Home Theater Meets the Personal Computer
Dolby Podcast Episode 5, January 4, 2007
All about experiencing surround sound from the movies, TV shows, games and music on your PC. Devon Bergman, Technical Marketing Manager for Dolby’s PC team, talks with Craig and Jack about what Dolby technologies you can experience with your PC and how to connect a PC to your home theater system. Listener, Noah, finds out how to experience Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD with his Logitech Z 5500 system.
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Mentioned in this Episode
[music]
Jack Buser: Hello and welcome to Dolbycast, the insider's guide to entertainment technology from the experts at Dolby Laboratories. I'm Jack Buser.
Craig Eggers: ...and I'm Craig Eggers.
Jack:...and we're here to give you a straight talk on everything you need to please your ears!
Craig: And welcome back to Dolby cast. Hello, Jack!
Jack: Hello, Craig! How are you doing?
Craig: I'm doing, well, you could probably hear how I'm doing. This is our post-holiday show and I think we're all suffering from effects of menthol cough drops and vitamin C and all the other things that go with that.
Jack: Every winter, those of us who are in the industry, we not only have to fight off the cold and flu viruses but we also have to fight off CES.
Craig: Exactly.
Jack: Oh my gosh, we all get so sick there, it's unbelievable; shaking so many hands and everybody's so excited to see each other. Man oh man, do I ever get a cold!
Craig: Precisely, don't shake hands if you go to CES.
Jack: True, at least wash your hands.
Craig: I don't think that you can get away with wearing rubber gloves or taking antiseptic.
Jack: They might think that you're a little strange. Who us? [laughs]
Craig: We're not strange, are we? [laughs]
Jack: No.
Craig: Not at all.
Jack: Well listen, what's today's topic, Craig?
Craig: Today's topic is interesting for me because traditionally I'm a home theater components kind of guy. I still got S-VHS in my home theater. I've got laserdiscs. I've got both of the new DVD formats in my home theater. I've always been a component guy. But the fact is there is tremendous amount of power in a personal computer.
Jack: That's right. More and more people are integrating PCs into their home theater because the PC, for so many folks, is becoming the center of their digital lifestyle.
Craig: And since we've done a survey on our listeners and found out that most of you are listening to us on your PC, we thought we would talk about how the PC can influence your entertainment experience as well as your home theater experience.
Jack: That's right. So maybe someday you'd be listening to this podcast through your home theater system, if you're not already. [laughs]
Craig: In surround sound, hopefully, right?
Jack: You got it! You got it.
Craig: So we're going to go take a quick break. We'll come back with a listener question and then we'll introduce our special guest.
Jack: Alright, sounds good.
[music]
Announcer: For answers to your audio questions, email dolbycast@dolby.com.
Jack: And we're back. Welcome again, everybody, to Dolbycast. Well listen, both Craig and I are so flattered with how many folks are actually writing in and asking us questions. We've had questions from all across the world from as far away as India . We've had questions from the United Kingdom . I mean, it's just so flattering to hear these questions come in and actually, Craig, we have a great question actually from a listener today, don't we?
Craig: We have a really great question Jack. It really pertains and opens up our next subject.
Jack: Yeah.
Craig: So let me go to the question. It's by a journalist with a name of Noah Lazarus. Hi Noah, how are you doing?
Jack: How you doing, Noah?
Craig: So Noah writes, "Hey, I like your podcast. I just have one question. I just purchased out-of-the-box 5.1 system (in parenthesis it's a Logitech Z-5500). It has Dolby Digital encoding built in to the receiver. My question is does that also let me decode Dolby Digital Plus and TrueHD or just standard Dolby Digital? Thank you, and keep up the good work."
Jack: All right, Noah, I have some good news for you. I jumped right onto the Logitech website and checked out that system and what a system it is! I mean, that thing packs a lot of power. Basically, it seems like a really good price.
So I'm actually quite excited this system and especially since this system has 3 stereo mini-jacks in the back, which can operate as a multi-channel analog input. And if you remember our previous podcast, you know, that all you have to do if you want to get Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus through this system, just make sure you buy yourself a next generation DVD player, either a HD DVD or a Blu-ray, that has multi-channel decoding for those formats built in.
Craig: So I suppose you can then go to a Radio Shack or any other accessory store, pick up a stereo cable to a mini-jack stereo.
Jack: Yep, you're going to need 3 of them. You've probably seen, they are an 1/8-inch stereo mini-jack to 2 RCA. You are going to need 3 of them. Then basically, you plug those into the back of your receiver and you should be good to go.
Craig: Excellent!
Jack: All right, Noah, be sure to write us back and let us know if it worked you.
Craig: Excellent! Great answer, Jack. We are going to be back with our very special guest in just a moment.
[music]
Announcer: If you have questions for the experts at Dolby Laboratories, email us at dolbycast@dolby.com. For more information and links to today's topic, be sure to log on to dolby.com/dolbycast.
Craig: And we're back with our special guest. I'm going to let Jack introduce him.
Jack: Alright. Well, we have Devon Bergman here in the studio. Devon is the Technical Marketing Manager for our PC team. So that means he is the expert on everything PC, isn't that right Devon ?
Devon: [laughs] Thanks Jack.
Jack: You're welcome. So we're going to be talking about home theater PCs. We also hear them referred to as “EPCs”. We also hear them referred to as “media center PCs”. Can you talk a little bit about these 3 terms?
Devon: EPCs, home theater PCs, media center PCs are all terms you're hearing out there. What they represent is the form factor of having this rectangular box that looks like a CE product that you stick into a rack or into your home theater setup and it just blends very well.
Craig: It's a rectangular box that looks like a CE [consumer electronics –Ed.] product. I like that already. [laughs]
Jack: So I mean, why would I want one these in my home theater? I guess a lot of our listeners here say “well gee, well my PC, I think of that more for word processing stuff”. What kind of role do PCs today serve in a home theater setup?
Devon: Well, you think of a PC; you have power, you have space, you have optical drives; it's everything. It can take over your amplifier, your receiver, your DVD player, your next-gen DVD player; it does everything. It's the ultimate source product.
Craig: I never really thought of a PC as an audio player. Quite frankly, in the past, PCs have not done a very good job with audio. What's happening in a PC to really bring out a high resolution audio experience?
Devon: So a few years back, Intel introduced this high definition audio and what that did was allow high bandwidth audio to pass through the PC. Dolby jumped on and we partnered with Intel for a while and we came up with a spec that helped raise the bar electronically.
So the electrical outputs to these devices are now bumped up to a higher audio requirement specification. It really just compares really well to CE products.
Craig: It seems to me that with all the power that's built into a PC, the ability to put in high performance DACs should never have been forgotten.
Jack: Is that what's happening now?
Devon: That's correct, yes. With the specifications that this HD Audio brought, it forced the vendors that are making all these DACs for the PCs to raise their bar as well. And in the PC industry, it's nickel-and-dime-ing everywhere; everyone's trying to save as much as they can on building these products. And your margins are much higher in the CE space. You have room to play. You can put in these more expensive parts. In the PC world, it's just not that simple.
So now, as we move into these HD Audio products—EPCs, home theater PCs, media centers, whatever we want to call them—you're getting a lot higher of quality. Whereas it was forgotten in the past, we're remembering it now.
Jack: So, Craig, you ready to buy one?
Craig: Not yet.
[laughter]
Craig: Not yet. I'm still thinking about this.
So what you're basically saying is, quality—audio quality, video quality—has now become a competitive feature for PCs, just as it is with CE products.
Devon: Absolutely correct, absolutely correct.
Jack: If you were talking to Craig, Devon —which, maybe you are, I guess, sort of talking to each other.
Craig: [laughs]
Jack: If you were talking to a guy like Craig, would you feel 100% confident saying, "Go out there, find yourself an entertainment PC, or a home theater PC, with Dolby technology; it's going to perform on the level of your consumer electronics devices?" Would you feel 100% comfortable saying that?
Devon: I would.
Jack: Yeah.
Devon: I, 100%, would. Again, there's 2 schools of thought. There's people that like the PC as an extra device, a source product; they like to have all the gear. Like you said, you have your HD Audio, your Blu-ray—you have everything—laserdisc, in your rack. People like that.
Craig: There's no laserdisc in PC.
Jack: [laughs]
Craig: [laughs]
Devon: That's correct.
Jack: I suppose there might've been at one point.
Craig: [laughing] No, I don't think so.
Devon: I don't think so, either.
Jack: No. Maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe not. [laughs]
Devon: But there's the other school of thought, where, simple, one product can do it all.
Jack: Yeah.
Devon: And the PC can do both.
Jack: And for a lot of younger folks—I remember, when I was in college, I didn't have a whole heck of a lot of gear, but I did have a PC. Now, in those days, that PC was a Pentium 90. [laughs]
Devon: [laughs]
Jack: Not really capable of doing a heck of a lot of multimedia. But I can imagine today's folks that are in college, they must have most of their entertainment on their PC.
Devon: It's true. Back a few years ago—maybe earlier this year, even—people would go out and buy a PC and they say, "OK, do I want a laptop or a desktop?"
Jack: Yeah.
Devon: It's not that simple anymore. It's rapidly changing. And now you have these laptops, you have desktops, you have gaming machines, you have entertainment and home theater machines, you have ultra-portables, you have tablets, you have these massive laptops that are 20-something inches wide and weigh a ton...
Jack: [laughs] I like those, actually. [laughs]
Devon: [laughs] It's not as simple as, "Do I need a laptop or a desktop?"
Craig: I think the cool thing would also be the user interface. You now have the ability to collate all of your content and literally access it by title, by genre, possibly...
Devon: Correct. Whereas, you'll see, the main differentiation—besides form factor—for EPCs, home theater, and media center PCs, from traditional desktop machines are the interface.
Jack: Yeah.
Devon: In the PC side, these are all running Windows Media Center Edition. It's an extra feature that Microsoft added that gives you this huge interface that takes over the entire screen. You control it with a remote control, sitting on your couch. The industry term we call it is “10-foot” because you're watching it and controlling it from 10 feet away, not mouse and keyboard style. You get to sit back, use your remote, access all your music, your movies, your IPTV, your Internet radio, everything.
Jack: I've seen the interface, but I don't actually have it myself. And I've got to say, after having this little chat, I may have to run out and grab myself a PC with Windows Media Center Edition. [laughs]
Devon: [laughs]
Craig: Do you still have room on that credit card?
Jack: [laughs] I don't think so. Not after this holiday, I'll tell you that.
Craig: [laughs]
Jack: So it's an interface; you can literally operate your PC from your couch with a remote control.
Craig: That's correct. Everything runs off the remote control.
Jack: Oh, that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool.
Craig: Remote control your computer. Who would've thought?
Jack: Who would've thought? I know, I know.
So you mentioned all these different types of PCs. Now, we've talked about even another sort of an interface, if not an operating system. It seems like there's a lot of choices out there. You've certainly convinced me, anyway, that I'd better get a PC in my home theater setup. What do I look for? There's so many choices out there.
Devon: So what you're going to look for is that Dolby Home Theater or Dolby Master Studio mark. And what these marks represent is, Dolby took all of our premium technologies: Dolby Headphone, Dolby Virtual Speaker, Pro Logic, Pro Logic II, Pro Logic IIx, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital EX...
Jack: Wow.
Devon: The whole package, everything. The kit and caboodle.
Jack: That's almost everything... [laughs]
Devon: All crammed into that PC. And what that does is it gives you access to all of our premium technologies for any content you have.
Jack: And that's one mark.
Devon: And that's one mark.
Jack: And it says, I've seen the logo: "Dolby" and then "Master Studio..."
Devon: It'll say "Dolby" up top, and it'll say "Master Studio" in red or "Dolby Home Theater" in blue. What these represent is, again, the ultimate set of Dolby technologies.
Craig: So we're going to come back in a couple moments and talk about the PCEE experience, these different Dolby marks, and how the PC interfaces with the home theater of the future.
Jack: You've got it. We'll be right back.
[music]
Announcer: You're listening to Dolbycast with Jack Buser and Craig Eggers. Be sure to log on to dolby.com/dolbycast to dig deeper into today's topic.
Craig: So in the last segment, I referred to CE. And for those of you who don't know what CE is, CE stands for "consumer electronics" And then I followed through with another one, “PCEE”, which is kind of an internal Dolby word, but I think Devon could probably give us a little bit more insight into what “PCEE” is, what it stands for, and what it brings.
Devon: So the PCEE represents "PC Entertainment Experience." And that, again, is Dolby's family of technologies for Dolby Home Theater, Dolby Master Studio, and Dolby Sound Room. These are the 3 tiers that we have for the way we bundle our products for the market.
You won't see "PC Entertainment Experience" written on a PC, but you will find these labels, these little stickers, that are common in the PC industry. You'll see the green one, which is Dolby Sound Room; that's our 2-channel. It has Dolby Headphone, Dolby Virtual Speaker. It's a personal listening experience.
You have Dolby Home Theater, which is a lot more relevant for EPCs and home theater PCs...
Craig: Connection to your greater system...
Devon: Yeah. And that has, again, the virtualizers, Dolby Headphone and Dolby Virtual Speaker, which give a personal surround sound experience, via any set of headphones or 2 speakers.
Jack: Right.
Devon: You have Pro Logic II and IIx, which will give you 5.1, and even 7.1, expansion of any of your 2-channel or 5-channel content.
Jack: Even iTunes and stuff like that.
Devon: Even iTunes.
Jack: That's great, that's great.
Devon: It works with iTunes. All of the products I'm speaking of are system-wide.
Jack: That's great. I've been buying a lot of movies, actually, over iTunes recently. And that's one of the things I'm most excited about, is being able to take all those movies in iTunes and actually expand them out, using Pro Logic II, back out to 5.1 channel surround sound. That's cool.
Devon: It's great.
Jack: Yeah, that's cool.
Devon: And then the last tier we have is Dolby Master Studio. And what that represents is the ultimate creation. It gives you all the Dolby home theater technologies, as well as creation apps that allow you to create DVDs in 5.1 yourself.
Jack: That's the one I'm getting!
Craig: So I can go out with my camcorder, shoot home movies, and come back.
Devon: Bring them back, and make it look like it came out of Hollywood .
Jack: Ah, that's what I'm getting.
Craig: That's very cool. Very cool.
Jack: That's what I'm getting. Now, Craig is definitely getting one. All right, so, definitely I think you actually got Craig onto PC bandwagon here. So what products out there right now that actually support these technologies. Are there any specific products that you'd like to point out?
Devon: So there are 2 that are really exciting right now. Sony just came out with the Dolby home, sorry, a Blu-ray player in their laptop.
Jack: That's cool.
Devon: This product features Dolby Digital Live, which I haven't mentioned, yet. All of our tiers have Dolby Digital Live. And the Sony specifically has Dolby Digital Live technology, and what that enables you to do is to take any content coming in and expand it to 5.1 and send over Dolby Digital Live.
Jack: That's cool.
Devon: It sends a S/PDIF digital connection in the tradition Dolby Digital format that any receiver out there could really decode in.
Jack: We've talked about S/PDIF before in the previous podcast. S/PDIF is that optical or coaxial digital connection you'll see on the back of the a lot of DVD players and stuff like that. It's THE way to connect Dolby Digital from a source product over to your receiver.
Devon: One single connection. That's great.
Jack: That's cool. So actually on your PC and any kind of audio I have on my PC is going to be basically transformed into Dolby Digital 5.1.
Devon: That's correct.
Jack: That's too cool.
Craig: So you play back through any system.
Jack: That's too cool. Games, too?
Devon: Games, too?
Jack: If I'm playing any game on this laptop, it'll be just like Xbox 360?
Devon: That's exactly correct.
Jack: Oh yeah! That's what I'm getting. [laughing]
Craig: Time for credit cards.
Jack: I think I might have a new laptop shortly. [laughing] So what's another product you want to pick out?
Devon: So those that are in HD DVD camp. Toshiba Qosmio has HD DVD player.
Jack: Yes, I was playing with that. That is a cool laptop.
Devon: That product has Dolby Home Theatre. It has again all the entire suit of technology I've just mentioned. That represents Dolby Home Theatre. It's great.
Jack: HD DVD playback?
Devon: HD DVD playback.
Jack: That's got to have a big wide screen. How big is that screen on that thing?
Devon: That screen is, I believe, it's a 17 inch screen.
Jack: Wow.
Craig: High definition movie on an airplane.
Jack: That's what I'm talking about. Boy, the guy sitting next to you is going to be jealous. [laughing] That's pretty cool. All right. That's very cool. So, Craig, I know you want to ask a question about connections. Let's talk a little bit about connections.
Craig: Yeah, Devon . So if I've got a media center PC or some of these advanced laptops, how do I basically connect these to my home theatre system to get the best experience?
Devon: You have 2 options. So, for those EPCs and laptops has multi-channel analog outputs that we were talking, mini-jacks.
Jack: Right.
Devon: You can hook up those with your mini-jack Y cable to your RCA.
Jack: We were talking about that during the listener question earlier.
Devon: Exactly. The same connections that you purchase for that Logitech system you were discussing, you'd buy for the EPC.
Jack: Got it.
Devon: You plug those into the back and separate them into your individual channels of your amplifier.
Jack: Got it.
Devon: And use your amplifier to pump up the volume.
Jack: Craig, that's what you'll have to probably do, I would imagine.
Craig: And the probably the best way, when you think about it, is that as PCs evolved, they're going to adopt Blu-ray and HD DVD capability with Dolby True HD and Dolby Digital Plus. These new advanced codecs deliver incredible audio performance. They're going to probably do decoding inside the PC.
Devon: Yeah, that's how it...
Jack: Very, very cool. Now, is there any other ways that these PCs connect. We've talked a little bit about the S/PDIF connection.
Devon: S/PDIF connection would be your other option. Again, one connection is either optical or coax. Just one connection, TOSLINK, and over that you would use Dolby Digital Live. And Dolby Digital Live again takes all the technology and all the processing and encodes it into family of Dolby Digital format.
Jack: Yeah. Now that's probably the way I would hook it up because I, frankly speaking, I ran out of multi-channel analog inputs [laughing] to my receiver.
[laughter]
Jack: So many Blu-ray players and HD DVD players now. [laughing]
Craig: So, Devon . We've talked about the audio connection, but you know as a videophile I'm curious what type of video outputs do you find now on these next generation entertainment pieces?
Devon: So lot of these EPC and laptops, they have DVI...
Jack: DVI.
Devon: DVI, HDMI....
Jack: HDMI.
Devon: and your traditional VGA.
Jack: So I thought DVI was a lot more common on PCs, but is it really HDMI that is coming around?
Devon: It is.
Jack: And for those folks aren't familiar with these connections, DVI is a sort of, if you will, it's a different physical connection than HDMI. But, if you will, it's sort of a subset of HDMI. It's video only, but very similar to HDMI.
Devon: It's only video. It's completely digital, it's a digital signal. And it only carries video.
Jack: But HDMI could carry digital video and audio. Right?
Craig: Now it be should be added that if you got an AV receiver with HDMI on it, there are DVI to HDMI connectors.
Jack: Yeah, I use one at home, actually, a little adaptor. So they are totally compatible as I've found out. You buy this little adaptor. It costs me 10 bucks. You can turn HDMI into DVI and vice versa.
Devon: You'll find a lot of PCs that have DVI, but do not have HDMI, and a lot of TVs that have HDMI, but not DVI.
Jack: Right.
Devon: So that connector is, again, it's just...
Jack: It's like 10 bucks. I bought one. Yeah.
Devon: Usually the format being transmitted over HDMI for video is the DVI format anyway.
Jack: I'm exited, you've mentioned a lot of these media center PCs or EPCs or HTPCs, or home theatre PCs, whatever you want to call them, are actually adopting HDMI. That, I mean, that's amazing.
Devon: We're starting to see that. It's very new for us and it starts to ramp up rather quickly.
Jack: But to me that really shows how these two worlds are really coming together.
Devon: Oh, they are completely converging. Completely.
Jack: Yeah, that's just great.
Craig: Providing the consumer the simplicity of a single cable connection.
Jack: There you go. There you go.
Craig: That's a great thing.
Jack: That's fantastic. Well listen, I have one more question.
Devon: Shoot.
Jack: which is, OK. So, frankly speaking, I have a PC laying around [laughing]. So, is there any options for somebody like me who just came out of the holidays, maybe spent too much money and wants to convert, just for the time being, I want to convert an existing PC, something I've already bought, something I already have into something more like one of these Master Studio Dolby PCs or home theatre Dolby PCs? Is there anything I could buy that sort of does this kind of stuff?
Devon: There is. So a company named Sondigo, which is a licensee of Dolby, they took the Dolby Master Studio suite, and they build into an internal sound card.
Jack: That's cool.
Devon: So you buy it third party off the shelf. You can go online, sure many these retailers are carrying them.
Jack: Sondigo.
Devon: Sondigo.
Jack: How do you spell it?
Devon: S-o-n-d-i-g-o.
Jack: Very cool. Very cool.
Craig: So Devon, I have to tell you, you've wetted my appetite.
[laughter]
Craig: I was a skeptic at the beginning of this session. But there's just so much more that we're going to have to learn about PC and entertainment.
Jack: Yeah. We're going to have you back. This is such a deep topic. We're running out of time here. I've got to say that I've got a list about 100 questions I've written down. I think we should just definitely revisit this topic if....
Craig: You'll come back, won't you?
Devon: I love to. With pleasure.
Jack: All right. Thank you, Devon Bergman. The Technical Marketing Manager for our PC team here at Dolby. I'm Jack Buser.
Craig: And I'm Craig Eggers.
Jack: And we'll see you next time.
Craig: And don't forget to send those cards and those letters to dolbycast@dolby.com.
Jack: We love to hear all the questions you guys have. If you have any questions about hook up, what you should buy, whether your system will do this or that, anything that might be bugging you. Write in your question, we'll answer them on-air. Don't forget, also, we have a web site where, I believe, you'll be able to contact us. That is dolby.com/dolbycast. So please send in your questions.
Craig: Say goodbye again, Jack.
Jack: All right, bye-bye everyone. We'll see you next time.
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