Windows 7 will support Dolby Digital Plus
San
Francisco - Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7 operating system
will support Dolby Digital Plus multichannel audio, Dolby
Laboratories announced.
The compressed-audio format will be available in the Home
Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions of
Windows 7.
Dolby Digital Plus supports up to 7.1 channels and such
features as bitstream mixing for secondary audio tracks.
It maintains the quality of Dolby Digital at a lower data
rate, and it's fully compatible with all current Dolby
Digital A/V receivers, the company said.
The format is an authorized format on Blu-ray discs, is
used to deliver Internet content, and is the broadcast audio
standard for HDTV services in such countries as France,
Italy, U.K., Spain and Sweden.
In the Windows Vista OS, Dolby Digital 5.1 was integrated
into the Ultimate and Home Premium editions. Vista was the
first Microsoft OS to integrate Dolby Digital technologies.
With previous Microsoft operating systems, including XP, consumers who wanted to decode or encode Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks had to add a third-party application.