Silverlight gets surround sound

SRS brings six speakers to the party

Audio expert SRS has teamed up with Microsoft to bring 5.1 surround sound to Silverlight video streaming.

Silverlight has a long way to go to catch up with Adobe's annoyingly ubiquitous Flash media player, but adding proper surround is a step in the right direction.

Video purveyors can now embed six-speaker audio into their files and any one of millions of SRS compliant devices will be able to decode and play back full surround from within the video stream using the same bandwidth as a standard stereo audio.

UK Internet users will probably first encounter the new technology using Sky Player which uses Silverlight technology.