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
Initial two first thoughts on the matter ... (Score:2, Troll)
Microsoft Anticompetitive? Never!
*Randomize*
Antitrust case my ass.
Even the Mac... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I actually tried to check this out... (Score:3, Informative)
The .exe are self-extracting zip-archives and contain wmvs in in Windows Media 9 format - MPlayer can play them with the correct dshow-filter installed (available from the MPlayer-page)
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 $500 dollars) or choosing Linux -- there is really nothing compelling about Windows anymore.
Re:I actually tried to check this out... (Score:5, Insightful)
I hear ya. It pisses me off I can't play Dreamcast games on my Playstation 2.
Even Cringely's Dog Doesn't Like It!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I actually tried to check this out... (Score:3, Funny)
On top of that, it sends all sorts of my information back to M$ for me. I'm sure it's used for making their products even better, never to spy on me.....
Worry about bugs that cause problems elsewhere. (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft spying on you may not be the biggest issue. It is best to wait until all the bugs have been found before you install Microsoft software. As Steve Jobs said, "Microsoft eventually gets it right."
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 adversari
Re:I actually tried to check this out... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I actually tried to check this out... (Score:3, Informative)
and personally I've looked through and fixed
All of the USB core [linux-usb.org] in the kernel, the ADSL driver [sourceforge.net] for my modem, povray [povray.org].
I've partly gone through Arson
and looked at lots of other source (including postgres)
So, I'm sure the ADSL software is spyware free the USB core looks ok too(if a bit badly documented and buggy)
and I've never found anything bad in povray.
Re:I actually tried to check this out... (Score:3, Insightful)
No it's not. If the source is available, then someone will see it. It doesn't have to be me or you. It's simply the fact that it *is* open and reviewable that makes the difference.
Re:I actually tried to check this out... (Score:5, Informative)
Among other nice options such as killing all flash in a page :) it has a dropdown menu for what browser/OS you want to impersonate. And they must be doing well with it - as far as MS was concerned I was running XP/IE6 so the doors opened...
Re:This just proves... (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, but it gets worse than that: Way back when most people were using Windows 98, and right around the beginning of the anti-trust trial, I had set my father's PC up with Windows 98 Lite (thus totally stripping Internet Explorer out). The PC had limited system resources and removing IE resulted in a considerable performance increase.
He bought a new game which required a newer version of DirectX, and it wasn't included on the game CD. So I hopped onto Microsoft's site (with Netscape) to download it.
No dice. They wouldn't let me have it. Said it required Exploder. I ran home, downloaded it from my spare PC with IE, brought it over on CDR and guess what? No problems. It worked flawlessly. Here was a legitimate customer of theirs who wanted support for the product he had purchased, and the fuckers wouldn't let him have it because he wasn't using their browser. They're like little kids on a playground: "No! You can't play with my toys unless you say you're my best friend and stop being friends with Tommy!"
I only wish I could have testified during the trial about this - as well as the "We can't remove IE, it's tied to the OS" shit, when everyone and their dog was running Windows 98 with no trace of IE thanks to a 30kb script (98 Lite).
Microsoft could be a great company if they'd stop all this childish bullshit. Their products are, more often than not, great - other than these unnecessary "features".
Obviously (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Obviously (Score:5, Interesting)
Patent issues (Score:5, Interesting)
While I'll be, it's one of those 700nm herrings. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Patent issues (Score:2)
No patents need apply. The DMCA took care of that in one fell swoop. You know, the same law that currently makes it illegial for you to play current DVDs on your non M$ box.
Re:Patent issues (Score:2)
What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Being unable to even record your own media on these formats, will scare people away from accepting it. (Anyone remember the LASERDISC?)
(And no, this ain't intended as a troll.)
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Informative)
That said, whatever is going to replace DVDs is going to have a couple of fairly high hurdles. First, there is already a huge base of DVD players out there, many of which aren't compatable with DVD-R,DVD-RW,DVD+R, and DVD+RW (one of the things holding off widespread acceptance of DVD-burning drives). It will have to be backwards compatable with existing technology, or offer substantially greater value so that everyone replaces their DVD players. I don't think that simply offering higher resolution without additional changes will be enough to get everyone to go out and buy a new DVD player. Maybe it would if everyone had televisions which displayed pictures in greater detail than DVDs support, and routinely watched broadcasts in said higher resolution.
Re:What's the point? (Score:2)
Re:What's the point? (Score:2)
Playing DVDs under Windows proved to be impossible. The OS refused to allow it, as it couldn't disable the TV-out socket on my grpahics card (Creative GeForce3 Ti200). So, I rebooted to Linux and had a go with MPlayer. I only played a few minutes worth, but it worked fine.
Re:What's the point? (Score:2)
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...
Because it is much more userfriendly... (Score:2)
Anyway, if the future
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but unlike its cousin that was stillborn (DiVX) the DVD format's encryption was optional. Also macrovision was removable almost from day 1, making analog copies (the only ones practical for a home user at the time) very possible. This also goes for region coding.
Because the encryption is totally seamless and invisible to the end user, the end user never cared. I have never heard of a single person, apart from people using unauthorized players, who has ever bought a DVD that was unable to play a disc, assuming their player follows all the standards, due to the encryption present for any reason whatsoever (apart from region coding, which is trivial to remove on most all players, and only effects a small segment of the population).
DRM, however, is intended to be obvious. DRM will not let the consumer do everything they want to without serious limits (physical, not legal) that they will almost surely encounter. That's what's the killer, and that's what made DiVX die, and it's why this format is another waste of someone's time and effort.
Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now concerning this format, it has failure written all over it. HD televisions are few and far between (nowhere outside the US), no DVD player supports this format and few people are going to buy another player to support some marginally better picture quality. With few players, the number of discs is going to be nonexistant, the price of discs will be too high and the whole format is doomed. That's not even considering what deals with the devil that player makers would have to make to carry the format - royalities, running WinCE or whatever.
To me it sounds like cross between DiVX and laserdisc. Unpopular, unwanted, artificially hyped and ultimately doomed.
Re:What's the point? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What's the point? (Score:2, Interesting)
2 films on vhs = £5-£10,
2 films on DVD = £15-£60
Re:What's the point? (Score:2)
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
most people didn't have TVs that were high-enough resolution that they could see VHS artifacts.
VHS was widely adopted before people realized the serious problems of VHS tapes.
Size was a problem. Ever gone to Blockbuster and brought back a single movie that weighed 10 lbs and had to have it's own seat?
Running time was limited. You had to get up half-way through a fairly short movie, to turn the disc over, or insert an entirely different disc.
VHS tapes are just more durable than discs. It was a serious deterant to audio CD adoption as well, but people (eventually) got used to the idea.
Higher prices than VHS.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Re:German copyright laws (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyone with a fast PC.... (Score:5, Insightful)
AND Windows
Or Linux, or MacOSX.... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's misleading. (Score:3, Informative)
video libraries (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:video libraries (Score:2)
Re:video libraries (Score:2, Informative)
The results are stunning. Easily as much better than progressive-scan consumer decks than p
Not much higher resolution (Score:5, Informative)
The limit imposed on consumer decks is 480p, i.e. 720x480. Consumer progressive-scan decks with the resolution limit are not limited below this resolution - So they do not provide any artificial limits for DVD display.
The one exception is that a good scaling algorithm can improve the visual quality of a lower-resolution video without increasing its sharpness or detail by smoothing out pixelization. If your TV's internal scaler is crappy or it doesn't even have one, good scaling before component signal generation will benefit you. But it depends on your TV.
(I believe this is why VCDs don't look too bad in standalone players while they look like utter shite in many PC players - It happens that the standalones do a better job of scaling up 352x480 to 480i than PCs - I was shocked at just how watchable some of my VCDs are, I can't tell the difference between them and analog cable.)
Theres HD and there's HD (Score:5, Informative)
These clips (the ones at MS's site) are 1280x720. Which is not a lot bigger than 720x576. Yes, it's about twice as many pixels, but as long as you don't watch it on a TV that's twice as big, you won't notice a big difference in detail even if you increase the (relative) compression. And twice the number of pixels does not require twice the bitrate; that's not how MPEG (and similar algorithms) work. You could probably get good quality out of MPEG-2 at this resolution if you used an average of 9 Mb/s for the video (most commercial DVDs average between 5 and 7 Mb/s). Using MPEG-4 or a similar algorithm (and a good compressor - this part is essential!), there's no reason why you can't get great quality at 1280x720 with 6 Mb/s, especially if your source is film or very "clean" video (less grain means lower noise which means compression works much better).
Now, there's HD and there's HD. Personally, I wouldn't call 1280x720 "HD"; it's more like "AD" (acceptable definition). Current HDTV standards go all the way up to 1920x1080. Which is still not exactly "film quality" (generaly considered as 4096 x H, although some effects are rendered at 2048 x H), but looks quite nice projected on a big screen. And for this you do need higher bitrates, and therefore bigger discs (unless you only want to watch short films).
But of course, part of the reason to define a new format has nothing to do with increased quality: it's about introducing new copy protection, and forcing people to buy new players.
What I really hope is that the "next DVD format" is not as strict as the current one. In other words, I hope it lets you make DVDs with any resolution and frame rate you want. And I also hope the menu structure is better than the current one. I'm sure it couldn't possibly be worse (anyone familiar with the standard will probably agree).
RMN
~~~
Re:Theres HD and there's HD (Score:3, Informative)
This is completely false. Film source DVDs are generally not interlaced. Between film source DVDs I've rented or own, I've seen exactly one that was interlaced. The others rely on the DVD player to telecine it for viewing on a standard TV.
screw them (Score:5, Insightful)
Screw them, honestly. What arrogance. I hate their whole "all-Microsoft" strategy. Would I buy a Sony DVD player and expect it to only play CDs or DVDs from Sony? People would be outraged!
This is why I have a hard time seeing Microsoft expanding beyond the very limited PC market. That's why the whole "Trojan horse in the living room" X-Box strategy will never work. Microsoft has a stronghold over PC operating systems, and can mostly get away with stuff like this. But if they refuse to cooperate with other companies already in the living room with technology like this, they're only hurting themselves.
And since I can't see the "stunning samples" in Mozilla, I'm not so stunned.
Re:screw them (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:screw them (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:screw them (Score:2)
How many normal people buy a new top of the line computer every six months? That's right: NONE.
How many geeks are willing to put up with Microsoft's "take away choice, control your system, DRM" strategy? Very few.
How many people are going to want to buy expensive hardware just to watch a small amount of movies? Some hardcore videophiles and a few script kiddies.
Anarxia was right, hardly any consumers will bother with this format any time soon--at least in terms of buying high quality DVD replacements.
Re:screw them (Score:3, Insightful)
Just want to point out your anger is a little premature and misdirected. The site itself, being Microsoft makes nice little popups that only support IE's DOM... no news there... however, you don't need IE to actually watch the clips, just wi
Re:screw them (Score:5, Insightful)
And the reason that I am dubious about MS as a video supplier is that I am sure that they will work very hard to make sure that consumers can only run these files on Windows.
I also find it very noticable that MS formats are getting into a major DVD release as DRM is getting into MS software. An assisted lockout for MS in the OS arena if they can deliver a non-piratable system to Hollywood?
Re:screw them (Score:2)
And the reason that I am dubious about MS as a video supplier is that I am sure that they will work very hard to make sure that consumers can only run these files on Windows.
I regretably disagree with you on this point... The secret to domination is to get everyone to use it, so it's got to be on everything... If Micros
Re:screw them (Score:2)
.EXE downloads (Score:3, Informative)
Believe it or not this will work on a pretty good percentage of EXEs that are self-extracting archives. (Although that percentage seems to be slowly decreasing.)
Re:screw them (Score:3, Insightful)
Go write your own damn codec and distribute it however you please.
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:This is a great idea (Score:2)
Hmmm. This also got me thinking...would Microsoft bundle this with XBoX 2, even if it weren't a fully adopted standard at that point? It makes a lot of sense in regards of their ambition to be the biggest home entertainment producer. It wo
Re:This is a great idea (Score:2)
Re:This is a great idea (Score:2)
True, asking for cross-compatibility between HD-DVD standards is way too optimistic... however, even if Microsoft's standard is not adopted, all they have lost are the development costs for putting the technology on XBoX, nothing m
Re:This is a great idea (Score:2)
Microsoft could get super anti-competitive, and make their own format of DVDs playable on the X Box 2 as it's sold, and make standard DVDs either unplayable, or at least require some $50 add-on (like the current remote).
Nice to see innovation (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, there is an issue with regard to patents, if MS has any on this technology.
Can anyone shed light on patents policies in the DVD-forum?
Innovation my arse. (Score:5, Informative)
For a while I believed that WM9 was superior to DivX for encoding home movies, although I had a feeling that there was something weird going on as I'd gotten much better results in the past. It turns out that the RC defaults of DivX 5.0.x aren't good for converting homemade DV video shot in low light. Once I started doing two-pass encoding in DivX, I could no longer tell the difference between WM9 and DivX. (Note: two-pass encoding did not benefit at all in WM9.)
So for one-pass encoding, WM9 is superior. For two-pass encoding, WM9 gains nothing and DivX catches up in quality.
Re:Bzzzt! (Score:2)
CRAP!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:CRAP!!! (Score:2)
Well, hopefully my AthlonXP 1.53Ghz will be buff enough. My 2GB of RAM BETTER be enough (frigging MS bloatware!).
Re:CRAP!!! (Score:2)
Bloatware is right!
Re:CRAP!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, it's not. My AthlonXP 1.8GHz chops up on some parts of the Microsoft demo videos, especially when chrominance is high (sun reflecting off the water, etc.)
I'm sure if you have a 2.0GHz processor (AMD or Intel) it'll run fine. And most likely there will be a hardware decoder available for this content, so no worries.
The quality is amazing though. I saved the superbowl ads for the Matrix and Terminator 3, and they were in 720i as well. Deliciou
T2 in HDTV quality? How? (Score:2)
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.
Re:T2 in HDTV quality? How? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:T2 in HDTV quality? How? (Score:2)
Re:T2 in HDTV quality? How? (Score:2)
First, what's the point of progressive scan DVD players? Obviously when coupled with a HDTV, they give a slightly better picture than the regular DVD/TV combo. However, I figured that that was the best DVD could do from normal film (35mm). If the DVD format is the problem, then doesn't that mean that progressive s
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 g
Re:A big part of the equation missing (Score:4, Informative)
Uncompressed video is just that, it contains every pixel, it's location and the color for each one on the screen. No device has to have any intelligence, just turn on the pixel. That's how everything actually talks today after it get's uncompressed, so obviously everybody already knows how to talk uncompressed digital.
I'm guessing you didn't know that raw HDTV 1080i @60 runs at ~1.5gbs or around 187MB/sec or a TERABYTE for a 2 hour movie. Yup consumers are just ready to decompress from their *proprietary* codecs (interesting dig) and store uncompressed video. You're going to have an extremely difficult time just getting that performance off your PCI buss which normally maxes out at 166MB/sec, not even taking into consideration how many drives you'd need to write 187MB/sec.
Lastly you do realize that DVI is already in the consumer grade market, I've got one on my video card today. DVI dumps raw video out now, it's not doing any uncompression, etc just throws the bits around and very handily pass raw HDTV resolutions and greater (1600x1200, etc). Many people (enthusiasts) are using DVI inputs already (firewire tops out at 400MB) for digital through and through, all you need is a regular computer with DVI output and a display that has DVI inputs (DLP projector, plasma, LCD, etc). You might be complaining that DVI displays maybe more difficult to find, today they basically on displays that are digital through and through, most displays do analog output and don't have them (though they are out there).
Great (Score:5, Funny)
The URLs of the samples (Score:5, Informative)
http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/d/2/bd2ef 814-9577-4d2e-a79e-35615ac7b13f/liquid_1.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/d/2/bd2ef 814-9577-4d2e-a79e-35615ac7b13f/liquid_2.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/1/a/31a2e 752-a74c-4935-a85b-3f3143cb53af/indy.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/1/a/31a2e 752-a74c-4935-a85b-3f3143cb53af/pinball.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/1/a/31a2e 752-a74c-4935-a85b-3f3143cb53af/snowboard.exe
Re:The URLs of the samples (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The URLs of the samples (Score:2)
Re:The URLs of the samples (Score:2)
5-8 mbit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:5-8 mbit? (Score:2)
Just downloaded it.. (Score:3, Informative)
Spiros Ioannou
--
Image Video & Multimedia Systems Lab.
Department of Electrical & Computer Eng.
National Technical University of Athens
Re:Just downloaded it.. (Score:5, Insightful)
You've got your numbers wrong, first it's encoded @ 6Mb/s nor 6MB/s second the frame is 12 times larger than the average divx encode! 320x240 vs 1280 x 720.... So, here's the real math is Divx @ same ratio would be @ 10.546Mb/s vs 6Mb/s for winmed .... I think that's impressive.
for the record, I've encoded a lot ... and i mean a lot of video in a whole wack of formats, from mpeg1-4, winmed (from the shittiest to the newest), quicktime, real, divx, and i'm probably going to play with some more when i get some spare time. From experience, there is a difference.
Oops, forgot (Score:3, Informative)
At 2 Mbits/sec (Twice the length on the same CD), both start to show artifacting, I'd say about equally.
Re:Just downloaded it.. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the whole thing about faster processors, they let us do cool new things that just weren't possable before in realtime. Any time you find a chip that is enough to do everything, someone will be able to develop an application to take advantage of all that new power.
The future in computers is things like high definition multimedia, good voice recognition and the like. All these things are going to need vastly more power than before, and fortunately chips that can supply it are comming out.
No, I don't think so (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not worth it. Set top boxes, microdevices, PVR, et. al are using linux now. They haven't even settled on a HDTV standard yet, not to mention the fact that only
I now give my Swamee prediction:
By the time we can actually see the difference, a better open compression will have emerged. Because most people will have access to the tech. As it is now, nobody does.
So, I wish Microsoft luck. I'm sure some companies will let greed drive them to use their spiffy crackable DRM.. until they realize they just lost all of their unborn children and future to them. But, it'll be fun to watch.
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: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
Well... (Score:2, Informative)
Ah well, I suppose if people want to sell their freedom for a T2 DVD, there's nothing I can do to stop them...
Damn Microsoft... and Big Enough? (Score:2)
btw... I still have to get a DVD-R, and they're coming out with larger ones already? =P
It doesnt matter how good it is (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesnt matter how good your product is; the conditions for it spreading are more important than great technical capabilities and fantastic specs.
Now, if MS made the encoder and the players free, and made them free to incorporate into third party devices, then there might be a wildfire. This is simply not going to happen.
Nothing to see here; move along.
compression quality (Score:2)
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.
I'd rather have A Blue Laser (Score:2, Insightful)
Any HD DVDs will have some sort of DRM that is far more secure than current DVDs. I would imagine that the entertainment industry will be leary of any Microsoft DRM technology that could make Microsoft the gatekeeper to an entire industry.
-MDL
Myself... (Score:3, Insightful)
So you mean to say that you are comfortable with the sentence "Myself have watched it." ?!?!?!?
The sentence is "I have watched it." and therefore your sentence should be "I and many others have watched it."
To educated people, your sentence looks like you're saying "Myself have watched it, and others have watched it." and you just look like a farking retard.
Please, people. Dont use "myself" to refer to yourself as the direct object in a sentence. You don't look intelligent. You look like a fucking buffoon. This probably goes for anything else you do to try to look intelligent.
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.
It depends (Score:2)
It depends on the job.
Re:im confused. (Score:2)
Re:Not supported... (Score:3, Interesting)
Selected video codec: [wmv9dmo] vfm:dmo (Windows Media Video 9 DMO)
=
Re:Um, kinda shitty. (Score:3, Funny)