SAN FRANCISCO - At AES, Dolby Laboratories (www.dolby.com) had a suite off the show floor where it was demonstrating its new Dolby Digital Plus audio codec. The codec is designed for HD-DVD and hard disk drive media applications, and can be used to deliver 7.1 channels of sound, and beyond, in a single stream.
In addition to the ability to deliver more channels of sound, Dolby Digital Plus also offers increased quality through higher data rates - up to 6mb/sec. Dolby Digital Plus encoders and decoders are currently in development. The format is compatible with Dolby Digital, allowing any of the 39 million A/V receivers currently in the market to transparently playback Dolby Digital Plus content, though without the benefits.