Netflix: Enjoy Your Favorite Movies with Dolby Atmos Sound

Netflix is now offering movies with Dolby Atmos sound technology. Okja, the exclusive movie streaming service, is the first material available with support for the standard. With up to 128 independent audio channels, the Atmos system offers the user sound quality similar to those available in the most advanced movie theaters in the world. In addition, the standard that was first developed for next generation cinemas and now reaches home TVs, allows movies to contain richer, detailed and full of nuances, which become noticeable thanks to the playback technology created by Dolby. The proposal is for the viewer to have such an immersive experience that feels "inside" the film.

How it works

Dolby Atmos works by mapping the sound system that the user has to get the most out of this installation. For example: in a 7.1-channel system, the arrangement is fixed, depending on the position and number of available speakers. In this way, 3D sound reproduction is distributed across the speakers to create the immersive sound, even in installations with a smaller number of boxes, or with horizontal and vertical distribution. The proposal is for the user to experience a realistic atmosphere, as if there were objects moving around them.


In practice

To understand where the Dolby Atmos gain is, just imagine a movie scene in a very noisy environment, like the bustling center of a city. Using Atmos, the long-time sound engineers can build a very rich sample of this environment with a series of noises and tracks that increase the immersion of the viewer - sounds coming from all directions.

In order for you to have the feeling of hearing everything in detail, from the creaking of a door, to the murmur of someone walking in the background, to a distant horn or even to the sound of cars on the street, the sound system must have the ability to transmit each of these sounds in the correct ratio. Then Dolby Atmos comes into your home, or movie theater: by intelligently distributing the sound from the boxes, the viewer has the impression of being "surrounded" by the sound, no matter what the position or distance of the speakers.

Restricted compatibility

In addition to having a compatible sound system, Atmos on Netflix will initially be restricted to apps on the Xbox One platform (all models), Xbox One S or LG's 2017 line 4K OLED TVs .

In summary, Dolby Atmos on Netflix is pretty tight right now: there's only one movie with the technology, and yet you need an Xbox One, or an OLED TV from LG to get access to movie sound. However, the next releases supporting Atmos will be: BLAME! (Scheduled to added in the catalog on July 28), Death Note (August 25), Bright (December) and Wheelman, scheduled for 2017.

Does Atmos Change Anything?

Your Netflix application on any device will continue to operate normally, reproducing sound according to the hardware you have.

Dolby Atmos is, in a sense, what the introduction of 4K meant for video: there are still few contents that can be found with this resolution in the catalog and, in addition, to watch them in Ultra HD, you need Screen with this kind of resolution.

Source: Netflix

Comments