Techno Know How, Understanding DVD Packaging

Pioneer VSX-C100-S Techno Know How, Understanding DVD Packaging, Digital Audio Formats

Techno Know How

Understanding DVD Packaging

DVD packaging usually states what sound formats are included on the DVD. The diagram here shows what you might see on a typical DVD box. The terms used (Dolby Digital, etc.) are explained in the following sections.

	LANGUAGE			English

				5.1
				SURROUND

				5.1
				5.1
				SURROUND

	CAPTIONS			Captioned
	SUBTITLES			Captioned
	SUBTITLES

English

Digital Audio Formats

Home theater uses various types of methods to encode the sound on to the digital sources and these are known as digital formats. The most common digital formats are explained below.

Dolby Digital and Dolby Surround 1

Dolby Digital is the most widely used system to record soundtracks on DVDs and other media. It's a sound compression format which records the sound of 6 channels of the theater surround system (Dolby Digital) on a movie film digital track. Of the 6 channels, the subwoofer channel is intended for bass only, and because the frequency range is smaller than a main channel, the overall soundtrack is called 5.1 channels.

Dolby Digital is the name of the Dolby surround multichannel digital system that was developed after the Dolby Surround System and Dolby Pro Logic Surround System.

Dolby Digital is also known as the 5.1 channel system. It is equipped with 5 channels (front left, front right, center, surround left, surround right) in the frequency range from 20 Hz to 20 kHz and an independent Low Frequency Effect (LFE) channel. The subwoofer channel is also called Low Frequency Effect (LFE).

This channel can be used with a powered subwoofer to get strong bass sounds.

DTS

DTS is another widely used system to record soundtracks on DVDs and other media. It has been adopted as a sound recording format in the latest movie theaters since the release of “JURASSIC PARK” in 1993, and has a good reputation for high quality sound and dynamic surround effects.

In this system, 6 channels of digital sound are recorded on CD-ROM, rather than on the film. DTS adopts a simultaneous playback format. With a low rate of compression of sound signals and a high rate of transmittance, a higher sound quality format is produced. Also, unlike the process of recording digital sounds on film directly, the only components required are a CD-ROM player as might be used with a personal computer and a DTS processor, and therefore less investment is required than with other formats. For this reason, the format is being introduced in more and more movie theaters, and is being adopted in home movie software (DVD, LD) and music software (5.1 channel CD).

PCM (Pulse Code Modulation)

This is an uncompressed 2 channel stereo format found on most CDs and DATs. PCM can be used as one of the audio recording formats for DVD but as it's only 2 channel stereo. It is sometimes used for DVD audio discs (or DVD-A).