Dolby rocks the cloud

LAS VEGAS, USA: Dolby Laboratories Inc. announced that some of the world’s leading providers of cloud-encoding solutions have chosen Dolby to raise the bar and give customers what they demand, which is amazing sound.

Cloud encoding and media management is hitting the mainstream and leading companies like Microsoft Corp.’s recently announced Windows Azure Media Services, Encoding.com, Zencoder, Digital Rapids, Nativ, and Linkotec are including Dolby Digital Plus technology in their cloud-based encoding and media-management platforms to deliver high-quality multichannel audio and premium video content to a broad range of services and devices. Offering a superior audio and video experience to their customers takes these cloud-encoding solutions to a higher level. It also offers more choices to premium content owners for their professional content production encoding and transcoding needs.

“Microsoft is pleased to be working with Dolby,” said Brian Goldfarb, director, product marketing at Microsoft. “The scalability and elasticity of Windows Azure is highly suited to the demands of high-quality audio and video. Windows Azure Media Services is a natural solution for delivering Dolby Digital Plus, with its high scalability and high-quality multichannel audio and premium video content.”

“Professional content publishing is quickly moving to the cloud,” said Jon Dahl, CEO, Zencoder. “Broadcasters and studios are increasingly looking to use cloud resources for their video encoding, and Dolby Digital Plus is a critical part of these workflows.”

“The ‘TV everywhere’ initiatives driven by our media and entertainment customers demand professional audio capabilities,” said Jeff Malkin, president, Encoding.com. “Supporting Dolby Digital Plus was a natural choice for us to exceed our customers’ requirements.”

“Our MioEverywhere media-management platform is installed in the Switch SuperNAP data center in Las Vegas, providing world-class security and connectivity with the flexibility of the cloud on a transactional basis,” said Jon Folland, CEO, Nativ, “and Dolby Digital Plus is a key part of that offering.”

“As we extend our on-premises media-processing solutions into the cloud, the capabilities we offer in the cloud must match those available in our facility-based systems,” said Darren Gallipeau, product manager, Digital Rapids. “Dolby Digital Plus is a critical element of our solutions and of the expanding ecosystem for our Kayak technology platform, and we’re pleased to be extending our support of the technology.”

“The number of devices and services that support high-definition entertainment is growing exponentially, and cloud-encoding services must be ready to deliver the premium experiences that consumers demand,” said Jean-Christophe Morizur, senior director, Professional Solutions, Dolby Laboratories. “Dolby Digital Plus is a powerful and efficient way to bring high-quality audio to multiple platforms.”