Dolby Wants to Make the Atmos Cinema Experience Mobile

This month's Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2015 in Barcelona featured a Dolby-sponsored panel discussion called The Art and Science of Storytelling. The panel included movie and tech-industry professionals covering the growth in our consumption of media though mobile devices. The panel wanted to answer fundamental questions about what the future of mobile media will look like in 2020 when the GSMA predicts some 4-billion people will carry smartphones.

At MWC Dolby wanted to let us know that audio in mobile devices is falling behind by citing market analyst IDC numbers that say displays drive 45-percent of the cost of a smartphone, while audio only makes up 4-percent. The conclusion according to Dolby:

“Mobile audio needs improvement.”

But, you may translate that to mean: "We need a cut of that 4%."

The strategy for Dolby using its Atmos brand appears to be nothing more than a cash grab in collaboration with device manufacturers like Levono to introduce new lines of tablets and smartphones with Dolby Atmos. So, for about the cost of a modest home theater audio system you can get a premium tablet with slightly better speakers.

Jack Black summarized the film industry’s pain in a humorous musical performance at this year’s Oscars. He lamented the state of a today’s movie viewing experience saying:

“…the only screens we’re watching are the screens in our jeans.”

People want the ability to watch what they want, when they want, and from any device; no matter how far removed the experience is from what the creators intended. And that’s fine. But you should be warned that Lawrence of Arabia wasn’t made with a 5-inch screen in mind and that won’t change with Dolby-blessed speakers built into the device.

Are You Really Watching Movies?

Picture yourself crowded onto a plane and the in-flight movie is Interstellar which is playing on a 12-inch headset display with a wad of the last passenger’s bubblegum stuck to the screen and you’re listening to the film through tinny-sounding ear-buds. Afterward, can you really say you’ve seen Interstellar?

What if you didn’t like the movie?

Was it really a bad movie, or did interruptions from the flight attendant throwing peanuts at you, while the big guy cramped into the seat next to you was snoring louder than you could scream have any part in diminishing your viewing experience?

When it comes to consuming art, experience is everything. This is why every Chef is intimately aware that ambiance flavors content.

What if Beauty & Essex, a swanky eatery in New York City, packed one of its world-class brunches into a Styrofoam container and tossed it at you through a window as you drove by. Would the food have the kind of taste Chef Chris Santos had in mind as you unwrapped it from driver’s seat of your car? Of course not!

The fantasy that we’re going to get anything approaching a Dolby Atmos theatrical experience from something you pull out of your shirt pocket is insulting. Not just to the consumer being asked to pony up a few extra bucks for speakers that offer only marginal improvements, but it’s a sell-out to the brands themselves. 

When the Dolby Atmos logo appears on the face of a budget tablet it might raise the profile of the device, but it diminished the profile of Dolby Atmos.

A Mobile Virtual Reality Experience

But all is not lost on the future of immersive mobile experiences. A truly interesting collaboration involving Dolby is taking portable immersion to a whole new level.

A demo was on display at WMC 2015 that was the result of a promising team-up between Dolby and Jaunt, a company that makes movies with a 360-degree camera and Omni-directional microphone to create a complete audio/video record of the environment. Jaunt’s recordings use Dolby Atmos surround sound and can be played back on a Google Cardboard Virtual Reality headset and headphones. The demo at this year's even involved was a horror film created by Jaunt called Black Mass. First-person accounts of the experience being demonstrated at MWC '15 sounds like an amazing step forward. What Dolby and Jaunt are working toward is recreating movies and games in full 360 virtual reality on a mobile device.

Surround sound paired with a virtual reality headset emanating from your smartphone - now that’s an immersive mobile experience I think we can all get behind.

Do you think the inclusion of Dolby Atmos into smartphones and tablet devices is a true advancement or just a marketing gimmick?  Share your thoughts in our forum thread.