DTS Question on Std-Def DVDs (1 Viewer)

[Brian_Wh]

Hello all, I've been away from this forum for some time with other diversions for the last few years, especially the last year and a half to 2 years preparing for and then welcoming a new baby into our family (who has just turned 1). In addition to this, I've been out of the loop as far as buying and renting movies like I used to and I've yet to make the jump to Blu-ray. One thing I have noticed though is that the SD-DVD movies that I have bought or rented in the last 2-3 years have had only Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks and no DTS soundtracks.

 

I did a pretty extensive search here, over at AVS Forum, and google yesterday and could not find much information, so forgive my question if this has been discussed to death already. Was there an industry agreement that has limited SD-DVD releases to DD only and limited DTS to being available only on Blu-ray releases? Or did this just sort of evolve? Thanks to any of you who can fill me in on how we arrived at this point!

 

I may pick up a Blu-ray player later this year, but for now I'm pretty happy with the upconverting abilities of my Oppo player.

 

[Michael Reuben]

It hasn't been discussed "to death" -- or even at all, AFAIK -- and I haven't heard anything about some sort of "agreement". There just doesn't seem to be the same level of interest in DTS that there once was, on either the consumer or the studio side.

 

I suspect this is largely attributable to the fact that concerns over lossy formats seem especially pointless now that lossless formats are available on Blu-ray.

 

[Brian_Wh]

Thanks for the reply Michael! As you say, when I upgrade to Blu-ray, I won't have to worry about the whole issue. I'll just need to fight off the urge to upgrade my receiver, among other things.

 

[Jason Charlton]

To my knowledge, the DVD specification does not favor one format over the other - both are perfectly valid to include, and a disc does not HAVE to have one or the other, however when DVD first came out, Dolby Digital support in A/V receivers was much more common than DTS support, so the trend was to include Dolby Digital, as it would be usable by a much greater proportion of the home audience.

 

Once DTS decoders became more mainstream, a few titles were released with the DTS audio option, however due to DVDs more limited disc capacity, studios often found it difficult to find enough storage space on the disc to include the movie and TWO digital 5.1 audio tracks. Since DD had pretty much become the de-facto standard by that time, it was pretty much universally adopted by all studios. DTS tracks were included if/when there was room, or were reserved for separate releases that had to include in big bold letters on the package that the only 5.1 digital audio option was DTS, and not Dolby.

 

EDIT: Oh, and congratulations on the addition to your family! Isn't being a dad awesome!

 

[Todd Erwin]

Originally Posted by Jason Charlton

To my knowledge, the DVD specification does not favor one format over the other - both are perfectly valid to include, and a disc does not HAVE to have one or the other, however when DVD first came out, Dolby Digital support in A/V receivers was much more common than DTS support, so the trend was to include Dolby Digital, as it would be usable by a much greater proportion of the home audience.

 

Once DTS decoders became more mainstream, a few titles were released with the DTS audio option, however due to DVDs more limited disc capacity, studios often found it difficult to find enough storage space on the disc to include the movie and TWO digital 5.1 audio tracks. Since DD had pretty much become the de-facto standard by that time, it was pretty much universally adopted by all studios. DTS tracks were included if/when there was room, or were reserved for separate releases that had to include in big bold letters on the package that the only 5.1 digital audio option was DTS, and not Dolby.

 

EDIT: Oh, and congratulations on the addition to your family! Isn't being a dad awesome!

The DVD spec requires that either a Dolby Digital or PCM soundtrack be present as the default audio. DTS is an option.

 

[Brian_Wh]

Originally Posted by Jason Charlton

EDIT: Oh, and congratulations on the addition to your family! Isn't being a dad awesome!

Thanks, yes, it is! This first year - especially the first 8 months - has been VERY tiring and challenging, but it's been great! What some friends had told me about having children is definitely true - your "free time" is no longer your own (and there's much less of it than there used to be).

 

Your explanation about the surround format issue makes a lot of sense, thanks. Studios probably had little incentive or room on the discs to continue providing dual 5.1 tracks and it probably became less worth their time and money to produce separate DTS-only releases. I can see that being increasingly true as the focus of their marketing and development shifted toward the emerging Blu-ray market.