Satellite broadcaster Euro1080 began using aacPlus/DTS multichannel audio with its recent switch from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 HD transmissions. Euro1080 was formed three years ago by Belgian HD production company Alfacam, and provided some of the earliest non-trial HD content available in Europe.
The aacPlus multichannel audio is fed to next-gen HD MPEG-4 set-top boxes, where the audio is transcoded to DTS Digital Surround for decoding in home theatre systems, according to DTS.
In some countries, Euro1080 is required to transmit audio in multiple languages, which was a major reason it said it required a more efficient way to allow multichannel audio to accompany its MPEG-4 images. The aacPlus code employs open-standard techniques that create significant bandwidth efficiencies without noticeable degradation, DTS said.
