HD DVD Coming Very Soon 594
x mani x writes "While the DVD Forum continues quibbling over a new blue-laser based HD-DVD standard, it looks like Microsoft has been busy developing a new video compression method that can show high quality HD video at bitrates similar to current DVD's (between 5-8mbps). Proof, you say? Check out some stunning samples of this cutting edge technology. Myself and many others have watched it and most of us feel this is significantly better looking than MPEG-4/DivX HD video of the same bitrate. This technology is causing some excitement, as the T2: Extreme Edition DVD package will include a DVD containing T2 in HD, compressed with this technology. Anyone with a fast PC will be able to watch T2 in high def, no pricey blue laser player required."
I actually tried to check this out... (Score:5, Interesting)
--Richard
Obviously (Score:5, Interesting)
Patent issues (Score:5, Interesting)
Format mania (Score:5, Interesting)
My other worry is that the proposed HD-DVD standards are baby steps, too small to make upgrading for me cost-effective. Why add to the storage capacity of DVDs one magnitude, when you could wait two years and possibly (probably?) get a media format that will increase your storage capacity a thousandfold. Or as a pipe dream, eliminate overlapping media formats -- I'd have no need for DVDs if I could buy digital copies of what is now put on separate DVD disks, and store that content on my hard drive. Same for music CDs. It would save an awful lot of shelf space and eliminate the need to buy n separate players for n separate storage media. But of course, these things have always been geared to maximise company profits and not consumer satisfaction. Shame.
Re:What's the point? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:T2 in HDTV quality? How? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nope, I doubt it was. What they prabably are saying is that the analog masters have been retransferred into a digital format. Analog masters can have great quality and (in theory) infinite dynamic range. The resulting quality of the digital version is all about the conversion. With a better conversion a better digital version can be produced.
My guess, anyway.
A big part of the equation missing (Score:2, Interesting)
Currently, all consumer digital video standards involve compression, which is the natural choice, if your source is already compressed, such as a DVD or satellite stream. BUT, if you're generating video/graphics on the fly -- OR as in the HD-DVD scenario, if you've already decompressed your video from some proprietary codec, it's senseless to (re)compress on the fly (introducing lossiness) and then decompress it again in the set.
Until such a AV interconnect standard is finalized, this MS DVD initiative will remain the province of PCs only, and those with non-PC based home theatre setups (read: the vast majority) will be left out.
Re:What's the point? (Score:2, Interesting)
2 films on vhs = £5-£10,
2 films on DVD = £15-£60
Or Linux, or MacOSX.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:screw them (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:screw them (Score:3, Interesting)
Not a Big Deal. What about Theora and Vorbis??? (Score:5, Interesting)
In addition, I would suggest people take a good long look at VP3/Theora+Ogg Vorbis before accepting the Microsoft solution. VP3 provides better quality than MPEG4, and (like Vorbis) is completely free of patents, and the necessary software is already available under a BSD license.
Re:German copyright laws (Score:2, Interesting)
Even the Mac... (Score:5, Interesting)
The Next Big Thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Imagine if you will, when this becomes mainstream in the next year or two, and we are given a delivery medium that can offer this to us at "live viewing" delivery rates. With all of the media enhancements that modern computers and operating systems are focusing on, people may demand a lot more high quality content to be available to them. As well, with the FCC, broadcasters, content providers, and high definition television manufacturers all dragging their feet, they may find themselves missing out on a market that they once monopolized.
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Interesting)
The EUCD prevents all copying of encrypted material, and the posession of hard/software that enables you to do so. It does allow national governemts a list of exceptions that they can sign up for, but the choice of which of these to implement is entirely up to that goverment (this kept Denmark and other more civilized countries on board). However the UK government has only signed up to two of these, and so we currently have a situation where not only DeCSS is illegal, but also general security research into CSS!
Just once, I really wish that the UK would avoid copying every infringement of civil libeties that happens across the pond...
Media Player 9 is NOT needed, play with others (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/window
I can play those demo videos in other players like BSplayer http://www.bsplayer.org/
(I don't even have media player 9 (or 7 or 8) installed, only 6.4)
Since the VCM codec is like 1k in size, it won't take long to reverse engineer (ahem! emulate), at least for playback.
Re:Not supported... (Score:3, Interesting)
Selected video codec: [wmv9dmo] vfm:dmo (Windows Media Video 9 DMO)
=
Re:I actually tried to check this out... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've had it.
I did the same thing I went to the link and "blammo", no can view. I'm using Mozilla 1.3b.
Here's my main issue with Microsoft, and my opinion comes from someone who's made a lot of money writing Windows code and who up until 2000, was someone who had mainly done ALL development on Microsoft platforms.
My main issue simply this: Microsoft is not the best anymore. Thier products are at best "mediocre". There was once a time where I felt that IE was a supperior browser, Outlook was the only mail client to use and that ASP/COM and ATL were the only solution for the server.
Those days are long gone.
The playing field has all changed because things have clearly gotten better in the open source realm.
Mozilla, in my opinion, is now a browser that is faster and more reliable than IE, and PHP with Apache is clearly a more secure and cost effective solution than ASP and IIS.
Microsoft has to wake-up, they are trying to "AOL everyone" into their little world on the desktop by restricting the user and making life difficult for the user who wants "choice" or is on the "fringe" and not running 100% microsoft products.
I don't really like to get into the MS vs. Linux thing because I like to solve problems by using the best solution available. But lately, I'm realizing that Microsoft is becoming a choice that I can't recommend. It's really now down to one single application that is holding people back from running another desktop: Office.
Once there is a viable mainstream office solution that "works" and is free. It's lights out in Redmond. I really can't think of anything else on the Desktop that is holding people back from using the Mac (which actually has Office but its like $500 dollars) or choosing Linux -- there is really nothing compelling about Windows anymore.
Why this isn't such a good thing (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Obviously (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not a Big Deal. What about Theora and Vorbis??? (Score:3, Interesting)
Reading AVSForum posts, some of the authorities on that site have done their own tests and seem to agree with the MS guys. Looks to me like the WM9 codec is almost a big a step over MPEG-4 as MPEG-2 was to MPEG-4.
Instead of posting assertions, why dont you do your own tests and make your own conclusion. This is Slashdot right? I'm sure you, and nearly everyone else here, have the know-how to encode video with competing codecs and make your own comparisons. Just a thought, before everyone gets on their anti-MS high horse.
Re:I actually tried to check this out... (Score:2, Interesting)
I would be a lot less anti-Microsoft if they actually put forth any effort at all to be compatible and/or interoperate with other OSes. I too am sick to death of the, "if you want to do this you have to run Windows" crap.
Even Cringely's Dog Doesn't Like It!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I actually tried to check this out... (Score:1, Interesting)
Media Player 9 only sends information to Microsoft to get CDDB data, and to automatically find codecs for video files that need one.
If you are really paranoid there is a "privacy" tab in the options dialogue that allows you to disable that.
I personally don't like WMP9, but thats because it displays weird aspect ratios for mpeg files. Not because of privacy concerns.
How about making the next DVD standard extensible? (Score:5, Interesting)
But guess what? In ten years, HD-DVD will be old hat too. Blue lasers or no, the compression algorithms defined in the standard will pale in comparison to whatever advanced video compression is available at the time. This is an unfortunate side-effect of progress -- we're so damned clever in the last 50 years that we keep shooting ourselves in the foot technologically.
There is a sane answer: for the next generation of DVD, instead of locking ourselves into a single compression format from the beginning, why not design the standard to be extensible? The existing DVD standard already has a virtual machine instruction set for describing the interaction of menus and video segments. Why not take this idea a whole lot further and implement a domain-specific bytecode language that handles complex graphical operations, and is sufficiently powerful to code decompression algorithms?
Since the language is specific to video decompression, vendors' DVD players could efficiently compile the bytecodes to whatever internal instruction set they use. This way, when you pop a blue-laser DVD into the drive, it will come with instructions on how to decode it. The format of the file containing the video and audio streams can be specified in the standard, but their content is left up to the DVD producer.
Microsoft wants Media Player 9 to be sneaky. (Score:3, Interesting)
What you say shows that Microsoft wants Media Player 9 to be sneaky.
There are ways of avoiding firewalls. If Microsoft wants sneakiness, then the software can tunnel information through an HTTP connection, once is has found that other ways are blocked.
The biggest issue is not one thing that Microsoft is doing, but that Microsoft has shown that it intends to be adversarial towards the needs of its customers. Many people who know that Microsoft is adversarial don't realize the extent of the adversarial behavior. Here are two links:
Lists of Microsoft Abuses:
Overall abuses: Reasons to Avoid Microsoft [lugod.org]. (More than 200 in one year! From the Linux User's Group of Davis, California.)
Abuses in one product: Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going. [futurepower.net]
For more than 20 years, I've been studying why and how companies destroy themselves. Microsoft is destroying itself, but the destruction is still hidden below the surface, so that most people with no technical education don't detect it.
Re:I actually tried to check this out... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd be a lot less anti-Konqueror if they'd actually put forth any effort to be at all compatible and/or interoperate with other OSes. I'm sick to death of the, "if you want to do this you have to run Linux" crap.
My website's broken with Konqueror and now I have to %@#$'ing install Linux to fix it.