Semiconductor company MStar adopted Dolby’s Multistream Decoder MS12 integrated circuit (IC), giving TV makers a single-package, onboard solution for decoding Dolby Atmos, said Dolby in a Wednesday announcement. The IC, available worldwide, works with broadcast, file-based, over-the-top, VOD and pay-TV content, said Dolby. With MS12 v2, TVs can deliver Dolby Atmos benefits including “encompassing sound, lifelike nuance, and crisply rendered speech,” it said. The MS12 decoder provides a consistent volume level across programs and sources, said the company, and has support for Dolby AC-4, paving the way for future audio experiences. Atmos is supported in over 10 major streaming and pay-TV services, including Netflix and Vudu, said Dolby, and more than 200 home releases to date were mixed in Dolby Atmos.
Technicolor shipped 573 million physical entertainment discs in 2017's first half, 5.9 percent fewer than in first-half 2016, but the rate of decline was “slower” than the company expected, said CEO Frederic Rose on a Thursday earnings call. The 3.5 percent rate of decline for DVDs to 410 million was lower than that of Blu-ray discs, shipments of which fell 8.9 percent to 119 million, said Rose. Shipments of music CDs declined 17.9 percent to 45 million, he said. Rose blamed the declines on “unfavorable” comparisons with 2016, when Technicolor’s disc replication business turned in record volumes (see 1702230028). A 50 percent decline in the number of new Xbox videogame titles released compared with a year earlier contributed to the decline in Blu-ray shipments, he said: “We believe that this is, in many respects, due to anticipation for the new Xbox that’s going to be launched by year-end, and we expect the games market to resume in the second half of the year.”
Onkyo announced Chromecast built-in firmware updates for the NCP-302 multiroom wireless speaker and a range of AV receivers, home theater systems and sound bars. The NCP-302 began shipping Tuesday at a suggested retail price of $349. The company also announced Chromecast built-in integration in a firmware update for select Pioneer AV receivers, CD receivers and soundbars, along with the recently launched DTS-compatible $349 MRX digital music system. The firmware update adds support for the Google Home speaker and for future audio devices integrating Google Assistant for voice control, Onkyo said. Users can ask Google Home to find music from supported streaming services and play it back through their Onkyo product and can control volume and song selection, said the company.
Klipsch sent an email blast to customers Tuesday, hoping to bank off the popularity of vinyl ahead of Earth Day on Saturday, also known as “Record Store Day.” Klipsch published a list of must-have LPs and the company’s R-15PM powered monitors with a turntable-friendly custom amplifier and a phono input that allows a turntable to plug directly to the speakers without the need for a stereo receiver. Nielsen, meanwhile, noted the 10th anniversary of Record Store Day, reporting that in the past three years, sales of all physical music formats in indie retailers have surged on the day, jumping 91 percent year over year in 2014, 47 percent in 2015 and 130 percent last year -- with vinyl representing 80 percent of sales. Overall, some 5.4 million vinyl LPs sold last year in indie record stores vs. 737,000 in 2007, while overall vinyl retail sales surged from 990,000 units in 2007 to more than 13 million last year.
An exhibition showing at the Bauhaus Archive Museum of Design in Berlin, devoted to the work of U.K. industrial designer Jasper Morrison, throws new light on Sony's unfulfilled plans for MiniDisc (MD) in the late 1990s. The exhibition, called Thingness, chronicles Morrison's work over 35 years with furniture, cooking utensils, tableware series, lamps, clocks and other everyday objects. Though there are physical examples of most of his designs, one commissioned by Sony Europe in 1998 exists in the exhibit only as a small, poor-quality captioned photo of a stylish tabletop audio system. Sony hired Morrison to design “a top of the range family of products, from TV to HiFi,” says the caption. Morrison came up with a system that allowed the HiFi to be mounted vertically on an aluminum base “or simply unhooked and laid flat, in a more traditional arrangement,” it says. Its “sideways slot” for MiniDiscs “seemed nicely expressive of the function of recording” from CD to MD, it says. “We never really discovered why the project was stopped." Sony launched MD in 1992, and though it was popular with consumers in Japan, several factors ultimately doomed the format, including reluctance of the major record labels to embrace it as a prerecorded medium. Sony sold the last of its MD players in 2013.
Kaleidescape has “confirmation” from the DVD Copy Control Association that the company was “incorrectly identified” in a DOJ Antitrust Division notice as having withdrawn from the Content Scramble System (CSS) licensing group (see 1703270055), Kaleidescape CEO Cheena Srinivasan emailed us Wednesday. DVD CCA representatives “regret the error,” Srinivasan told us. “They have informed me that if anyone wishes to know more about our DVD CCA status, that they’d be glad to confirm that we’re a current licensee of the [CSS] technology.” DVD CCA confirms that Kaleidescape remains a member of the group, spokesman Greg Larsen emailed us Thursday. The notice mistakenly listing Kaleidescape’s membership as having lapsed was the result of “nothing more than an unintentional clerical error on the part of DVD CCA,” Larsen said. “We are looking to see if there is a way to file an amended notice.” DVD CCA “is certainly not happy about this filing mistake and regrets any error for which it is responsible,” he said. Kaleidescape was one of six companies to recently withdraw from DVD CCA, according to the notice published in Monday’s Federal Register. DOJ and the FTC require the change-of-membership notifications to extend DVD CCA members antitrust protections under the 1993 National Cooperative Research and Production Act, the notice said. That the notice listed Kaleidescape as having withdrawn from DVD CCA was noteworthy in light of the company's settlement nearly three years ago of the decade-long breach of license complaint brought by DVD CCA over Kaleidescape’s movie servers that import CSS-protected DVDs.
The Sonopress line in Guetersloh, Germany, recently stamped its 3 millionth Ultra HD Blu-ray disc, about a year after starting production, it said in a Tuesday announcement. Ultra HD Blu-rays “have been an absolute success story for our company since Day One," said Sonopress Managing Director Sven Deutschmann. Sonopress helped “blaze the trail for the entire industry in the technical development of a completely new format,” he said. Its “pioneering role has opened the door to several worldwide entertainment clients,” including Warner and Universal, he said. Sonopress is currently producing all the Harry Potter films for Warner on Ultra HD Blu-ray, it said.
Analogix is working with MediaTek on a multimedia solution combining MediaTek’s SoC and Analogix’s DisplayPort technology, they said in a Monday news release. Analogix Vice President Michael Ching cited expanding use cases for applications requiring high-performance video output. Analogix’s ICs and intellectual property core solutions support the DisplayPort standard up to version 1.4 providing video resolution up to 8K, Display Stream Compression (DSC 1.2) for interoperable lossless compression over display links, and High Definition Content Protection (HDCP 2.2) for digital rights management, said Analogix.
The ZigBee Alliance announced UL as the fifth independent authorized test lab to support ZigBee Alliance certification programs. UL will offer ZigBee testing at its labs in Fremont, California, and Basingstoke, U.K., said the alliance in a news release. “We are at a tipping point in the industry where the Internet of Things moves from an idea to real world application for consumers,” said Ghislain Devouge, vice president-UL Consumer Technology division. Other ZigBee authorized test facilities are the Chinese Electronics Standardization Institute, Element Materials Technology, National Technical Systems and TÜV Rheinland Group, it said. Providers have tested more than 1,600 certified ZigBee products, including 200 this year, it said.
DTS will showcase its DTS:X encoder suite, Manzanita Systems software updates, broadcast radio technologies and virtual reality audio solutions at IBC beginning Friday in Amsterdam. The DTS:X encoder is a stand-alone compression tool that allows content creators to produce immersive DTS content for Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray, plus file-based and streaming media, said a Wednesday news release. The DTS:X MediaPlayer gives creators the ability to test DTS audio against video prior to final multiplexing, authoring or packaging, it said. DTS also will demo its global hybrid radio platform for cars and mobile devices that supports analog AM/FM, DAB/DAB+ and HD Radio broadcasting and its VR audio solution based on DTS:X for Android and iOS in-app software developer kits.