Digital Theater Systems

After last year's impressive home theatre demonstration, the DTS room at the LVCC this year was a little disappointing. In its LVCC display, DTS chose to focus on some of its newer products, which play outside the traditional home theatre market.

This is the demo rig for the DTS in-car system. It is not widely known, but several of the manufacturers of car audio products have, or soon will have, DTS compatible car audio products available. I think DTS would be the first to admit that the simulator here does not really provide a true in-car experience (like the demos by Lexicon and Dolby) as it lacks the elements that make setting up car systems a little difficult - the body shell, windows, doors and upholstery. I also thought the speaker placements on the rig were a little unrealistic. The demo did, however, show some of the potential for DTS in-car.

DTS had two of these PlayStation® demos set up to show of the first PlayStation® 2 games encoded with real-time DTS audio during game play (as opposed to movie passages between game sections). The big blue thing attached to the back of the chair is a subwoofer enclosure intended to allow the player to feel as well as hear the bass material.

The Inspire system features Dolby Digital and DTS decoding. It can also be hooked up to a DVD player or portable audio device via its Toslink input so, given its MRSP of $299.99, may be one alternative for a modestly priced home theatre system. []