A Sussex company is pushing audio technology to new limits.

Disctronics, the largest UK manufacturer of CD and Digital Versatile Disc (DVD), has been pressing pre-recorded discs at its Southwater manufacturing factory since 1987.

Now the company is the first in the country to press DVD Audio, the next phase in DVD entertainment.

Graham Sharpless, Disctronics general manager for innovation and technology, said: "DVD has been the first platform to cross all of the entertainment sectors. It is being used in film, music and games software.

"DVD Audio is the next stage on from CD quality sound and it is coming in to its own as a method of delivering top quality surround-sound."

Unlike its CD predecessor, DVD Audio offers high resolution, surround-sound with additional information such as slide-shows, video clips and text.

The data storage capacity for a dual layer DVD Audio is at least two hours with full surround-sound or four hours with stereo audio. This has potential for the major growth market of home cinema.

Mr Sharpless said: "Twenty per cent of European homes have some kind of cinema set up. The surround-sound capabilities of DVD Audio will make home cinema even more attractive.

"The first film I saw using effective surround-sound was Twister. The opening scenes are full of action and I just sat there feeling as if I was in the centre of the storm, I could hear the wind pounding and trees cracking."

The 1.2 million DVD players already in use in the UK can play DVD Audio discs but only those specifically designed for the format, approximately five per cent of the market, will be able to reproduce all the features available.

Warner Music has announced plans to launch 28 DVD titles with more than 100 expected to be available later in the year.

Mr Sharpless said: "To hear DVD Audio properly, a player is needed that can handle it and the rest of the sound system will have to be good enough to produce top-quality sound."

A number of manufacturers have released universal players designed to play both DVD Audio and Video discs. These and DVD Audio specific players can be found at specialised hi-fi suppliers.

The first generation of players costs anything up to £1,000. Disctronics has been promoting DVD Audio to the music industry in a bid to speed up acceptance of the new format.

Mr Sharpless said: "DVD Audio combines the best of both worlds and we hope we will be able to build a steady stream of products once it begins to reach a wider audience."

The technical requirements for DVD production are higher than previous formats of optical disc manufacture and Disctronics has recently invested in new DVD replication lines to increase capacity at the plants.

www.disctronics.co.uk