Dolby Atmos comes to homes with Blu-ray and Vudu

Dolby Atmos-enabled audio/video receivers and speakers will allow you to enjoy Dolby Atmos movies from Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. in home theater systems.

Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. films with soundtracks in Dolby Atmos will soon be available to home theater fans thanks to audio/video receivers and speakers enabled with this immersive sound system. Dolby Atmos movies will be available this fall on Blu-ray Disc and through Vudu, a leading content services provider, which will be the first streaming service to announce support for Dolby Atmos movies.

Doug Darrow, senior vice president of Dolby Laboratories, said: "Dolby Atmos, the most important audio advancement for home theater systems in the last twenty years, will allow the viewer to be totally immersed in the story by offering an experience in which sound is distributed three-dimensionally throughout the room with astonishing clarity and extremely realistic details. After its release and subsequent refinement in theaters, Dolby Atmos has generated great interest and excitement in the home theater industry. and among their fans. We have worked with an incredible group of leading companies in the sector, to offer consumers around the world the best entertainment experience when they choose to watch a Dolby Atmos movie at home.”

On September 30, 2014, Paramount Pictures will release the first Blu-ray disc with a Dolby Atmos soundtrack, and will do so with the film that has been number one at the box office around the world, Transformers: Age of Extinction. Both the Blu-ray pack and the 3D Blu-ray pack will offer the soundtrack in Dolby Atmos encoded in Dolby TrueHD. Paramount Pictures hopes to offer additional titles for home theaters with Dolby Atmos via online streaming and Blu-ray Disc later this year. Dolby Atmos soundtracks are fully compatible with traditional home theater playback systems.

Warner Bros. will also be one of the first studios to offer Dolby Atmos movies via online streaming and Blu-ray Disc. “By leveraging new technologies like Dolby Atmos, we can offer a richer, more life-like experience that uses the power and localization of sound to draw the viewer even deeper into the story they are seeing on screen,” said Jim Wuthrich, president of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment for the Americas.

Consumers who want to experience Dolby Atmos home theater products will be able to visit various retail locations in the United States to attend demonstrations. Some Magnolia Home Theater centers and Magnolia Design Centers (United States) plan to hold Dolby Atmos demonstrations in some centers starting in October.

Manufacturers that have announced that they will have audio/video receivers or preprocessors for Dolby Atmos include Denon, Integra, Marantz, Onkyo, Pioneer, Steinway Lyngdorf, Trinnov Audio and Yamaha. Manufacturers that have designed speakers and expansion modules for Dolby Atmos include Atlantic Technology, Definitive Technology, KEF, Onkyo, Pioneer USA, Teufel, and Triad Speakers. Onkyo also announced a Dolby Atmos-equipped home theater system in a complete system (HTIB). Microchip suppliers Analog Devices, Inc., Cirrus Logic and Texas Instruments have developed chips for home theater systems, audio/video receivers and Dolby Atmos processors. Other manufacturers that have committed to offering Dolby Atmos products in the future include Datasat Digital Entertainment, Emotiva Audio Corp, Outlaw Audio, Storm Audio and NHT (Now Hear This).