Dolby Laboratories said Thursday that several Dolby audio technologies have been selected as mandatory standards for the emerging High-Definition Digital Versatile Disc (HD DVD) and Blu-ray Disc media formats. The DVD Forum has selected Dolby Digital Plus and MLP Lossless for HD DVD, while the Blu-ray Disc Association has selected Dolby Digital for the Blu-ray Disc. Both disks are next-generation packaged media formats designed to deliver high-definition picture quality.

Both Dolby Digital, selected for the Blu-ray Disc format, and Dolby Digital Plus, selected for HD-DVD, are compatible with the millions of current consumer electronics products, including A/V receivers, DVD audio and video players, PCs and DVD video recorders. Dolby Digital Plus offers bit-rate and channel extendibility beyond Dolby Digital.

MLP Lossless technology, for HD-DVD, is the core audio technology behind multichannel DVD-Audio. It enables content providers to encode multiple channels of 24-bit/96 KHz surround sound or 24-bit/192 KHz stereo content onto a DVD.

The HD-DVD spec is expected to be finalized by early 2005. The Blu-ray spec was approved in August.