Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Streaming DVD Video over the Internet

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the now-thats-what-I'm-talking-about dept.

Sexy Commando writes "According to this article on ZDNet, the new codec, H.264, is able to stream DVD quality video using bandwidth as little as less than 1Mbps. The new codec requires 3 to 4 times as much CPU power than MPEG-2 to process the video. Now we can have two movies on 1 CD. Cheers."

8 of 195 comments (clear)

  1. hmm? by scalis · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well, I've got no phd in DVD technology, but the AC3 sound alone would take up far more than 1mbit all by itself right?

    One of the reasons im not into watching movies on my PC is that I cannot take advantage of my DTS gizmos.
    If this is just for video quality - Count me out.....

    --

    True ravers don't need drugs
    1. Re:hmm? by scalis · · Score: 4, Interesting

      When i watch movies on my computer i never notice the sound, even if it had mp3 quality sound i wouldn't care. The video is the most noticed aspect.

      Yes, well one of te reasons I rather rent/buy the DVD is that my TV screen is LARGER than my monitor. I also have a remote. But that really doesnt matter since other people may have plasma screens of 62"... Besides that the top reason is that I *cannot* take afvantage of the sound since:

      1: The sound is encoded with something that sounds like mp3 if I got the article correct. MP3 is stereo (dolby Pro-Logic) and most sound cards are stereo although some new ones are actually 5.1

      2: My AC3 amplifier is better than ANY soundcard you can possibly come up with in the near future

      The sound may not matter when watching on your computer with headphones but my guessing is that they are actualy trying to develop technology to change the way we rent DVD's and watch TV. They can't do this until the experience gets better than it is with the old technology. Im sorry, just because it's new, it isn't better in my oppinion.

      --

      True ravers don't need drugs
  2. Re:This is great however ... by scott1853 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    From another article:

    "To date, LSI Logic has not outlined the company's plan for how and when to introduce silicon capable of handling H.264. Umesh Padval, LSI Logic's senior vice president of broadband entertainment division, acknowledged that Bob Saffari's group - responsible for professional video market - has seen a growing demand for H.264. But as far as the volume consumer H.264 market is concerned, he said: "The actual deployment for H.264 is not solidified at all."

    Padval predicted that the volume market for H.264 won't emerge before early 2005."

  3. And the compression? by neoform · · Score: 3, Interesting

    if it takes 3 to 4 times more cpu power just to decompress it, how long does it take to actually make these files? I've done some DivX-ing and 16 hour compression sessions are too long.

    --
    MABASPLOOM!
  4. The article is somewhat vague... by Guspaz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It claims this new codec can get the same quality at 33% lower filesizes than other MPEG-4 codecs, but it doesn't say WHAT MPEG-4 codec. There is more than a 33% difference between existing MPEG-4 codecs alone! Are they comparing this to DivX 5.x, arguably the current leader in quality? Or are they comparing it to Microsoft's ISO MPEG-4 encoder, with it's horrid quality?

    Regards, Guspaz.

  5. Re:This is great however ... by packeteer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I disagree. Now people are encoding to divx in better than real time on some machines so i dont think its a problem to take 8 hours to encode a movie. I remember when i did 20 hour encodes back in the day. Its really not a big deal.

    --
    unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
  6. Re:I'll believe it when I see it by T-Kir · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The little problem is when you get more storage or more bandwidth, you tend to find ways to use it to the max...

    I set up a file server for my brothers' MP3 archive (he is a DJ and a few use mp3's on an external drive and laptop for gigs, just because you don't have to lug hundreds of CD's around), and it has 240GB of RAIDed storage, that lasted 6 weeks... it's been teetering around the 10GB mark for a while)... plus a 5Mb broadband doesn't help in keeping the HDD free! We're just saving up for another storage upgrade.

    --
    Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
  7. Nothing new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A couple of guys from Hardforums and I played with this codec back in early July. There is a writeup here about how to create a file. At the time we were using it, it was a pain to compress and decompress. At the time the encoder required a YUV file and the decoder produced a YUV file. On a 1.2 TBird it took about 14 hours to encode the Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within Trailer. It was about 2:45 I think. The file produced was 11.2MB. A comparable (quality as best we could tell) Divx 4 encoding was about 35MB, both started from DVD and contained no audio. Decoding was about 2fps on my machine. Remember that these times are using files that were written to be correct, with no efficency added in. In fact, one of the guys on the JVT team told us if we were able to improve the compression at all to let them know.

    Btw, JVT stands for Joint Video Team, which is the group resposnible for developing the standard. It used to be H.26L, and looks now to be called H.264. The ftp below is the once that is used by the people developing the standard, so don't hit it too hard ;)

    And here's what you all have been waiting for. the Source Code to it. I dunno how it's changed since I used it last, but the newest version we had available was 3.2 and they are now on 4.2. Version 3.7 came out shortly after we finished our tests, but there were no compression speed changes from the few quick tests we ran on it, as well as no file size changes.

    Also, one intereting thing that I didn't see when glancing over the linked article was that the server's software will monitor the connection and playback and if there are too many dropped frames it will decrease the quality. The opposite is true as well, the quality will increase based on the connection and playback. Of course the server would be able to disable this as well, but would be nice if a video stream got /.ed to be able to still see it, just at a lower quality.