By McGregor McCance, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Mar. 2--AT&T Broadband is using Richmond as a test market for cable TV service with Dolby Digital 5.1, an audio technology designed to provide a more robust home theater experience.
Programming encoded with Dolby 5.1 divides audio into five speaker channels, plus one for a subwoofer, to produce a surround-sound effect.
AT&T Broadband said the increasing popularity of home theaters prompted the test.
But the new service doesn't mean every show will have 5.1 surround sound. It's still limited to programs or movies incorporating the newer standard. And customers still need their own, separate home theater receiver capable of handling Dolby Digital to pump the signals out to speakers.
AT&T's Rob Christensen said about 100 titles per month are broadcast in Dolby 5.1. Many are from premium package channels such as HBO, Showtime and Starz!
Most DVDs include the 5.1 technology, too.
To get the upgraded surround sound, a subscriber pays a one-time $29.95 installation fee, and must already subscribe to digital cable service or upgrade to it. New models of the set-top digital converter boxes support Dolby 5.1.
Once the new box is installed, the subscription fee does not increase.
AT&T's current digital converter boxes can't pass along the 5.1 signal. They feature a less complex Dolby Surround technology that only has four audio channels.
"The experience is not the theater quality you get with the 5.1," Christensen said.
AT&T Broadband has about 150,000 subscribers in Richmond and several surrounding counties. That includes about 16,000 high-speed cable Internet subscribers, who also have seen changes in their service recently.
Other than switching from ".mediaone.net" e-mail address suffixes to ".attbi.com," the company increased the number of e-mail addresses available to each subscriber from four to six.
AT&T also has enabled subscribers to check e-mail from any computer with an Internet connection through its Web-based e-mail service, and has introduced anti-spam and parental control features for Internet connections.
The company, however, has ended a feature allowing high-speed customers free dial-up Net access when they're away from home. No replacement "mobile access" is in place, but AT&T said it is exploring options.
In Chesterfield County, Comcast Corp. high-speed cable Internet customers also are experiencing changes.
The company has been focused on switching customers from the now-shuttered Excite@Home Internet network to Comcast's own high-speed network. That process included e-mail address changes and introduced caps on the speed of some connections that were not capped by @Home.
New Comcast features include Web-based e-mail access and "My File Locker," which offers subscribers 25 megabytes of Web storage space for files such as digital music or photos.
Comcast cable Internet subscribers can establish up to seven e-mail addresses for each account.
To see more of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.timesdispatch.com
(c) 2002, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
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