/DD+, Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and 7.1 codecs shall not be height virtualised by any third party upmixer (ie. DTS). (This implies height virtualization without height speakers. DTS has this capability but Auro-3D does not).

Audioholics said the company will however "permit third party upmixing and/or surround virtualization of channel-based codecs that support Dolby Atmos rendering as long as the third party doesn't license their own upmixing technologies to third parties."

Last modified on 04 June 2018
Rate this item
(0 votes)