SPEED adds Neural-THX Surround to HD broadcasts
By Darren Murph 
posted Jul 21st 2008 2:34PM
posted Jul 21st 2008 2:34PM
After Neural-THX Surround got around 14.5 minutes in the limelight with its Super Bowl XLII showing earlier this year, the technology has remained far, far away from the press. Now, however, SPEED is vowing to integrate Neural-THX Surround professional products "for its HD programming schedule covering NASCAR, Grand Am, IndyCar, etc." For those unfamiliar with the technology, it goes a little something like this: 5.1 sound from the track is taken in, beamed over stereo channels to minimize bandwidth usage and then decoded by specially equipped receivers for "5.1 surround" in the living room. From what we can tell, the tech should be ready to roll right now, so it's up to you to snatch up an AVR in order to take advantage.
So it's DPL-II?
How is that better than broadcasting in 5.1?
We need yet another new surround sound format like we need another hole in our heads. Come on Speed, you're already doing production work in HD, along with your parent company Fox (who already uses Dolby Digital extensively, by the way). How about thinking about your customers, and using the perfectly serviceable Dolby Digital instead of accepting whatever kind of bribe you took to start using a completely useless new format?
This is nice and all, but I would much rather have my old Speed channel back and a secondary channel for all things NASCAR. But when your home base is Charlotte, NC, what else would you expect?