Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] surround encoding
From: Steve Harris (S.W.Harris_AT_ecs.soton.ac.uk)
Date: Tue Oct 16 2001 - 13:23:25 EEST
On Mon, Oct 15, 2001 at 11:36:49PM -0400, Paul Davis wrote:
> whats the legal status of surround encoding? are we free to write
> GPL'ed software that encodes 6 streams of audio data into DTS or Dolby
> digital?
Nope, the dolby ones at least are very much not free. c.f. www.dolby.com
I've written a 4 channel matrix encoder for LADSPA that just happens to be
compatible with prologic (aka dolby surround) as I believe that the
generic form of this variety of matrix encoding is not Dolby IP, but
Dobly's digital formats most definatly are (plus I don't you can encode to
them in realtime on a PC anyway).
DTS OTOH is patented, but I've a feeling the the line format is just the
2 stereo channels plus Sr, Sl and LFE, uncompressed on the data channels,
so its hard to imagine that thats covered by the patents.
- Steve
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