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DTS (formerly known as '''Digital Theater Systems'''), owned by '''DTS, Inc.''' (), is a multi-channel compression system and the former a sophisticated hybrid perceptual and signal-redundancy compressor). It is used for in-movie sound both on film and on DVD, and during the last few years of the format's existence, several Laserdisc releases had DTS soundtracks. The company which created it, Digital Theater Systems, is now referred to simply as DTS. One of the company's initial investors was Film Director Steven Spielberg , who felt that theatrical sound formats up until the company's founding were no longer state of the art, and as a result were no longer optimal for use on projects where quality sound reproduction was of the utmost importance. Work on the format started in 1991, four years after Dolby Labs started work on their new Codec , Dolby Digital . The basic and most common version of the format is a 5.1 channel system, supporting five primary speakers and a subwoofer, referred to as an LFE (Low Frequency Effects) channel. Note however that encoders and decoders support numerous channel combinations and stereo, four-channel and four-channel+LFE soundtracks have been released commercially on DVD, CD and LaserDisc. Other newer DTS variants are also currently available, including versions that support up to 7 primary audio channels (DTS-ES). DTS's main competitors in multichannel theatrical audio are Dolby Digital and SDDS , although only Dolby Digital and DTS are used on DVD s and implemented in home theater hardware. Spielberg debuted the format with his 1993 production of '' Jurassic Park '', which came slightly less than a full year after the official theatrical debut of Dolby Digital ('' Batman Returns ''). In addition, Jurassic Park also became the first home video release to contain DTS sound when it was released on Laserdisc in January 1997, two years after the first Dolby Digital home video release ('' Clear And Present Danger '' on LaserDisc) which debuted in January of 1995 . In theatrical use, information in the form of a modified Time Code is optically imaged onto the film, a DTS processor in the projection booth uses this timecode to synchronize the projected image with the soundtrack audio, which is recorded in compressed form on standard CD-ROM media at 1.5 Mbit/s. The processor also acts as a transport mechanism, it holds and reads the audio discs. The units can generally hold 3 discs, allowing a single processor/transport to handle 2-disc film soundtracks along with a 3rd disc containing sound for theatrical trailers. In addition, specific elements of the imprinted timecode allow identifying data to be embedded within the code, ensuring that a certain film's Soundtrack will only run with that film. One advantage of DTS (for DVDs) is that it has a much higher bitrate than equivalent Dolby tracks. DTS 5.1 typically uses 768-1536 kbit/s (overall), while Dolby 5.1 uses 384-448 kbit/s. Proponents claim these extra bits give higher fidelity and a greater dynamic range, providing richer and more life-like sound. They also claim that DTS is louder and has less hiss at the same volume. DTS AS A CODEC DTS is an enhanced copy (and, according to some movie industry insiders, a Hacking ) of a French patent called '' LC Concept '', first used in 1990 for the movie '' Cyrano De Bergerac ''. On the consumer level, DTS is the oft-used shorthand for the DTS Coherent Acoustics codec, transportable through S/PDIF and used on DVD s, CDDA s and in wave files. This system is the consumer version of the DTS standard, using a similar Codec without needing separate DTS CD-ROM media. DTS PLAYBACK Since DTS is not a mandatory CODEC for current generation DVD devices, many players did not initially support it. While most modern DVD players now feature DTS support, users wishing to playback special DTS soundtracks require some piece of equipment or software which is capable of decoding DTS. For home cinema equipment, most users choose either a DVD player with a built-in decoder that can decode DTS soundtracks or a separate processor which supports DTS decoding, often in a home theater surround sound receiver. Most modern receivers support DTS. For PC playback, many software players support the decoding of DTS. The VideoLAN project has created a decoding module for DTS called Libdca (formerly libdts), which is the first open source implementation of DTS. DTS VARIANTS In addition to the standard 5.1 channel DTS Surround codec, the company has several other technologies in its product range designed to compete with similar systems from Dolby Labs . The primary new technologies are:
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