In Dolby Laboratories’ Q3 2011 post-earnings conference call, the company’s president and CEO Kevin Yeaman disclosed that Microsoft might not include Dolby DVD audio codec support in Windows 8.

Conference call transcript excerpts:

Kevin Yeaman (Presentation)
“We work with operating system providers, ISVs and OEMs to support DVD on the PC. In recent years, our mix of PC licensing revenue has increasingly shifted towards the operating system, as our technologies are included in four editions of Windows 7. However, we have recently learned that our technologies are not currently included in the Windows 8 operating system under development. If our technologies are not included in the commercial version of Windows 8, we expect to support DVD playback functionality by increasingly licensing our technologies directly to OEMs and ISVs and we will seek to extend our technologies to further support online content playback.”

Kevin Yeaman (Q&A)
“Well, we work with Microsoft in a number of fronts including the Xbox 360 and we’re engaged with them across a number of divisions with a number of technologies. As it relates to Microsoft 8, if the commercial release doesn’t include our technologies, then we’re going to continue to work with OEMs and ISVs to make sure that we’re supporting the consumer use case for DVD playback, which we believe is still a very important one. And we’re also going to be looking at that as an opportunity to work with them to expand our technologies to be really improving the online content delivery. And so that’s how we see it going forward.”

“Well, that’s ultimately Microsoft’s decision to make. What we know today is that we’re not in the current build of the software and so we are planning for a scenario where we’re not in Windows 8. And that would mean, for us, working more extensively with OEMs and ISVs, each of whom we work with today but working with them more extensively not only to support DVD playback but to really make for the best online experience.”