Fox is Second Studio to Sign On for Dolby Atmos Sound Platform

By emeadows
September 12, 2012

20th Century Fox has joined Disney to become the second major studio to support Dolby Laboratories’ Atmos audio platform to change “the way films sound at the megaplex,” reports Variety.
“The Fox deal is significant for Dolby as a sound system battle is quietly tuning up inside the world’s movie theaters,” notes the article.
“Dolby hopes the Atmos rollout will help it control a larger share of the in-theater surround sound biz as it competes with rivals like Barco, Immsound, Iosono and Illusonic 3D, which are also promoting new systems to exhibs, especially as more theaters make the transition to digital projection.”
Atmos has received high praise from sound designers and filmmakers thus far, and could end up saving theaters money in the long run because it “automatically creates mono, stereo and 5.1 and 7.1 mixes of a movie, optimizing distribution of one version of a film to most theaters and homevid formats,” according to Variety.
If Dolby can continue to encourage theater chains to convert, “Atmos is expected to be used by exhibitors as a marketing tool to fill more theater seats the way they promoted screenings with THX in the 1980s and DTS and Dolby Digital in the 1990s.”

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