While your
argument
is perfectly sound Phil, as are the technical issues, you have of course
neglected to consider the marketing angle fully. Sky don’t make a
huge amount
of money out of flogging boxes, they are determined one way or another to
increase each household’s monthly subscription spend. I’ve
always taken the
whole lot, and my subscription has increased from 26.99 in ’96 to
34.00 today.
What they are hoping is that when I install Sky plus, I keep the second box
and take out a mirror subscription – which will increase my monthly
spend to
56 quid straight away (I’m not going to so it will only go up to
44!)
Their business
model
relies on squeezing every penny they can out of their existing subscribers,
and as witnessed here they will continue to use the Dolby digital angle in
their advertising, because most people think they will get digital audio on
everything that they watch, and the fact that the led is live with a PCM
soundtrack won’t do anything to destroy the myth.
Sky to tend to be
a
law unto themselves, BUT the last thing they want is a furore fanned by
Nicky
Campbell when the general public do give into the advertising and they see
a
huge reduction in the number of films that are broadcast in dolby
5.1
Tim
-----Original
Message-----
From: Phillip
Harris [mailto:phil@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 23 June 2002 11:09
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxxSubject: RE: [ukha_d] Digital
Out???
> I finally had my new hifi system with full surround
sound
> yesterday and it
sounds amazing with movies etc. I'm now
> really disappointed that there's no digital out for
> Dolby/DTS, I take it no
one
has found any mods on this?
>
> Has anyone here got Sky+
just wondering how it compares to
> the tivo as im seriously thinking of trading mine
in
now for
> it, as the
deciding
factor has to me surround sound now!
Remember Chris that just having a digital out on the
back
of the box
doesn't necessarily
mean that you'll get AC-3 or DTS all the time ...
Most TV shows are recorded or mixed in stereo - at best
you
get dolby
surround - neither of
which will be significantly improved by being fed
as a digital bitstream to an AV amp. Mixing an audio
track
in AC-3 or
DTS is just too
expensive to do for "normal" TV programmes!
Surround sound can be carried by plain stereo audio
connections whether
they're
left/right analogue stereo or a PCM stereo
bitstream.
Films on the
other
hand are slightly different as they are usually
supplied to $ky with their AC-3 or DTS soundtracks
intact
so $ky can
broadcast those at
no
extra "cost" to them...
...or
can they?
You see $ky
already
have bandwidth problems ... They already restrict
the data rates for their channels to pack more in and
unlike DVD players
(which can
downmix AC-3 or DTS into ProLogic) Sky boxes can't
do
anything with an AC-3 or DTS bitstream other than ignore
it
so any film
that is broadcast
with
an AC-3 or DTS soundtrack *HAS* to have its
ProLogic (stereo) audio track broadcast too as well as
the
video ...
This increases
the
bandwidth required to transmit the film quite
significantly so although there's no direct "money"
value
associated
with transmitting
AC-3
or DTS there is a hidden money value in the
additional bandwidth required which can only get tighter
and tighter as
time goes
on.
T.B.H. I think you'll
find
that *LESS* films get transmitted in anything
more than plain old stereo / ProLogic as time goes on
and
more channels
are added to the
soup that's there already - unless of course they
lob
up a few more satellites to increase the available
bandwidth!
Phil
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