London, UK, October 5 2020: Dolby Laboratories (NYSE: DLB), a leader in immersive entertainment experiences, today announced the debut of a 24/7 terrestrial TV channel featuring Dolby AC-4 next-generation audio, the first of its kind in Europe.
Run by Telewizja Polska (TVP), the Polish public broadcaster, the threemonth trial uses transmitters in Krakow and Katowice that cover six million viewers, and is part of the country’s move to the DVB-T2 standard, giving TVP the opportunity to operate the next-generation Dolby AC-4 audio standard in a fully live commercial context. Now on air, TVP Kultura HD, the broadcaster’s flagship cultural channel, has adopted Dolby AC-4 after two years of collaboration with Dolby’s Poland office. Javier Foncillas, Vice President Commercial Partnership Dolby Europe said: “The choice of Dolby AC-4 became compelling for a number of reasons, including enhanced audio quality, accessibility, ease of integration with the existing distribution chain, the high take-up of Dolby AC-4 in modern TV sets, and high spectral efficiency at a time of frequency reallocation.”
Poland’s broadcast regulator, KRRiT, has mandated that digital terrestrial broadcasters transition to the DVB-T2 standard by June 2022 as part of reallocating the 700MHz band for mobile internet, giving TVP the impetus to adopt new technologies.
TVP began internal testing in 2018, with an experimental immersive audio production of the Poland vs Lithuania pre-World Cup football match, and Dolby AC-4 broadcast tests. More recently, Dolby Poland in Wroclaw, TVP, and the Polish transmitter operator Emitel conducted interoperability tests on a wide selection of TVs in the Polish market. Dolby also collaborated with France-based video compression specialists ATEME for integration of the necessary functionality into the TVP Kultura workflow, based on ATEME’s TITAN Live encoder.
Over 70% of UHDTVs that shipped in Europe in early 2020 included Dolby AC-4 decoding capability, offering broadcasters such as TVP the potential to innovate new services. Dolby AC-4 provides double the audio coding efficiency of previous codecs and includes the ability to offer Dolby Atmos immersive audio, accessibility options such as dialogue enhancement, and powerful soundtrack personalisation features.
About Dolby Laboratories
Dolby Laboratories (NYSE: DLB) is based in San Francisco with offices in over 20 countries around the globe. Dolby transforms the science of sight and sound into spectacular experiences. Through innovative research and engineering, we create breakthrough experiences for billions of people worldwide through a collaborative ecosystem spanning artists, businesses, and consumers. The experiences people have — with Dolby Cinema, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, Dolby Audio, and Dolby Voice — revolutionise entertainment and communications at the cinema, on the go, in the home, and at work. Dolby, Dolby Atmos, Dolby Audio, Dolby Cinema, Dolby Vision, Dolby Dimension, Dolby Voice, and the double-D symbol are among the registered and unregistered trademarks of Dolby Laboratories, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries. Other trademarks remain the property of their respective owners.
Media Contacts: Perveen Akhtar +44 (0) 7741 726414 Perveen.Akhtar@Dolby.com