MUMBAI: Indian Television Dot Com Pvt. Ltd. and Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE:DLB) today announced 'Best Sound' category in the upcoming 13th Indian Telly Awards. With the onset of digitisation of television services, high quality sound has increasingly become an important aspect of television content. Recognising this important industry change, Indiantelevision.com's much acclaimed Indian Telly Awards has announced the inclusion of the Show with the Best Sound category in its 13th edition. The sound category is being instituted in collaboration with Dolby Laboratories, a pioneer in audio technology.

"Indian consumers have become more discerning today," said Anil Wanvari, Indian Telly Awards founder and creator, and International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (International Emmy Awards) member, commenting on the announcement. "While watching a show at home, these consumers want a similar sound experience to what they get in a cinema hall. And this has become more important with over three million HD TV subscribers in India. With an aim to meet this need of discerning viewers, broadcasters have started investing to make shows sound much better. This trend is bound to increase with the spread and increase in the number of HD channels, digitisation, DTH, and digital cable TV. We at the Indian Telly Awards are extremely delighted to introduce the sound category and are grateful to Dolby for collaborating with us on the initiative."

A jury consisting of top names in the sound industry will take into consideration the entire gamut of the sound production process—location recording, sound design, mixing, rerecording, editing - to give the award to the one TV show with the best sound design and mixing. The jury will include Academy Award winning sound mixer Resul Pookutty; National Film Award winning sound designer Bishwadeep Chatterjee; Dolby Content Services Engineer Bhaskar Pal; and Anil Wanvari.

"It gives me immense pleasure to know that sound is being recognised as an award category in the Indian Telly Awards," said Bishwadeep Chatterjee. "This would not only give a huge morale boost to the sound technicians but sensitize the producers, directors, actors, and the public by and large to a relatively much lesser known yet very important aspect of television. Thanks to the initiative by Dolby, we can look forward to great sound quality, which will hopefully enable the producers to keep a substantial budget and time for the sound department."

Resul Pookutty said, "Being a sound designer, I am very glad that the Indian Telly Awards and Dolby together are giving sound the due recognition which it very well deserves. I truly believe that this initiative will help raise awareness about the importance of good sound in television, which in turn will make audiences more interested in newer TV shows. I hope to see more such initiatives and importance being given to sound in Indian television shows going forward."

Dolby Laboratories India country manager Pankaj Kedia said, "We are very excited about this announcement, as this award will give the due recognition to sound in the broadcast industry. Dolby has participated and contributed in the transformation of sound in the Indian cinema and television industry. It gives us great pleasure that the role sound plays in storytelling and engaging the audiences is being given the due importance and recognition."

The Indian Telly award for the category of show with the best sound will be announced at the gala event on September 9, 2014, at Mumbai's Film City.