Ear-jarring volume discrepancies between television shows and commercials may be a thing of the past if
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Dolby Labs (NYSE: DLB) persuades TV manufacturers to include its new technology in their sets.
We're all familiar with the phenomenon: We're reclining in our
Barcaloungers, calmly watching the late show when a commercial comes on
and the volume has suddenly increased 10 decibels, causing us to spill
our beer as we jump for the remote control. Dolby says its new Dolby
Volume technology will make that rude awakening a thing of the past.
The technology is pretty important for Dolby, because systems
incorporating its surround sound technology make the experience that
much more jolting when it occurs. It might not be as jarring on your
rabbit-ears set in the kitchen, but on that 60-inch plasma screen with
five, six, or seven high-def speakers pointed at your cochlea, it can
leave your ears ringing.
Dolby will unveil its volume control system at the Consumer
Electronics Show Monday in Las Vegas, and the company hopes it will
start appearing in television sets by year's end.
The difference in volume occurs because programmers try to compress
the sound to boost volume without exceeding the limits the government
has set. While most televisions today are equipped with circuits that
are designed to stabilize the differences between TV shows and
commercials, they are not necessarily effective and can still be
problematic if the broadcaster fails to properly operate equipment on
its end. Part of the problem: Depending on the type of program a
commercial is inserted into, the commercial might actually be broadcast
at too
low a volume. While viewers might not consider that a
problem, advertisers would, so generally, broadcasters transmit the
sound all at one level.
Audiovox (Nasdaq: VOXX)
recently came out with a device to help minimize sound differences by
automatically detecting when a television has gone to commercial and
lowering the volume for you. Dolby seems to go one better than this.
First, its technology isn't an external box that needs to be hooked
up to the television set. We've already got enough wires crawling from
our sets with DVD players, cable boxes, game systems, and whatnot. A
sound "equalizer" might just be too much.
Dolby instead offers one chip that would be part of the set's components. (According to some reports,
Cirrus Logic (Nasdaq: CRUS)
has spoken highly of the development; it may wish to partner with Dolby
to put the technology on its chips.) The technology then mimics how the
human ear works, and how people perceive changes in loudness because of
various factors. Dolby then created formulas to have the technology
react to those factors to create a more even experience. It believes it
could be applied to MP3 technology as well.
Perhaps another area where it should be investigated is cell phones.
Despite advances there, sound quality has never been all that good, but
Q Sound Labs (Nasdaq: QSND),
another surround-sound developer, is using its MobileQ technology to
provide a surround sound experience on close-proximity speakers and
headsets. With
advertising moving to mobile phones, quashing loud commercials before they begin could be a big seller.
Let's hope Dolby's technology proves popular, if only so that
another drop of beer will never be spilled while jumping to turn down
an annoying commercial.
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Fool contributor Rich Duprey owns shares of Dolby but does not own any of the other stocks mentioned in this article. You can see his holdings here. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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