I'm not sure what "move over" means in the headline. Isn't dolby atmos encoded in the metadata so I think what would happen is you put your Dolby Atmos encoded source into the Samsung and Google TV and its algorithms interpret the sounds and output a best guess idea of what those sounds relate to. Why then doesn't Samsung and Google just output from the metadata in Dolby Atmos - because to do so would mean you would have to have a Dolby decoder and that would require a Dolby license.
Far from being "free" it still required some financing from Samsung and Google so what this reminds me of is when historically companies that primarily operated in the hardware space released open source software that was "free" as a way of undermining competitors whose business was mostly software. The obverse was also true, companies commodified hardware as their only business was software.
On first inspection this looks like Samsung and Google not wanting to pay licenses for Dolby Atmos and even if they do pay licenses they can use the argument that they have an open source alternative to drive down the price of Dolby Atmos licenses.
Well, you might argue, isn't it good to reduce the price of licensing and turn it into open source? If companies like Samsung and Google are able to force a company out of business then it reduces competition in the marketplace. Alternatively if they can drive down the cost of Dolby licenses then they can reduce the profitability of Dolby and thus reduce their ability to act as a player in the digital market space.
Neither Google or Samsung's main business if sound processing so as long as it fits in with their overall strategy they are all good.
Far from being "free" it just means increased profits for companies who don't pay a Dolby license.
There are many open source and open platform projects that have been rather marvellous, I very much doubt this is one.
I've made any number of assumptions and conclusions in the present piece and would welcome anyone else's thoughts
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