CES 2011

Dolby Home Theater v4 is, as the name suggests, the fourth-gen implementation of sound enhancement for PCs from Dolby Labs. It incorporates trickle-down technology from Dolby Volume (best known for its use in surround receivers) including volume leveling, dynamic enhancer, and spatial virtualizer. First of two demos at the Central Hall sanctum involved a laptop with and without DHTv4. It was a huge difference: muffled sound versus rather bright sound. In the second demo, another laptop bitstreamed into an Onkyo receiver with Focal sat/sub speakers. This time the benefits were more subtle, though still discernible: a larger soundstage and more solid imaging. The technology will be shipped with laptops including Acer, Lenovo ThinkPads, and more to be announced. In another corner of the Dolby booth a Nokia N8 smartphone with built-in Dolby Digital Plus (a high-quality lossy surround codec) mustered pretty good surround via Harman Kardon receiver and Focal floorstanding speakers.