DCX3400
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Motorola set-top boxes to get Dolby Volume
For those of you who hate loud commercials or explosions -- just for the record, explosions are supposed to be loud -- Dolby Volume has the answer but it's one of those technologies that is included with something you buy. This of course means that if you already have a new HDTV and a new AV receiver, you kind of missed the Dolby Volume bus, but now you might just be in luck. Motorola and Dolby have worked out a deal that'll bring it to the DCX family of set-top boxes. The DCX700 and DCX3300 boxes will now ship with it, but providers will also have option to push an update for the DCX3400 HD-DVR and DCX3200 -- assuming your cable company loves you. And don't worry if you prefer dynamic sound, if you're lucky enough to get this from your provider there will be a setting to turn it off.
Motorola's new lineup of MPEG4 HD STBs
Moto's VP was just saying that MPEG4 would take over cable too, and so it begins with its first MPEG4 STB. This new lineup of cable set-top boxes will have all the bells and whistles including; MPEG2, MPEG4, OCAP, CableCARD, MoCA and most interestingly Dolby Digital Plus -- you know the new codec commonly used on HD DVDs. We can see where this is headed already, first we'll see these new boxes in the wild and before you know it new channels will require the latest hardware -- sound familiar? It should, it's how the satellite providers did it. In the long run this will help cable bring us more HD, but considering cable co's are footing the bill for all these boxes, we'd suspect the MPEG4 rollout will take much much longer than it did for either DirecTV or Dish.[Via Mediaexperiences2go.com]
