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Dolby® Upsamples & Apodizes TrueHD

Pictured (from left to right): Rhonda Wilson, Senior Member, Technical Staff, Products & Technology Group, Dolby Laboratories; Craig Eggers, Director, Content Creation and Playback, Home Theater Ecosystem, Dolby Laboratories; Poppy Crum, Senior Staff Scientist, Dolby Laboratories pose with some of the most recent titles using Dolby TrueHD with advanced 96k up sampling.

At 12 noon PST today, Dolby Laboratories, Inc. announced the availability of the first Blu-ray Discs™ premastered using Dolby® TrueHD with advanced 96k upsampling, The process, designed for use by studios, authoring houses, and mastering facilities, elevates playback performance of lossless audio on Blu-ray Disc™ by using the apodizing filter developed by Meridian.

Done Deal: Sony BMG

Now there are four. The music industry's "Big Five" record labels officially became the "Big Four" on Thursday, August 5, as Sony Music Entertainment and Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) finalized a merger months in the making. The partners are the music divisions of Sony Corporation and German media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG, respectively.

Dorian Tries Again

When we last">http://stereophile.com/news/011705dorian/">last left them, a troubled Dorian Group had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. In mid-January, the company issued a statement indicating that it would liquidate its assets and begin requesting bids for the purchase of the company in a sealed bidding process authorized by the US Bankruptcy Court, Northern New York District.

Download Duels

Stereophile readers may wonder why we regularly report on a low-fi music distribution service like iTunes. The reason is simple: What becomes popular in the mass market today, is what audiophiles will have to squeeze high-end music out of tomorrow.

Download War Far From Over

It has been an interesting week on the download battlefront. On Friday, online file-sharing service BearShare announced that it was shutting down its business. The P2P company, along with its operators Free Peers, Inc., agreed to the terms of a $30 million settlement with the recording industry. As part of the settlement, Free Peers agreed not to start any other unlicensed music services, and the company has agreed to sell BearShare's technology, rights, domain name, and user data to iMesh, Inc.

Downloading Increases

Downloading audio files, whether through a paid music service or not, continues to grow as a means to accumulate music in the US. According to a recent Ipsos-Insight study, as of April 2003, nearly one-third of the general US population aged 12 or older has downloaded a music or MP3 file from the Internet. This translates into roughly 65 million downloaders.

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