DTS-HD Master Audio used on first European HD DVD Release

DTS, Inc. announces that the first European-produced HD DVD will feature DTS-HD Master Audio as the exclusive lossless sound format on the disc. The release, 2046, was presented at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival to the President of the Feature Films Jury. Laurent Villaume, CEO of QOL who replicated the disc, presented the new title to Wong Kar Wai, the director of 2046. Set in a futuristic Hong Kong, the romance stars Tony Leung (Hero) and ZiYi Zhang (Memoirs Of A Geisha).

The audio for the 2046 HD DVD was encoded in DTS-HD Master Audio, which is DTS' newest surround sound technology extension for HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc. DTS-HD Master Audio delivers sound that is bit-for-bit identical to the master soundtrack for the next generation optical disc formats, whilst being fully backward compatible with all existing DTS-capable surround sound equipment.

Full press release can be viewed here.

An interesting tidbit from the Press Release:
QOL (Quantum Optical Laboratories) is France's foremost exclusive DVD pressing company.
And it boasts "An HD-DVD capacity of 2m/month" and I suppose '2m' means 2 million which works out to roughly 67,000 HD DVDs churned out per day, a notable figure, although it is not specified whether it refers to the HD-30 or HD-15 or both discs.