3. DTS Sound

DTS, for Digital Theater System, was introduced by Steven Spielberg with the release of "Jurassic Park" in 1993. So far, this standard applies more to the big screen than private homes. It, too, is 5.1, so the sound is coded over six channels as in Dolby Digital. There are now many DTS-compatible systems available. So surround systems, like sound cards, can decode the standard via software. However, while the excellent quality of DTS is undeniable, and even a bit higher than Dolby, remember that there are no movies available in DTS alone, and that Dolby is considered to be the digital sound standard and DTS is not.

The main feature of DTS is that its coding system favors sound quality over disk space. So a DTS sound band codes in 24 bits instead of the 18 bits with Dolby. Compression uses a dynamic process where the compression rate varies with the amount of sound to encode. This rate ranges from 1:1 to 1:40 and generally results in better sound quality than Dolby Digital with an average rate of 1.5 Mb/s. The main drawback is obviously that the sound band takes up much more space (about three times as much) than Dolby. So DVDs coded in DTS can only have one language and a limited number of bonuses. Because it is optional as a sound standard, there are not many DVDs with DTS on the market, though the number is growing.