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Windows Media 9 in Digital Theaters

Posted by michael on from the popup-ads-for-popcorn dept.

SpamJunkie writes "Feel like watching new releases in 7.1 surround sound with full digital video? It's coming, not with MPEG 4 but with Windows Media 9. Microsoft announced it is bringing Windows Media 9 to 177 screens in Landmark Theaters."

4 of 597 comments (clear)

  1. WM9 Is a good codec by 1337_h4x0r · · Score: 4, Informative

    WM9 is a good mpeg-4 implementation. It has slightly better results than Divx 5 or X-vid from what I've seen (with the same file size). If they start doing High Definition transfers of movies and showing them digitally in the theaters, thats a great thing. I don't understand why you'd need a super-advanced codec to do it other than publicity, though. Mpeg-2 works for High Definition just as well, the file sizes are about 30% larger though.

  2. WM9 *is* MPEG-4 by 1337_h4x0r · · Score: 5, Informative

    WM9 is an implementation of MPEG-4, it's just a proprietary one. It uses the same I-frame and compressed p-frame concepts as mpeg-4. DIVX is another well-known implementation. Also X-Vid.

  3. Re:Let's give a collective... by Ooblek · · Score: 5, Informative
    So you are under the assumption that the crappy, poorly compressed captures that float around the internet are what would be projected? Just an FYI - digital video doesn't have to be compressed so that it will only look good at 640x480 resolution.

    I guess you also never watched a DVD? That video is compressed with a lossy compression scheme, yet it still looks good. Why? Variable compression. Someone just didn't pop a tape into a tape player, hit play, then click the record button on a computer. There are actually people that go through and master these things over a period of weeks or months to make the video stream as small as possible while trying to make it as quality as possible. There are also all sorts of measurement and analysis tools applied to it along the way to remove scratches from the film transfer, and to make multiple streams of audio (for foreign languages, commentary tracks, and I've even seen some DVDs that not only support the AC3 digital surround, but will have a Dolby Prologic encoded stream.)

  4. WMV9 is NOT MPEG-4 by benwaggoner · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, WMV9 isn't a MPEG-4 codec. Earlier versions were based on draft MPEG-4 standards, but they forked quite a while ago.

    Also, the difference is a lot bigger than 30%. It's more like 100% more for MPEG-2, with the gap increasing as data rates get lower.

    --

    My video compression blog