Dolby monopolizing upmixer technology

[blue_lion11]

Not sure if this has been posted before. Apparently, Dolby intends to restrict 3rd party upmixing on audio.Which means that you would not be able to take Dolby audio codecs and run it with a DTS or Auro mixer, basically monopolizing audio formats

Here's an excellent detailed article on it by audioholics along with a video discussion.

https://www.audioholics.com/audio-technologies/dolby-non-native-upmixing-atmos

 

This is taking away choices from the consumer while trying to sabotage the lesser known DTS and Auro formats. So if you have set up your home audio system for Auro3D (which requires a different layout from Dolby Atmos), you won't be able to experience a lot of content in 3D surround.

[Sauron]

There would probably be grounds for an antitrust lawsuit

[Blasteque]

It's a restriction on 3rd party upmixing only, correct?  Specifically: it would restrict using DTS or Auro upmixers to upmix a Dolby stream.  That doesn't sound all that unreasonable.  Yes, it's less options for the consumer, but Microsoft is under no logical obligation to allow Adobe Acrobat to be used for saving a .doc file as a .docx file.

 

Certainly a better move would be for Dolby to license that feature, rather than prohibit it.

 

Besides, doesn't DTS had a similar restriction?  (or at least did at one time)

 

(I admit to not knowing this subject matter as well as I used to...)

[blue_lion11]

4 minutes ago, Blasteque said:

It's a restriction on 3rd party upmixing only, correct?  Specifically: it would restrict using DTS or Auro upmixers to upmix a Dolby stream.  That doesn't sound all that unreasonable.  Yes, it's less options for the consumer, but Microsoft is under no logical obligation to allow Adobe Acrobat to be used for saving a .doc file as a .docx file.

I mean sure, they don't have to but it's still a crappy thing to do. Imagine if you couldn't open your docx file in libreoffice or google docs because Microsoft only wants you to use their own interpreter i.e. Office. It's not like DTS or Auro are stealing Dolby's tech. Rather, they are taking the existing audio codec and running it their own way. I am pretty sure you can overlay Dolby on DTS too. This just makes the battle for the dominant audio format a lot more awkward.

 

And Dolby has put this under the false pretense that they want to curate and enhance the customer's experience. If that were true, why would they still be allowing Yamaha, Denon or any other receiver manufacturer to overlay their DSPs over their signal? The first party processing by these companies is known to be far worse than that of DTS, Auro, etc. 

[Blasteque]

Just now, blue_lion11 said:

I mean sure, they don't have to but it's still a crappy thing to do. Imagine if you couldn't open your docx file in libreoffice or google docs because Microsoft only wants you to use their own interpreter i.e. Office. It's not like DTS or Auro are stealing Dolby's tech. Rather, they are taking the existing audio codec and running it their own way. I am pretty sure you can overlay Dolby on DTS too. This just makes the battle for the dominant audio format a lot more awkward.

 

And Dolby has put this under the false pretense that they want to curate and enhance the customer's experience. If that were true, why would they still be allowing Yamaha, Denon or any other receiver manufacturer to overlay their DSPs over their signal? The first party processing by these companies is known to be far worse than that of DTS, Auro, etc. 

I agree.  Their pretense is also a load garbage (that sort of excuse usually is).  My reaction was mainly aimed at the notion of an antitrust lawsuit (not your post).  As long as fragmented markets exist with competing formats, manufacturers will push to maintain fragmentation.  It's not in their financial interest to make their products free for everyone to use.  Bottom line for me: yes, it sucks, but it's not surprising.

[SansVarnic]

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[mr moose]

4 hours ago, blue_lion11 said:

I mean sure, they don't have to but it's still a crappy thing to do. Imagine if you couldn't open your docx file in libreoffice or google docs because Microsoft only wants you to use their own interpreter i.e. Office. It's not like DTS or Auro are stealing Dolby's tech. Rather, they are taking the existing audio codec and running it their own way. I am pretty sure you can overlay Dolby on DTS too. This just makes the battle for the dominant audio format a lot more awkward.

 

And Dolby has put this under the false pretense that they want to curate and enhance the customer's experience. If that were true, why would they still be allowing Yamaha, Denon or any other receiver manufacturer to overlay their DSPs over their signal? The first party processing by these companies is known to be far worse than that of DTS, Auro, etc. 

That's where it gets sticky, because the doc/docx thing is the same.  A format is IP and dolby own the ip to their codec meaning they do get to decide who uses it and who doesn't (how they use it is irrelevant).   It seems a little strange they would isolate themselves given DTS is not exactly the poor cousin and is , for intents and purposes,  as mainstream. 

[Sniperfox47]

9 hours ago, Blasteque said:

Yes, it's less options for the consumer, but Microsoft is under no logical obligation to allow Adobe Acrobat to be used for saving a .doc file as a .docx file.

Actually they are, as long as Adobe does all the work to support the formats and doesn't steal any of Microsoft's code.

 

So long as the other company black boxes the format, the owner of the format has no right to restrict interoperability. They can bring out a new version of the format that breaks compatibility, but they have no legal recourse when the other company keeps updating their compatibility. See Wine, OpenOffice, POSIX, and many other open implimentations of proprietary specs.

 

The only thing that would prevent this is a patent which is part of why the modern patent system is so fucky 

[leadeater]

11 hours ago, blue_lion11 said:

This is taking away choices from the consumer while trying to sabotage the lesser known DTS and Auro formats.

Pre Atmos DTS was the much more used and way higher quality codec, Dolby's only advantage back then was that if you didn't have a decoder you could still get audio (L & R channel). Decoders became way more common and inbuilt in to most things so DTS got favored for the higher audio quality. Dolby TrueHD was very far off from DTS: Master Audio.

 

10 hours ago, Blasteque said:

It's a restriction on 3rd party upmixing only, correct?  Specifically: it would restrict using DTS or Auro upmixers to upmix a Dolby stream.  That doesn't sound all that unreasonable.  Yes, it's less options for the consumer, but Microsoft is under no logical obligation to allow Adobe Acrobat to be used for saving a .doc file as a .docx file.

 

Certainly a better move would be for Dolby to license that feature, rather than prohibit it.

This is actually rather similar to the THX certified standards.

 

Also

Quote

Not too long ago, we had two flavors of Dolby PLIIx and DTS Neo:6 upmixers, each tailored for music and movies.

Both of those were garbage, nobody really wants those and if you do.......

 

As to why Dolby wants to do this I actually sort of agree with and understand why, Atmos is object based audio and the decoding of it alters based on configured number of speakers and their locations, any upmixing is counter to how this works and why the technology was developed.

[alphaproject]

DTS selections wouldn't really benefit much but the Auro 3D setting is what would get the most screwed since I barely ever see movies uploaded/streamed in actual Auro 3D. The layout might be different than Atmos BUT both setups use the same front height speakers unless you choose to bounce them off ceilings which is trash anyways. I have a 7.1.2 layout and I'm happy with it. There is room for rear heights only if I went with the Auro 3D layout not atmos. DTS X is easier to place speakers for as well.

[mr moose]

5 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Actually they are, as long as Adobe does all the work to support the formats and doesn't steal any of Microsoft's code.

 

So long as the other company black boxes the format, the owner of the format has no right to restrict interoperability. They can bring out a new version of the format that breaks compatibility, but they have no legal recourse when the other company keeps updating their compatibility. See Wine, OpenOffice, POSIX, and many other open implimentations of proprietary specs.

 

The only thing that would prevent this is a patent which is part of why the modern patent system is so fucky 

I believe Dolby can enforce it because the decoding algorithm is patented.  Part of the license agreement would simply be to not re-code into DTS or any other format. 

[Sniperfox47]

10 minutes ago, mr moose said:

I believe Dolby can enforce it because the decoding algorithm is patented.  Part of the license agreement would simply be to not re-code into DTS or any other format. 

Yeah. And that's totally fair. I wasn't arguing that Dolby couldn't do this, I was just pointing out that things like format conversion itself is protected by law.

 

Also on topic: Fuck patents. Fuck patents so hard. Patents were useful and important, and would still be useful and important nowadays if they were reasonably implimented, but in the past few decades it's just turned into a system that's manipulatively abused by large companies and patent trolls.

 

Protecting IP investments is important, but that doesn't defend those protections being abused for anticompetitive applications. It's as bad as the changes we've had to copyright law locking things down waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay past their life.

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Yeah. And that's totally fair. I wasn't arguing that Dolby couldn't do this, I was just pointing out that things like format conversion itself is protected by law.

 

Also on topic: Fuck patents. Fuck patents so hard. Patents were useful and important, and would still be useful and important nowadays if they were reasonably implimented, but in the past few decades it's just turned into a system that's manipulatively abused by large companies and patent trolls.

 

Protecting IP investments is important, but that doesn't defend those protections being abused for anticompetitive applications. It's as bad as the changes we've had to copyright law locking things down waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay past their life.

Patent trolls fucking it for all of us.  I do';t understand why they can't limit the sale of patents to organizations that actually use them (like you can;t buy a patent unless you make products that use said patent or you intend to use them),  in other words stop patents form being treated as a commodity and keep them as they were intended to be, a legal protection for IP.

[vanished]

To be clear, does this mean you will need a separate audio receiver - one that does just dolby content, and one for the rest?  If so, then yes, this is obviously stupid and needs to be stopped.  But if it's anything less than that, then a) I don't understand it yet and b) I bet it's not as bad as it sounds.

[vanished]

On 6/5/2018 at 3:27 AM, Sniperfox47 said:

On 6/5/2018 at 3:17 AM, mr moose said:

I believe Dolby can enforce it because the decoding algorithm is patented.  Part of the license agreement would simply be to not re-code into DTS or any other format. 

Yeah. And that's totally fair. I wasn't arguing that Dolby couldn't do this, I was just pointing out that things like format conversion itself is protected by law.

How is that fair in any way, or even logical?  Going back to the doc/docx example, it would be like Microsoft making a rule that LibreOffice may open docx files, but only if they don't allow saving them as a pdf.  Makes absolutely no sense.  The restrictions would be on opening/decoding it, what happens after that is none of their business.

[Sniperfox47]

8 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

How is that fair in any way, or even logical?  Going back to the doc/docx example, it would be like Microsoft making a rule that LibreOffice may open docx files, but only if they don't allow saving them as a pdf.  Makes absolutely no sense.  The restrictions would be on opening/decoding it, what happens after that is none of their business.

If something about the decoding of Docx was patented it would totally be within Microsoft's right to lisence that patent only under the condition that you don't convert it to another format. The lisence conditions are theirs to decree.

 

I'm not saying that's logical, or right or sensical in any way. I'm not saying it's fair from a competition standpoint. I'm just saying his point was fair that they're legally justified in doing it.

 

I would strongly disagree that anything about Dolby's encoding formats should even *be* patentable, but the patent office would seem to disagree with me... so... yeah...

[mr moose]

5 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

How is that fair in any way, or even logical?  Going back to the doc/docx example, it would be like Microsoft making a rule that LibreOffice may open docx files, but only if they don't allow saving them as a pdf.  Makes absolutely no sense.  The restrictions would be on opening/decoding it, what happens after that is none of their business.

Fair is a point of perspective.   I could argue that all laws that restrict me doing anything I want are ultimately unfair because who should have rights over me as a sentient being?

The dolby encoding algorithm is highly guarded IP, a bit like the 11 secret herbs and spices.   Somewhere along the line the the powers that be in Dobly decided that re-coding their signal into a competitors was going to hurt their bottom line (I don't know how or why),  Without knowing the reason for such a move it gets hard to decide if that is fair or not.

 

With regard to the docX analogy, yes it would be exactly the same as far as I can tell.  And I can see why it would make no sense, except for the fact it would make libreoffice less appealing for some people.  Which I think would be a reasonable motivation when your business relies on people buying your product over a free one.

[LAwLz]

On 6/7/2018 at 6:13 PM, Sniperfox47 said:

If something about the decoding of Docx was patented it would totally be within Microsoft's right to lisence that patent only under the condition that you don't convert it to another format. The lisence conditions are theirs to decree.

 

I'm not saying that's logical, or right or sensical in any way. I'm not saying it's fair from a competition standpoint. I'm just saying his point was fair that they're legally justified in doing it.

 

I would strongly disagree that anything about Dolby's encoding formats should even *be* patentable, but the patent office would seem to disagree with me... so... yeah...

I think the problem with software patents is that they often patent a problem or a result, rather than a solution.

 

What I mean by that is, let's take Apple as an example. Apple owns the patent for the little "rubber banding" effect you get when you scroll and reach an end of a list on iOS.

For regular patents like a patent on a lock, you patent the specific construction of the lock. With software patents, you patent the end result rather than the algorithm which creates that result. It doesn't matter if Google writes a rubber banding algorithm which is completely different, code wise, because it's the result that's patented.

Imagine if patents for physical things were like that. Rather than a patent saying "this shape on the key and lock is patented by us" it would be "patent for not being able to open a door unless authenticated", which would cover all possible lock designs, as well as a bunch of other things too. It would be a patent for a problem, rather than a specific solution for that problem.

 

If you ask me, patents and copyright should protect Dolby's code from being copied without their consent, but it should (in my opinion) be legal to decode it assuming the decoder does not use code from Dolby. And if the audio is decoded without using Dolby's decoder, then they should not have the right to enforce their own restrictions, since their software was not used in the creation of the output, just like Adobe can't enforce their licensing agreement on me just because I may have used an image created in Photoshop when creating a video.

 

It's also pretty ridiculous that you can patent math. 

[vanished]

7 hours ago, LAwLz said:

[snip]

I had never thought about that before but that's true... I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact most people know nothing about coomputers?  For example, when the patent office reviews and grants these, do they have a relevent industry expert or is it just some random guy?