TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

Get out your checkbooks guys, you all need some more speakers and all the amps to drive them with. Just saw this at GameSpot News. Looks like the newest thing from Dolby.

I just can't imagine this. I've already got a mountain of wires, with my 7.1 home theater system. I've got about half of those speakers, biwired, with 25 foot length Monster Cables. That, in addition to the tangle of other wires needed to make this mess all work.

I keep looking at my room, and thinking about what it would look like with almost twice the amount of wires I already have, and almost twice the number of speakers. Maybe I'll have to move some furniture out. Heh Heh. And my Denon 7.1 reciever weighs in at around 62 lbs. Guess with a new 13.1 reciever, I might have to re-enforce the floor to hold the added weight. Heavy duty cabinet to. And with all the added heat this monster will put out, maybe some more air conditioning too.

I don't know what everyone else will think about 13.1, but it kind of seems like overkill to me. I already, at times, wonder if there is really that much advantage in a 6.1, or 7.1 system, over a 5.1 system.

I guess if you spend money to buy all those speakers, it BETTER sound better, or at least you've going to tell yourself it does. Heh Heh.

It'll take a long time until HD-DVD is mainstream, and not all of the discs will have the maximum audio channels.

I remember some quadrophonic LPs from the 70s and their fate...

I wonder where that 13.1 came from?

Dolby's own white paper for DD+ says
I'm still watching my DVDs with DD and DTS audio, and listening to DVD-Audio discs, with normal stereo headphones

I did a little searching before I wrote that, and I couldn't find any other reference to the 13.1 channels either, I guess it's at least capable of that, or so it says. But putting thirteen channels aside, it reads like it will improve the quality of our 5.1 systems that we already have, and that's not bad.

Hey, along with the quadraphonic lp's, remember the quad 8 track tapes? They didn't last long either, well come to think of it, the regular 8 track tapes didn't last long.

And it will, take a while for HD-DVD to become mainstream, not enough people have HD televisions yet. In my area, of the six over the air tv stations that I watch, only three of them have a strong digital signal, that everybody can get. The other three are only taking care of the FCC mandate that they be broadcasting in digital. As everyone here says, "if you can't see the tower, forget it", well, I can't see the towers. So, when there's enough content, people will buy HD tv's, and then HD-DVD players.