[Europe-DVD]

The 5.1 Audio Standard Battle

Update - 1999

This article may provide interesting historical content, but for now the issue has pretty much been decided by the market. Dolby Digital has won the day. While MPEG multi-channel is still supported by many European market DVD-players, the need for it is minimal and fewer and fewer DVD-Video titles waste bandwidth by supporting it.

The Original Article

While the whole issue of regional coding is annoying enough for prospective European purchasers of DVD, the electronics industry seems determined to force their own extra bit of insanity on top of that forced upon them by the movie industry. The root cause of the problem was a certain European hardware manufacturer who refused to pay licensing fees to Dolby Laboritories for the right to use Dolby Digital (AC-3) in the European versions of DVD. As a result of this, this manufacturer lobbied hard for the competing MPEG-2 standard for 5.1 channel audio to be specified as the standard for DVD in Europe.

The fundamental problem with the MPEG-2 5.1 channel audio format however is that it has yet to be deployed in any major way. As a result it can be expected to exhibit all the teething problems of a new technology such as encoding and decoding problems, high cost of consumer equipment and lack of the refinements of second generation units. Conversely, the alternative -- Dolby Digital (AC-3) has been on the market for around three years now by virtue of an implementation for NTSC LaserDisc and more recently with US and Japanese DVD, meaning that it has by now reached the mass production volume needed to guarentee it's inclusion in even relatively low-end AV amplifiers. At the production end, Dolby Digital is by now well understood by the movie companies and they have the equipment to master for it; in contrast, the European launch of DVD has had to be delayed yet again because the MPEG-2 audio mastering equipment has been delayed by problems getting it working.

Furthermore, continuing delays in sorting out the consumer reproduction hardware have led to some of the first generations of players to be sold in Europe not supporting the format. As a result, the DVD consortium has now reduced the MPEG-2 5.1 audio support from manditory requirement for Europe to one of two optional sound systems. This means that some titles released in Europe may well have Dolby Digital (AC-3) soundtracks, and others may only have MPEG-2 soundtracks. Some studios have even decided to issue titles with both types of soundtrack available on the same disc; this while a laudable attempt to cut through the compatibility problems never the less means that the bandwidth available to the video signal has been reduced no doubt resulting in inferior image reproduction from such discs.

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Bevis King <B.King@ee.surrey.ac.uk>
12th August 1999