With the announcement of Universal’s first DTS releases in January, many of you have written to us, asking for advice and help, so I’d like to take today’s column to clear up some misunderstandings that seem to be out there regarding DTS.

First of all, what is DTS? DTS is an audio format, like Dolby Digital, Dolby Surround or PCM, all of which are commonly used on DVD releases. Surround formats like Dolby Digital are compressed formats and have been chosen for DVD in order to allow up to 6 separate audio channels on a disc, without having too much of a data throughput. Since we are now in the digital domain, data throughout can become a serious problem, if the hardware is unable to shovel data through the bus as quickly as it is needed. General space restrictions on DVD discs also come into play and due to the compression of the Dolby Digital audio format it is possible to have three or more 5.1 channel Dolby tracks on a single layered, single sided disc, if the film is of average length. Compression however comes at a cost, and the cost in the case of Dolby Digital is fidelity and limited dynamics. Just as we can see compression artifacts in the picture of DVD if it is poorly done, we can also hear compression artifacts in the sound of a DVD disc if it is poorly or heavily compressed. And that is where DTS can make a difference. DTS stores all discrete channels  in a data stream with substantially less compression than Dolby Digital does, and can only be played back through DTS capable equipment. Since the compression is much less, the degradation of the signal you are hearing is significantly lower as well, resulting in a higher fidelty.

What does this mean in practice however? Do we all have to dump our old DVD players and replace them with new, DTS capable ones? Should we all sell our Dolby Digital equipment and upgrade to DTS receivers? Certainly not.

Many people argue that compressed signals are inherently worse than uncompressed and as such will tell you that DTS is clearly better than Dolby Digital because of its smaller compression ratio, and a must for every serious home theater owner. I disagree to an extend and have to tell you that there seems to be a certain lack of knowledge in the field of data compression on many of those advocates’ behalf. You can indeed have high compression that is free of audible artifacts if it is done well, but many people prefer to compare a sub-par Dolby Digital track to its most glorious DTS incarnation. Maybe we should start comparing the best of Dolby Digital tracks to the best of DTS tracks and then make that decision to be fair to both formats. Either way, DTS is great indeed, and it outshines a great number of Dolby Digital tracks with its potential clarity. Personally though, I feel that only a minority of people would actually be able to tell the difference outright. It is much easier to make this distinction if you have a direct A/B comparison, of course, and chances are, you too would hear the difference if you had the chance to compare an average or poor Dolby Digital track to a good DTS track. Fact of the matter is however, that without this direct comparison many people are not able to tell the difference and this is the key point, I guess.

Not everything is as rosy as it may seem in DTS-land either. Just as the higher Dolby Digital compression has its price, so does DTS. The price of DTS, though, is directly related to your purse and oftentimes to your viewing comfort, too. Image Entertainment are preparing “Dances With Wolves” for release with a DTS soundtrack, for example, and the only way to manage the flood of data generated by the DTS bitstream, is to spread the film on two separate discs. One of them dual layered and a single layered one for the “rest of the film”. Not exactly what we had expected from DVD, is it? Universal’s release, while still on single discs obviously, will come at a $10 premium compared to their Dolby Digital counterparts and chances are, some of them won’t even contain all the extras found on the Dolby Digital Collector’s Editions, again, because of space restraints on the DTS discs. I think it is rather obvious. While DTS has its benefits, it is clearly designed for people who do not mind the extra expense and who would do anything to obtain the truest sound image possible. DTS caters to those audiophile people and it costs them accordingly. Not only is the actual disc more expensive, DTS capable receivers come also at quite hefty a premium. I am sure we all would love to enjoy DTS at home, but realistically, it is just not feasible.

It shouldn’t concern you too much, though, because many films you see in movie theaters don’t have DTS sound either and are presented with a Dolby Digital soundtrack. I have hardly had an “unsatisfying” sonic experience when I left a movie theater, because I felt I could hear compression artifacts - although I have heard of people who claim they have. Since all DTS DVDs are also available in Dolby Digital versions, there is really no need to spend extra money on DTS releases and equipment, unless you feel Dolby Digital is just not good and dynamic enough for you.


On a completely different note, I would also like to say a few words about our “Hidden Features” section for a minute, and thank everyone who has contributed to this section and submitted his comments. As you certainly know DVD Review’s Hidden Features section is the most complete list of Easter Eggs and Hidden Features you will find anywhere, and this is mostly because of your help. Without your submissions, we wouldn’t have been able to gather so many hidden features in one place. Interestingly, there seems to be a constant controversial about what is a hidden feature and what is not, and I would like to take a few minutes of your time to tell you a little more about how we look at these features.

We have stopped listing the various trailers found in Warner’s Reel Recommendations, because these trailers can be found on literally every release from Warner Home Video. Although not advertised on the packaging, we feel they just don’t qualify as “Easter Eggs” anymore because they are simply too implicitly part of Warner’s releases. The same will soon be true for Trimark’s hidden trailers, as every other one of their releases contains these trailers hidden underneath the Trimark logo in the menu screen.

Strangely though, some people also feel we should not list a feature as “hidden”, if it can be found in the disc’s regular menu structure. While at first everyone would probably agree, imagine this for a moment. A disc contains an isolated soundtrack that can be accessed through the language menu of the disc’s documentary, which in turn is part of the “Special Features” menu. If this feature is not printed on the disc’s packaging, chances are, the majority of users will never get to see it, because most English speaking people never really need to access any language menu to begin with. If it is hidden two layers deep within “Special Features” and “Documentary Language” menus, we feel it clearly qualifies as a hidden feature, because the creators have done their best to keep it from the regular user’s eyes. Sure there are people who have the habit to surf through every single one of the menu entries on a DVD disc, but we fell the majority of users just play their discs and check the special features in the main menu.

The same is true with hidden features that are rather easy to find. Is a hidden feature really determined by the difficulty level it poses on the user? If so, how do we rate this difficulty level? Does a feature not qualify because it can be easily found and yet it is not advertised on the packaging? Well, in this case, we usually make case by case decisions, mostly in favor of the feature. In general we feel we’d rather list too many hidden features than too little. It doesn’t hurt to tell people about a few nifty elements on the disc they might  or might not  overlook otherwise.

With that in mind, I’d like to sign off for today, but not before telling you that we have inserted a great number of layer change times in our Film Vault. Thanks to our reader Anthony Haukap, who started the ball rolling, by sending us a number of layer switch times, reminding us that there is still quite a deficit in the database. Well, it should look a quite a bit better now.

Have a great week everyone and enjoy your movies.

 December 14, 1998

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