The Myth of the Speakers: A Critical Reexamination of Dolby History

[spoRv]

Found this interesting paper:

The Myth of the Speakers: A Critical Reexamination of Dolby History

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.2979...8.1.06.pdf

[stwd4nder2]

Fascinating read.
I've always found the history of surround formats interesting, and it's a shame that many early mixes are either lost or just unavailable and replaced by (often not great/revisionist) remixes.

[spoRv]

The oldest the release, the more probable it contains original mix.

For example, laserdiscs usually retain untouched mixes, often not found in successive formats as DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-ray, UHD-BD. Still, some were available on DVD - especially early versions - even if nowaday, sometimes, they are also released on UHD-BD, but it's quite rare.

[dvdmike]

Dolby always sought to copyright history and give it a brand.
Used to like them in the 90s.

[zoidberg]

It's not surprising really, after all Dolby get a license fee for every commercial release in one of their formats. I don't know if they made a lot from hardware sales but theatre licensing was a significant revenue stream for them (which is famously why The Terminator and Evil Dead 2 were mono releases, the studios wouldn't pony up the extra cash). Once cinema went digital they stood to lose a lot of their revenue hence you got Dolby Cinema (Atmos, 3D, Vision). Had digital projection not taken over completely they might not have felt such an overwhelming urge to diversify.