Dolby's vision for the living room includes abundant audio options
Why should you have to listen to a sports commentator who's obviously pulling for the other team -- or one who's just plain boring? That's the question Dolby's out to answer with its personalized audio demo here at NAB. The company's showing attendees how they could enjoy a TV experience tailored to their preferences. Following through with the sports example mentioned above, this means different options for commentators during a hockey game. If you're a basketball fan watching the Spurs take on the Pacers while talking with friends on Skype, the system will recognize the VoIP service and mute other audio when they're speaking. Maybe you're more into The Voice; Dolby's tech could bring you audio from your favorite judge, excluding the opinions you don't want to hear.
Though Dolby's only demoing this audio experience now, the plan is to take the tech to market working with specific content providers. It's not clear how the company plans to distribute multiple audio streams simultaneously -- be it with the existing infrastructure or over IP -- but we imagine there will need to be new hardware on both ends in order to take advantage. That's for Dolby to sort with content partners, but in the meantime, you can get an idea of how it'll work in the hockey game demo below.
Zach Honig contributed to this report.
