Millions of South Korean television viewers watching the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics can access quite an interactive audio experience. Fraunhofer has developed MPEG-H is a TV audio system that can be personalized in never-before-seen ways to fit a consumer’s needs.
SBS, the largest commercial broadcaster in South Korea, will provide immersive and interactive sound with its broadcasts of the Olympic Games in February.
Two brands, Samsung and LG, have the MPEG-H auto-decoder built in, meaning those buying a 4K ultra-high definition TV in South Korea have the full range of audio capabilities at their disposal.
The system as a whole is based on Fraunhofer’s lengthy audio coding experience dating back to the late-1990s when they started with MP3. Now, features on the next-generation audio codec include adjusting each individual audio mix by using your TV’s remote control.
“You can change the level of the commentary compared to the ambience level,” Fraunhofer audio consultant Stefan Meltzer said. “So if you are listening to something in a noisy environment you can raise only the dialogue or commentary without raising the overall volume.”
Say you’re watching an Olympic ice hockey game and you want to mute the commentary. With MPEG-H you’ll be able to do this while still receiving ambient noise from the game providing an immersive experience. Or, less emphasis can be put on the stadium atmosphere so the sports broadcast could be heard better.
“On sports you have a lot of possibilities,” Meltzer said. “You can think about having two different commentators for the home and away team, for example. If you have biased commentators, you would like the one for your favorite team. That would be a possibility.”
Fraunhofer introduced this feature as “hear your home team.”
The company does this by producing the audio separately as opposed to mixing in the commentator on-site. “You transmit it in separately as an object to the home and there the user can mix it in so there’s a default mix which will do nothing,” Meltzer explained. “It’s like you are mixing it and if you want to change something then you can do this at home.”
With this being new for broadcasters as well, Fraunhofer has built a training and demo room in South Korea to explain the new features.
While only available in the Seoul area, other metropolitan areas and venue cities for the Olympics in time for PyeongChang 2018, MPEG-H and next generation audio is going nationwide by 2020 and being discussed in China as well as other European countries. There are also plans to roll out this immersive audio platform on mobile devices.