Will Google deliver us from Dolby

[usersky]

Google seems to head to a premiere: doing something actually good for human kind: Google goes after Dolby with HDR and audio standards. Now Google beeing themselves I wonder what will be the catch here because I fear what they will come with will be more evil than we experienced from Dolby. Hey, at least it will be "free".

 

[norcalscott]

I'm holding out hope that Google will at least be able to provide some competition to Dolby. Samsung, DTS, Technicolor and others have not been able to get it done so far. Many on this forum complain about licensing for things like MQA but as someone who works with IP licensing in the entertainment industry, I can tell you that most would be surprised how much of what they pay for HW and SW is tied to Dolby licensing fees - We just desperately need more viable competition in this area, especially on the audio side of things.

 

[JayGilb]

Google seems to head to a premiere: doing something actually good for human kind

It's only an accidental side effect, soon to be remedied when they control enough market share.
Don't be evil - I think it started out as !Don't be evil, but everyone thought it was an exclamation symbol instead of the intended negation operator.

 

[voodooless]

We just desperately need more viable competition in this area, especially on the audio side of things.

While I can applaud the sentiment, I don’t think this will change anything. Manufacturers will not start to make products that do not have Dolby licensing just because there is a supposed open alternative. There is just too much content out there that needs Dolby. At least for the foreseeable future.

 

[usersky]

Manufacturers will follow what Netflix, Amazon & Co will adopt. Content can be transcoded, irelevant if realistic, faithfull or not. Dolby can be history in a year if these big guys decide. And open source/free is a powerful argument. What I fear is Google being even more evil + Google abandoning randomly it's own projects.

 

[DVDdoug]

IMO - We don't need any more formats. Of course, the streaming services can use whatever they want and it doesn't affect us as long as the quality is adequate.

DVD & Blu-Ray are established standards so they aren't going to change. DVD supports uncompressed stereo and Blu-Ray supports uncompressed surround and those aren't licensed. But I'm pretty sure the video formats are all licensed.

But if you buy an AVR you want it support all of the official standards and you're going to pay (indirectly) for the CODECs.

 

[voodooless]

Manufacturers will follow what Netflix, Amazon & Co will adopt.

Why would they? For them to do this, there first needs to be hardware. Hardware will come if there is content… chicken and egg problem.

 

[usersky]

Why would they? For them to do this, there first needs to be hardware. Hardware will come if there is content… chicken and egg problem.

Content is king IMO. Very few people still own and care about DVD or Bluray discs, the whole planet streams. Digital hardware is just disposable nowadays. Look at Google Chromecast, cheap as a key ring. Netflix or Amazon can give this kind of hardware for free when you sign up.
Edit: why would you they do it? Because each streamed minute is cheaper. Times billions.

 

[norcalscott]

While I can applaud the sentiment, I don’t think this will change anything. Manufacturers will not start to make products that do not have Dolby licensing just because there is a supposed open alternative. There is just too much content out there that needs Dolby. At least for the foreseeable future.

Yes, no doubt manufacturers will continue to have to support, and pay royalties, for any formats that are required. Where things could change would be on the SW front, like with the ability to get multi-channel decoding / conversion support in Linux, FFMPEG and really even easily in Windows. This inflexible licensing by the 500 pound gorilla whose name rhymes with Colby, and their stranglehold on the industry is really only ever going to change if the big players develop viable alternatives.

 

[Mozi]

I can appreciate why paying licensing fees for Atmos is justfiable, but Dolby Vision is just HDR as it really should have been had HDR10 not been kneecapped out of the gate. There's really no good justification for paying Dolby just to have HDR work properly and I doubt Dolby sunk nearly as much money into developing Dolby Vision as they did with Atmos. I'd be happy to see a more open standard take root as HDR10+ doesn't seem to have taken.

 

[Sancus]

Doubt it. They might produce alternative standards that will be used for free content sites like YouTube etc, but Google approaches these things as a software problem. They're not, they're an advocacy problem. Defining a standard doesn't mean anything, Dolby wins because they put together a software and hardware package for producing content and aggressively market it to studios. They also put a lot of work into making sure their formats are supported by all hardware.

Without an aggressive campaign to both get studios onboard and get compatible hardware everywhere, there's little chance of unseating Dolby.

I mean, DTS:X already exists...

 

[usersky]

Doubt it. They might produce alternative standards that will be used for free content sites like YouTube etc, but Google approaches these things as a software problem. They're not, they're an advocacy problem. Defining a standard doesn't mean anything, Dolby wins because they put together a software and hardware package for producing content and aggressively market it to studios. They also put a lot of work into making sure their formats are supported by all hardware.

Without an aggressive campaign to both get studios onboard and get compatible hardware everywhere, there's little chance of unseating Dolby.

I mean, DTS:X already exists...

But then again, DTS is not Google. Google name is advocacy in itself. Google doens't care about software really, they are an advertising company, not a software company at all.