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HD DVD Coming Very Soon
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."
"We're sorry. This Windows Media 9 Series content is only available to be viewed using Internet Explorer." ...but I guess I won't.
--Richard
All the new media will have hardware copy prevention built in.
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.)
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
...uhm, this isn't supported by MPlayer yet, right? So why is this news?
Hell, I'd buy it. I hate having to watch the crappy movies they show on ABC when I wanna watch a film in HDTV. I don't really want to get DirecTV and a HD-VHS player seems a bit pointless. HD-DVD ALL THE WAY!
AND Windows
Like some other posters have already pointed out, no IE, no "stunning samples".
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.
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.
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?
still reading?
The right to copy is useless with the new laws (EU-wide copyright directive just about to become national law in Germany) forbiding hard- and software that disable copy protection mechanisms. Almost all mainstream audio CDs already have copy protection, so soon it will be illegal even to make private copies of the CDs you own.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
Ok, so the article says that they're going to offer T2 in "2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer digitally mastered from a brand-new 1080p, 24sf high-definition digital telecine transfer." That's great and all, but how are they getting this quality? Was T2 filmed in digital? I thought something had to be filmed in the 1080p HDTV-quality to have that kind of picture. Can anyone shed some light, or are they blowing sunshine up our collective asses? Thanks.
Does this technology make Arnie read his lines better?
What is Microsoft saying...
Yeah, I wonder why they compare those two processors, but I have a more fundamental question.
Why do they try to improve the picture quality by a fraction of an order of magnitude, and not go and try to make a current technology work with lower power equipment? I think that would be much more valuable to the consumer.
Though, this would ruin the whole WinTel idea of having to buy newer hardware for the newer software for the newer hardware....
There needs to be a standard for uncompressed digital video, so devices such as video game consoles, or DVD players that play new compressed formats like this MS thing can output a direct digital stream to the TV, without having to convert to analog first. In other words, a consumer electronics version of DVI, or (HD) SDI.
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.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
besides it being offtopic, your message is a troll. 2100+ is equal or even faster than a 2.4GHz Intel is most respects.
Yet an other version of the LOTR to buy....
-= This is a self-referential sig =-
It depends on the job.
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
They're porting WMP9 to linux and MacOS. Nice try.
Seriously, a DVD is vastly superior to a VHS tape in so many ways besides picture quality (no rewinding, instant jump, extras, smaller, don't deteriorate gradually). Have you looked at Asia? They already hda the (S)VCD as the standard, so DVDs have basicly flopped, even though you can buy fake DVDs for about $3. I imagine a HD-DVD format would suffer much the same problem, most people don't have or care about a huge HDTV disply. Also that FTC limit is only to go digital, not to go HD.
Anyway, if the future is Windows/WMP9/IE only, I think I'll settle for DivX anyway. Personally I don't feel that the movie _experience_ gets significantly better or worse by being in HDTV or standard DVD. A good movie is still a good movie, and a bad movie still a bad movie...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Wrong!
Better image and video compression has been promised for years, in the shape of wavelent encoding. Such methods give a factor of 10 better compression that discrete cosine (i.e. fourier) coding as used in MPEG and JPEG with less of the blocking artifacts. I can't be bothered to read the article, because it's nothing new as usual from Microsoft. It's been done before, a decade ago by people with more brains. The trouble is they patented a load of the algorithms so there's been no Free, free or Open implementation.
Stick Men
Since all you'd have to do is buy an HDTV DVD player (pretty cheap, since all that's different is the software), and they bundle in the Windows Media HD version along with the normal DVD version. That way you have a regular DVD, plays on regular machines, that also pumps out HDTV for those who have a screen that can take it. Kind of like how they have all those different surround sound choices on DVDs. THe DVD can hold it all - look at the new T2 Extreme Edition.
My DVD player can show the current bitrate and 3-4 seems more like it. No wonder this miracle compression algorithm works miracles at 5-8!
or, as the text at the top puts it (emph mine):
"We're sorry. This Windows Media 9 Series content is only available to be viewed using Internet Explorer."
Microsoft Anticompetitive? Never!
*Randomize*
Antitrust case my ass.
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
WHAT?? 2GHz+ computers? I bought a standalone DVD player, since I was not very pleased watching DVD on the computer, or watching it on TV with the computer on. I was not very pleased with my 10 meters cable crossing the corridor to watch DVDs on a good TV with my girlfriend. Why would I need to go back to my computer to enjoy HiRes images on a small screen, while I could enjoy mid res images on a medium size screen that satisfy me??? Why should my ear get fed up with that boring computer fan noise? Why should I use 150W to watch movies, while I could only use 55W? Why should my ugly beige box be the center of all my medias? I am satisfied with what I have now...
This will become as popular as wmv files...
Most everyone avoids wmv because they suck due to being incompatable with everything but the microsoft player, are riddled with DRM (and I'll bet you $1000.00 that this "new" codec is full of DRM)and just overall suck.
If it is not a standard and is not OPEN it's crap and nobody cares.
hell Real has a codec that will do HD impressively.. but everyone hates real more than microsoft.
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."
It is being ported, but the company that are doing it seem unlikely to release it as a consumer product. They already make LinDVD (the Linux version of WinDVD suprisingly). LinDVD is available to consumers as a standalone, it's only marketed to integrators making Linux appliances, and it's looking like the WMP port will be the same.
sorry, that should read "LinDVD isn't available to consumers". Preview button you say? Never heard of it! ;)
I just got the video playing. I have a 1.7Ghz P4, the cpu goes to 100% and the frame rate is below 1 frame/3 seconds in wmplayer9/win2k. Besides that, the quality is very good, but there is nothing astonishing with it. The video is at 6MBps, and if you consider that most mpeg-4 and divx content is encoded at 900Kbits then I don't see the breakthrough. BTW video size is said by researchers in most video conferences in the field that is going to be reduced at most 100% in the next 10 years. So don't expect much from the future. As for the HD-DVD, 1080i is still low (but close) compared to 35mm film.
Spiros Ioannou
--
Image Video & Multimedia Systems Lab.
Department of Electrical & Computer Eng.
National Technical University of Athens
Media providers are waking up to the fact that Microsoft is going to screw them. No matter how good it is(and this ain't that good), is it worth it when you pay per client connect, per server connect, per play, per minute, per bandwidth compression size, per my foot in their asses...
.5% of the population can view a DVD in HDTV quality.
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.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/d/2/bd2 ef814-9577-4d2e-a79e-35615ac7b13f/liquid_2.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/1/a/31a 2e752-a74c-4935-a85b-3f3143cb53af/indy.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/1/a/31a 2e752-a74c-4935-a85b-3f3143cb53af/pinball.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/1/a/31a 2e752-a74c-4935-a85b-3f3143cb53af/snowboard.exe
.zip to unzip without the stupid .exe hassels.
And you can rename them to
Is anyone surprised? MPEG4 provides the same quality as DVDs (MPEG2)in a tiny fraction of the space. It's very surprising that the MPAA chose to come out with DVD using MPEG2 instead of MPEG4, since MPEG4 was already established. The same disbelief goes for the HDTV standard. They broadcast MPEG2, when they could broadcast MPEG4 and do many times more with a fraction of the bandwidth.
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.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
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.
a s t r o t u r f
Even AMD doesn't claim the (1.7Ghz) 2100 matches up with anything beyond a 2.1Ghz P4, and the benchmarks would tend to agree with that.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
We're sorry. This Windows Media 9 Series content is only available to be viewed using Internet Explorer.
Learn more about Internet Explorer.
DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE
The fact that the page pointed to is inaccessible from anything other than IE doesn't make me confident that this technology will be an open standard.
Ah well, I suppose if people want to sell their freedom for a T2 DVD, there's nothing I can do to stop them...
Oh yea.. I really trust MS to develop a new compression 'standard'. I know... let's put them in charge of the W3C too!
btw... I still have to get a DVD-R, and they're coming out with larger ones already? =P
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
We have Internet Explorer here on the Mac, but that too is refused :( Maybe they should have said Windows Internet Explorer?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I will not have those fucking goons at MS interfering with my life any longer
;)
If your life revolves around the DVD market I think you probably have more to worry about than M$
Remember Betamax.
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.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
come on, tell me that 99% of people on this site don't use Windows. Riiiight. Mozilla, maybe.. Linux? Definitely not. Gimme a break man.
On another topic, anybody have any encoding tips for WMV9? I've always wanted to encode using VirtualDub, but the only M$ codec that's any good with it is the old 3.11alpha. Best to use NanDub. What's up with that?
The only "agreed standard" that is relevant is the one that has been agreed upon by the public -- not the one that got approval in some musty committee room.
BOO! TERRO
No large corporation ever pays for patents. They just threaten to counter-sue from their own patent portfolio when challenged.
Stick Men
MPEG-4 was not finalized at the time the DVD standard was settled upon. And even if it had been, the computational requirements for decoding it would have pushed the initial price of players up pretty high.
I do hope the codec can provide quality like that thruout an entire movie, regardless of action and wide variances in scene lighting. I'm happy with MPEG2 for standard-definition comtent, such as what's found on DVDs. Having a popular medium that's of higher quality that what most existing television sets can make use of is quite impressive and forward-looking. Now that we're moving on to HD, I hope the new codecs can make an equally impressive jump in quality. HD is a big thing because of... well... the high definition image! Most demos I've seen on high-end HDTVs thus far, especially those coming off of HD satellite, have not impressed me. I dunno... are you impressed by rampant artifacting and scene changes that take at least 3 frames to fully repaint? HD artifacts are not really what I was hoping for...
This new MS Codec looks great with the sample clips, but will it really do the job? I sure hope so... and if not, I hope the industry can wait until a better one does come along.
"MPEG4 provides the same quality as DVDs (MPEG2)in a tiny fraction of the space. It's very surprising that the MPAA chose to come out with DVD using MPEG2 instead of MPEG4, since MPEG4 was already established."
Sir, I feel that it is necessary to point out that your first sentence seems.. contrary to the second.
I haven't kept up on the specifics of MPEG, but if MPEG4 does give DVD quality in a 'tiny fraction of the space', it isn't surprising at all that the MPAA chose not to use it.
Search Slashdot for the MPAA going nuts about 'pirates' (Yarr!) and not bothering to take any serious steps to distribute movies online.
I'd wager that MPEG2 was specifically chosen for its size over MPEG4.
I can't help but think this might be the next big thing. Although it took about 10 minutes to download the 2 minute "liquid" trailer, and my computer stuttered a little bit, it reminds me alot of the days when MP3s where first introduced, and the majority of the computers of the day were just barely able to play them (today they can be played in the background, and don't take up much comparable processing power at all).
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 haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
yeah GothicManSlut is fucking moron!
It doesn't, but when I DO buy a DVD (probably once a month or so), I don't want to be beholden to MS to actually watch the thing.
That was classic intercourse!
I think he means a standalone player, codecs are a lot easier to load on computers than standalone stuff.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
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
Happy meals fund terrorism
Has anyone heard anything about Windows Media Player 9?
I'm concerned that its got a lot of snooping code in it, DRM stuff and etc...seems like when 8 came out there was some concerns.
Yeah, but conversely they could encode the movie in MPEG-4 and increase the bitrate, so the end result could be the same size as MPEG-2, just higher quaility - I think that's what the previous poster had in mind.
" To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research. "
An article on /. about something MS is doing, and no one even complaining that in order to view the content on the linked site you have to be using MSIE.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
The best part of the Ultimate Edition of T2 is the DTS-ES soundtrack. It kicks much ass compaired to the Dolby one.
Why the hell did they remove it? Bastards.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
If the codec from Microsoft requires a very fast "PC" then don't expect to see consumer devices that can play this stuff. Can you imagine if your DVD player needed a P4 with fan cooling?
I can't see this being adopted unless there is an innexpensive hardware solution.
There\'s no place like ~
By installing the VCM (video compression manager)s media/9ser ies/codecs/vcm.aspx
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.
Although other system configurations may be able to playback this content, for an optimal experience we recommend at least a 2.4 GHz Intel or AMD Athlon XP 2100+ or higher processor and an AGP4x based NVIDIA or ATI video adapter card with at least 32 MB of RAM and the most recent OEM driver updates. The higher the data rate (in Mbps), the higher the resource requirement.
I don't see this catching on any time soon if it requires a 2.4GHz processor in order to experience the increase in quality. I'm frightened to see the system requirements for the upcoming windows 2003.
You got it. As it is, one can encode the DVD into MPEG4 at low bitrates, while maintaining the same quality. That has got to be their single worst fear... Not that DVD players would have cost a few bucks more.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Hahahahaha, you're kidding, right? (Look for an older doom9 codec comparison, vp3 wasn't in the newest (which is actually quite old) because it can't keep up with the current codecs anymore)
That was about as intelligent as the following from the forum linked in the news:
Microsoft has offered MPEG4 vs WM9 HDTV demonstrations, and they always show WM9 superior at comparable bit rates.
Oh, really? How surprising.... -_-
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Nope, I've tried VP3 myself... It retains much more detail than MPEG4 at equivalent bitrates, and provides a much nicer quality picture even at significantly lower bitrates.
As an added bonus, it doesn't have the terrible artifacts that just about every-other-codec-on-the-planet does, such as blockiness for one.
Instead of trusting the review of someone else, why don't you spend 10 minutes and do a comparison for yourself?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Microsoft has done a great job on this compression algorithm, it definitely works better than MPEG4. But I really don't want to see red laser disks become the standard HD DVD, and I don't want to see format wars. Even with the best compression, red laser disks just don't have enough bandwidth. Sure, you can do 720p, and it looks pretty good, but it has far more artifacts than HDTV. Do we really want an HD DVD format that isn't as good a picture as TV? Blue laser disks have plenty of space. It's easy to put an MPEG2 compresses 720p or 1080p24 movie on a disk, without overdoing the compression. Right now, Sony's Blue-Ray seems like the most likely to be a standard for this. And it records as well as plays. And with better compression algorithms, you could fit even higher res movies on a blue laser disk (1080p60? 2160p24?) in the future. Format wars are a bad thing. Support one and only one HD DVD format. And if you want that to be the best, it needs to be blue laser.
All you need to do is install one .deb for CSS support and vlc will play DVDs. You can either install it on each startup instance you want DVD support, or remaster the .ISO.
One disadvantage is that unless you install to your HD, you will need your DVD drive to be seperate from your boot CD drive.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
the subject says it all. take it easy.
-Mani
To avoid confusion, I would like to point out the VP3 codec is patented, but the company who owns the patents has released a "free for anyone for anything" license. (See the Theora FAQ for information.)
Many .EXE files that encapsulate media files are self-extracting ZIPs. Under Linux, try "unzip foo.exe".
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.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
WM9 is nothing more than a hacked-up version of MPEG-4. Its only apparent advantage is that the default WM9 encoder is a bit more flexible/less picky as far as bitrate control than other MPEG-4 implementations (XviD/DivX). Yes, DivX is a bit of a hacked-up version of MPEG-4 itself, but less so and the format is much more open. (See XviD).
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.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
As a MS employee from the WM9 team stated, MS holds many MPEG-4 patents and played a large role in developing the technology several years ago. In fact they built on the knowledge from MPEG-4 to develop this new codec. They feel this new codec is demonstrably better than MPEG-4, and encourage people to do their own tests and make qualitative and quantitative comparisons, as of course they are biased having developed the codec.
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.
It's designed to guard against page-widening posts.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
It's very surprising that the MPAA chose to come out with DVD using MPEG2 instead of MPEG4, since MPEG4 was already established.
1. The standard had barely been set.
2. The licencing was nowhere near ready, it happened not that long ago, took literally years. It's covered by a bunch of patents.
3. While the standard might be set, the hardware implementations were way off. Having the reference software is a far cry from having a chip design.
4. It was more than good enough already, HDTV was (is) far off for the average consumer
5. It was good enough to beat VHS. If they can make you buy a HD-DVD of the same sometime in the future, why not?
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
In one word: No. VP3 basicly never came up to par with MPEG4, and was backthrottled to make Ogg Vorbis, which is very good. So I suspect some very good things will come of Theora, but it's not there yet. And yes I've looked at sample clips. It's better at some things, worse at others, but in total not that good, in my opinion.
However, I suspect companies would still be interested, as they really aren't *that* keen on making stuff small, but rather higher quality. They are *not* interested in giving you 10 times the music on the same disc, because they wouldn't be able to charge 10 times as much. Rather they are interested in giving you DVD-A/SACD/HD-DVD, selling essentially the same product (1 album/movie) despite having much more space. And if they can cut out any royalty payments, all the more interesting for them.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
At least that's the max bitrate for TMPGenc when encoding DVD format, and I think for transcode too.
Either way, 8 Mbits/sec will allow you to fit about 80 minutes of video onto a single-layer DVD. (20 minutes takes around 1.1-1.2 GB at 8 Mbits/sec, single-layer DVD is 4.7 GB.) A dual-layer DVD will be able to hold 160 minutes at the same bitrate.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I'm sure many of the knowledgable /.'ers have seen the WMP logo on DVD players now-a-days. My question is, if I was planning to spend $200-300 on a good progressive scan DVD player in the relatively near future, should I wait until they load these codecs into them, or will that probably never happen?
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
Three points:
MPAA has a lot of influence, but the forum includes the consumer electronics companies as well.
There was cheap silicon to decode MPEG-2 in hardware. MPEG-4 in hardware is just now becoming a reality.
Where MPEG-4 really shines is lower bitrates. At the rates available on a DVD drive, MPEG-2 isn't that far behind.
In general, there could have been a better DVD standard had they waited another 4 years, but when is that not true? DVD is the union of existing technologies, tweaked a bit. That has a lot to do with its success.
-Dave
Come back when I can download at least two other implementations which aren't owned by Microsoft, and at least one of which is open source. Like, say, MPEG-4. No? Too bad.
Stuff like this should be like W3C recommendations; at least two independent and interoperable implementations should be available before it's even concidered for acceptance.
As Media Player 9 cannot be removed once installed I'll have to wait until this fact changes, since I dislike anything that prevents me from choice.
Don't know about 1280x720, but at 960x540, I cannot tell the difference between 2-pass encoded WM9 and 2-pass DivX.
1-pass is a different story - WM9's encoder defaults seem to be more flexible with a wider variety of videos, so WM9 excels when you only use one-pass encoding. But as soon as you use two-pass encoding, WM9 loses all of its advantages.
(Where did I get a good 960x540 source? WCBS-DT's HD broadcasts, I record using my HDTV tuner card and then transcode while throwing out every other field and scaling horizontal res down by two to end up at half the vertical and half the horizontal resolution of the original 1080i broadcast.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
So, first digital theater projection, and now HD DVDs? Does this mean that, say, fifteen years from now, a few pennies from the price I pay to see ANY movie ANYWHERE will go to Microsoft?
Ew.
Both of those were at 4 Mbits/sec video bitrate. (Approx. 20-22 minutes of video on a 700M CD.)
At 2 Mbits/sec (Twice the length on the same CD), both start to show artifacting, I'd say about equally.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I feel the same way. I just got that fancy silver-box edition a couple months ago. I've only watched it once. Shit, I'll *never* be able to save up for a big plasma at this rate. :-(
So, let's see--I can have an HDTV and no media, or a bunch of HD media and a plain TV...
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The problem with laserdiscs was that they were HUGE in comparison to CD/DVD and the defect rate on them at time of manufacture was quite high. I remember seeing laserdiscs in the store for close to a hundred bucks when the same movie on VHS was only a fraction of that.
If laserdiscs had been more affordable they probably would have been quite successful.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
So NTSC DVD's are at a 720 * 480 resolution. Full HD is 1920 * 1080 - that's a 6 times greater number of pixels.
To encode a decent movie at really good quality takes more than one layer of a DVD, so that's greater than 4.7GB of data.
The Terminator Windows file is said to be 3GB in size.
For it to be the same quality as the movie, which is going to be at least 6GB on the DVD, the new codec has to give 12 times the efficiency of the existing MPEG 2 codec.
I reckon it's going to look like shite.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
Oh, how wrong you are, my friend. Laserdiscs were most certanly burnable. They were THE thing to use for instant video access, before CD burning was big. Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, where the Detroit Red Wings play, used to use it exclusively for all of their headshots and moving font backgrounds. The same for the Detroit Tigers at Tiger Stadium. All of the font backgrounds, home and away headshots, and animated sponsor logos were put on them. They were incredibly ideal, with a cueing time of only a few frames. Compare that to having multiple Betacam tapes, which could take 20 seconds to a minute to prepare.
Unfortunately, due to the move from Tiger Stadium to Comerica Park, the writable laserdisc machine was stolen (god only knows who wanted or could use it). Joe Louis' writable laserdisc machine is still around and kicking. Even though we have an MPEG server for all of our videos and backgrounds now, the JLA video wall test patterns and other color patterns still come off of our reliable old writable laserdisc machine.
It was the greatest thing in the world in the mid-90s. The only pain was when you ran out of space on one side and had to have an operator eject and flip those big-ass platters over. It added 15-20 seconds to your cue time, but as long as you didn't put material you had to access all the time on the back, it worked just fine.
... until I got this:
"We're sorry. This Windows Media 9 Series content is only available to be viewed using Internet Explorer.
Learn more about Internet Explorer."
If I wanted M$ duckspeak news I'd go to news.com, not slashdot... *ix duckspeak only here please!!
Gee, I can't play DVDs that I legally purchased on my Linux system without installing essentially illegal software.
Oh, I suppose my Linux machine is an "unauthorized player".
So what "authorizes" a player in your view? I paid my money to buy the DVD. That's not authorization enough?
Am I the only one who didn't think it was all that good? It definitely looked well below the quality of a good DVD, even if the resolution was higher. It was blurry, expecially with much motion.
I was much more impressed with the quality of the Matrix trailer on my iMac...
The subject of this article should be "Microsoft tries to subvert
HD-DVD standards with Windows Media".
This is yet another sad day. Slashdot continues to push anti-Linux
articles.
For making my brand-new 2Gig, 512 MRAM, 64M video, UGA laptop appear to run dog slow playing your new videos! :)
It's quite simple...until there is something that will attract the average person to buy this it won't catch on. Most people, on their current entertainment equipment, simply can't get any benefit out of this. In maybe 5-10 (to 20) years, people will have TV's that can really utilize this, but until then...I can't even fathom anyone switching over to this. It would basically be a no-benefit upgrade for 99% of people right now.
I'm hoping this'll show up on the XBox Lite being announced in May at E3. It incorporates their new Media2Go stuff, so it might. Other than that it's a normal xbox, smaller and sleeker (and cheaper). Good news for someone like me who's been holding out on getting one.
When Plug and Play was introduced, mostly at the absolute insistence of Microsoft (and Intel once MS convinced them it was necessary), NO ONE had Plug and Play hardware. For the first few years, it was more like Plug & Pray. But now? Just stick the hardware in and go.
This could be the same way. Standardize on a format, then start including it in all new DVD players. Sure, many won't have the capability with their old sets, but at least you can get the ball rolling sooner rather than later.
Oh, and the HDTV problem? We have a widescreen 43" projection HDTV (quite nice... projection TVs of today are absolutely nothing like the ones of yesteryear). The real issue is that the local cable company doesn't offer ANY HDTV programming, and the only over-air station we can get is 2 hours away and we'd need a huge antenna to get it. (Oh and $300 for a simple MPEG decoder, which is crazy considering DVD players can be had for $69 and are more complicated and expensive to produce).
HDTV won't really take off until more people can sign up for the service with their local cable company.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
I just watched one of these videos. It's kinda shitty. Even a regular DVD (resampled to 1600x1200 no less) looks much sharper and clearer than this POS. Take a look at the "Liquid" video. Right off the bat, at the title screen, you notice significant "cloudiness" in the sharp contrasting areas between the red title text and the black background. The Matrix Reloaded trailer yesterday was a lot better.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Here is the real deal. There is a BIG fight going on over the next generation of compressed digital video.
In this corner, backed by billions and billions of cash reserves and half the digital codec developers money can buy, is Microsoft. They hold out WMV9, the next generation. The be-all and end-all. You can license it to create digital media on all platforms. The licensing is dirt cheap. You can play it on any machine with WMP (which is, like, all desktops). It ru13z. It is not really any better than MPEG4, but it is easier to use.
In the other corner, is EVERYONE else. They created a patent pool to combat Microsoft. They are the MPEG4 consortium, led by Steve Jobs, but also including just about every other major player in the computer industry. They tell people that their standard is the best - and everyone will be licensing from them. Their licenses for creation cost more than Microsoft's (less $$ in the bank). They can't agree on whether they will charge streaming fees, or how much they will be. But they can agree that, boy, they got a lot of patents, and boy are they gonna give Microsoft a run for their money.
So, in the next few years, this is it. MPEG4 consortium against Microsoft. Who will win, and who will go the Betamax route.
Being technically better is only a small part of this game.
:) it has a dropdown menu for what browser/OS you want to impersonate.
This just proves that Microsoft are full of shit when they say you must use IE - if all that is required is a differetn user-agent string, then they are simply censoring browsers. Not surprising of course.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
"Myself and many others have watched it."
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.
Think about it, people. If Microsoft can get 'Dozers to start thinking of movies as MS Windows programs instead of data files, then some day the piracy networks will be buzzing with .EXEs. What a perfect vector for viruses and trojans! If I were MPAA, I would be soiling my pants at the thought of this.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Simple, I don't use Windows.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Okay. Let's say MPEG4 sucks at higher bitrates... Keep the bitrate for the 720x480 picture at about 1Mps, and instead, have 9x the resolution or so. 9 720x480 MPEG4 streams, each carrying 1/9th of the video, played back in an arrangement like a tic-tac-toe board, to make one full (*HUGE*) screen.
Sorry, I don't buy the "MPEG4 sucks at high bitrates" story.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
That's a strawman. I didn't say anything of the sort. MPEG-4 is better at high bit rates, too, just not as dramtically so.
-Dave
SO... these new dvd's will fit into 640 K, then?
Then I submit that you shouldn't post assertions if you can't prove them. Just because you don't use Windows doesn't lend your arguments instant credibility, and this is from someone who's been using Linux since 1995.
-Mani
Ah ha, now you should call me a troll, and tell the moderators to mod me down, as is slashdot tradition...
No, it's not a strawman, it's a misunderstanding. You definately need to learn the difference.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Well, I'd like to ask you exactly what assertions I made, as I certainly didn't see any when re-reading my post.
What did I say? WMF sucks? Microsoft is evil? Help me out here... I'm seeing nothing like that at all.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
With the Micro$oft standard behind this is should be an easy hack or buffer overflow to create duplicates, eh? Question is: How soon before it's hacked? Decss?
Moderators, I apologise unreservedly for daring to challenge what someone said regarding Microsoft and their unparalled and unsurpassed ability to innovate. Microsoft truly is at the forefront of software engineering. I love Microsoft. Without them the world would be in the dark ages, historically speaking. I see they've increased chocolate rations again this week. Double plus good! :-)
Stick Men
It could be explained by the rumour that Dave Cutler prefers Athlons and Microsoft is doing so much Athlon64 development - maybe they are moving towards optimizing their code for x86-Athlon rather than x86-P4
The Santa Monica office for Artisan Entertainment, who own the T2 distribution rights, happens to be in the same building as Microsoft's L.A. office.
How much you wanna bet the deal was made in the elevator one day?
This sig intentionally left justified.
... but first I have to restart my computer. gr.
Has anyone noticed that the "5.5" Mbps stream has a maximum rate of 8.6 Mbps, and the "6.9" Mbps stream has a maximum rate of 10.7 Mbps?
ATSC HDTV MPEG-2 streams are broadcast at a maximum rate of 19.39 Mbps (in practice, they average less, just like Microsoft's streams; VBR encoding is thrifty). ATSC includes 18 formats, including 1920x1080@24p, which is the preferred format for HD films.
In contrast, these demo clips are encoded from only a 1280x720@24p source. (Codec reports 30fps presumably due to film pulldown conversion.)
So, the Microsoft clips have only 44% of the resolution that a HD-DVD might have. Now, I certainly hope that a WM9 codec is powerful enough to not require 1/0.44=2.25 times the bitrate for a full resolution HDTV stream (as would be encoded on an HD-DVD), otherwise the 10.7 Mbps max rate demo stream would require 24 Mbps!!! That's more than the existing ATSC MPEG-2 standard!
Hey, I'm not dismissing Media 9; it's a very powerful codec, and it's more efficient than MPEG-2 and the earlier versions of MPEG-4. But let's compare apples to apples here!
I see plenty of folks squawking about how red laser DVDs are untenable in the long run, regardless of the compression technology you use. The consensus among these naysayers seems to be: forget about trying to improve DVD, it's old and busted; wait for the new hotness of HD-DVD which will rock your socks.
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.
I installed WMP9 to check this out and now I regret it (win2k pro). WMP9 can't play multiple files at once, handy for showing off your videos to your boss if you do any animation...
piece of sh!t!
I uninstalled WMP9 but now I have to manually re-associate all video file types with the old version. what a waste of time...
Or, if unzip doesn't work, try cabextract.
That only leaves the Installshield files. Anyone know of a free extractor for Installshield?
(n/t)
I wonder how probable it is for technology as good as this HD DVD codec to be developed by individuals working together without any kind of funding. I guess what I'm trying to figure out is if free and open source software users like myself only deserve second-rate technology because of our ideology. Sure freely developed and licensed audio codecs like Ogg Vorbis exist, but it seems in the video world, proprietary and well-funded seems to leave open and free in the dust. Or am I missing something?
The newer codecs take a lot more computational power, something not simply was not available affordably in 1996 when the DVD format was being finalized.
I don't think MPEG4 was even considered a large video format at the time either. Its original intent was for video phones and compact streams. I don't remember anyone at the time even considering MPEG4 for high resolution images. It wasn't until the bootleggers came along, particularly with the DivX hack of MPEG4.
I do agree that a patent unencumbered is preferable.
i really don't like IE. that is why i downloaded mozilla 1.3b.
but mozilla is way way slower than IE. so much slower that i still use IE regularly.
No way am I giving up media player 6! That was the last good windows media player :P. Maybe I'll check these out on my laptop sometime, which is already burdened with media player 8 :(
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
If you use Phoenix, check out the User Agent Switcher that allows you to switch browser identification on the fly from a simple drop-down menue from Phoenix, no extra screen space taken up.
Shouldn't You expect more from your DJ?
with the "user agent" extension.
-Dan
I am so sick and tired of their forced upgrades. The other day I wanted to watch some WMV video, which I'd never had any problems before, and I realized I needed a new codec. Ok, download the codec from MS. Try to install it: you can't use it with Media Player 6.4, you gotta upgrade.
:)) I hate WMP > 6.4 so much, it's such a piece of junk.
Fuck that shit.
I've been trying not to install that piece of junk forever, now I have to (ok, I'll tell you the truth, it was my lady who wanted to watch the video, and you know women, you can't say you're not gonna install it...
At least it still lets you run the old one! I'll see if now that the codec is installed I can uninstall WMP 7.1. I'm pretty sure that there's nothing that technically requires that version to be installed, they just want to force you to install their more restrictive software.
Sorry, I know this is kind of obvious and redundant, go ahead and mod me redundant. I just wanted to vent it out.
tmegapscm
DTS should be on every DVD movie. There is a huge difference, and I'm surprised more people don't have it.
What you're essentially talking about is having a Java-like write once, run anywhere implementation of video decompression codecs.
I think the concept is nice, however, current computing power is not yet efficient enough to handle this, much less in a consumer level device.
The WM9 HD compressed content already takes a PIV at 3 Ghz. just to play without stuttering, and these codecs are highly optimized for Intel, probably with assembly language and SSE2 instructions.
Now imagine the computing power necessary to implement that in a Java Virtual Machine or some platform-independent work-alike. The costs would be extraordinary.
Then, look years down the road when consumer level companies like Apex need to be able to make cost-effective players they can sell for $50 at Walmart. Think that will ever happen?
That is what really fueled the consumer level adoption of DVD as a format: having players that are so cheap and readily available that they only cost as much as a couple of movies.
If all of the players for a given format cost several thousand dollars each, that format will die before it ever reaches widespread adoption.
With the current level of computing power available in the world, I can't see anything like this happening in the next 10 years.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Oh, absolutely not. MPEG4 is marginally acceptable at a rate of about 400 MB/hr. Certainly better than MPEG2 would be at the same bitrate. But there is a clearly noticeable difference. MPEG4 files show banding, blocking, and smearing artefacts that just aren't present on a DVD.
VP3 provides better quality than MPEG4, and (like Vorbis) is completely free of patents
It's highly unlikely that VP3, or any other relatively modern video codec, is free of patents. It's just a matter of which patents companies choose to enforce now and which patents they hide so that they can submarine you when your format becomes popular.
No such word as "farking" (what's the matter, afraid the big bad filter won't accept your post?)
"Please, people." is a sentence fragment. Try and remove that period at the end and use a comma next time.
"Dont" has an apostrophe, like this: "Don't"
. . . is one that you build yourself from off-the-shelf computer parts. I put together a home entertainment type computer system for under $500, here are the features: * Black case fits nicely under the TV along with the VCR * Great for games - right now it can play Nintendo, SNES, N64, Playstation and MAME roms. * Winamp for MP3 playback and internet radio. * Plays VCD, DVD, DivX or any other type of video you can imagine. * All controllable with a cheapo $9.00 remote I bought at Wal-Mart. Winamp works especially well with the remote - you can go through all your playlists and change volume, shuffle, etc. without touching the computer. The nice thing about a box like this is it's so easy to upgrade. I don't need to run out and buy a new DVD player every couple years. And with the right sound, video card, speakers, and TV you have a kick-ass home entertainment system. I should have put up a how-to site with pictures. Maybe I'll do that next time.
Perhaps I should have been more clear... It is not patent-free per se, it's that On2 has agreed to release their patent rights on it.
I can understand why. They've had an uphill battle with MPEG-based codecs for some time now, just because MPEG is open, and VPx is not. Admitedly, patent fees for MPEG are probably more expensive than whatever On2 is asking for use of their codecs. It only makes sense that they'd want to strike back as much as possible.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
For the home user, 'office' is almost a non issue, its that nice shiny new game they got from the local superstore that requires windows which is the issue for them..
.its not at the level for a average home user to grasp, nor is it as universal as native 'windows'.
Don't tell me about wine, winex etc.
Not that I even play games or use MS at home, but the rest of the consumer-Joes do...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
LDs use a laser to read a videostream that is written in ANALOG format. The only thing digital about LDs is a late extension to the format that allows a digital audio track to run alongside the video.
DVDS are a higher density of VCDs (video Compact Discs), or a storage shift from Digital VHS. But they have more in common with CDs than LDs. And CDs are rarely even used in the US as a video distribution method.
Regarding increases beyond DVD video quality... This will mostly be of interest to people after they can buy high definition TVs. Most people who get a HDTV will want to buy a new DVD player with higher quality component outputs on it anyway, so getting a new DVD player won't be a major hassle anyway, whether it uses blue-ray technology, or some new compression scheme. The real hurdle will be getting both formats into the same packaging (DVD one side, blue-ray on the other) so that people don't feel like they will have to choose between campatibility and quality.
the frame is 12 times larger than the average divx encode! 320x240 vs 1280 x 720....
...
for the record, I've encoded a lot
Wha? Most DivX encodes are 640x360 (if it's 16:9, 640x344 or 640x272 are also quite likely), 512x288 if movie is really long. So 4x the pixels, and way more than 4x the bitrate. Also nevermind that the WM9 footage is taken directly from source, and rips are a resized DVD -> DivX transcode. Anyway, if you're encoding at 320x240 with that bitrate, no wonder your encodes look shitty. Try downloading something done *right* off the net...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The quality of LDs over VHS was very noticable, even on a poor TV. Enough that people would pay 2X+ for LDs over VHS.
The main problem with LDs was manufacturing cost. The additional cost over VHS to make and ship a LD was about +$10, vs. maybe $3 total for a VHS tape. This means that the minimum that most LDs sold for was $25-30, when you could get the same item on VHS for $10-15. A good movie would typically run you $40-50, and a boxed CAV (half hour per side with easy pausing, or reverse playback.. instead of 1 hour CLV) set with extra discs of content could cost $100 easily. That's $100 for the content that you get in most DVDs now for $20 or less. And the ugly part is that the $100 set cost $30 or more just to press it.
Size was certainly an issue, weight to be more precise. Even if you wanted to purchase LDs used from someone, the shipping costs would rarely be less than $10. Thats up against $3-4 for VHS tapes.
LD players never dropped much below $300, even after 10 years on the market. You can get a DVD player for less than the price of a VCR after 5 years on the market. That's a huge factor.
In the end, all-around insane costs prohibited mainstream buyers from getting into LDs. It really didn't have anything to do with VHS already being out, or having to flip the disc halfway through (auto flipping models were available), or even having to change discs after 2 hours. You could flip/change the disc a few times in less time than it takes to rewind a VHS tape.
BTW, all of my price information for LDs are from 5+ years ago. Adjust it upward for inflation.
He's talking about an interconnect standard for consumer electronics. If you don't what this means, a consumer electronics device is a specialized device such as a stereo, tv, vcr, or game console, not a computer. Yes, it is a specific term, and it refers to certain appliances, not everything that you can plug into a wall socket.
When he is talking about a standard for uncompressed video, he is referring to a digital interconnect standard for these devices. The reason it hasn't happened yet is because the MPAA won't allow DVI to be used. A few manufacturers tried to use it, and then the MPAA had a fit, and since then it has been stalled in a standards war.
I think that it is also obvious that he is not referring to file format standards. I will agree that it is a bit confusing, since this article is about file formats, and not interconnect standards, however, I would have though that as "knowledgeable" as you are, that you would have been able to figure this out.
If you're going to chew out a Phd working in the industry, how about pulling your head out of your ass and making sure you have your facts straight? You aren't the first person that I have seen who has acted completely out of line when someone who obviously has alot of knowledge posts.
By the way, I am posting anonymously because I already used one of my mod points to mod you down and another point to mod him back up to 5. My user id is composer777. Have a nice day.
There's always at least one error.
If you don't what this means, a consumer electronics device is a specialized device such as a stereo, tv, vcr, or game console, not a computer.
is supposed to be...
If you don't know what this means, a consumer electronics device is a specialized device such as a stereo, tv, vcr, or game console, not a computer.
VP3 always looked blurry to me next to XviD, 3ivx, DivX 5 or even DivX ;-)+SBC (Nandub).
Because of that it's better at low bitrates (because it seems to blur out rather than block out, which is slightly more pleasing to the eye) but I didn't really think it competed with a good MPEG-4 encoder (let alone one with all the "fancy" features like the newest XviD) in the 700kbps range at all. It loses on the movie-on-a-cd bitrate range where people could adopt it, but it's not vastly different, just slightly out of focus, and it handles underwater scenes better than any MPEG.
That said, Theora has and will evolve beyond mere VP3 - it's certainly not too _bad_, and is a codec with some future promise, good considering you don't need a licence (On2 "released" the patent) - I think you could see Theora improving in quality quite a bit in the coming months when the Theora team start to tweak it in ways similar to VP4... and beyond.
Everyone is warily eyeing up the mythical Ogg Tarkin though - even if it's a big whiteboard at the moment and they are just throwing around little prototypes and discussing new arithmetic encodings they can still use, they are aiming not just for something in about the class of MPEG-4, but a generation beyond that - there's little doubt Tarkin will, in a couple of years when the first, buggy alpha codecs start to surface, be able to slap a Blu-Ray quality movie on a CD - possibly even before Blu-Ray becomes mainstream. You could fit quite a bit of DVD-quality transcodes or better-than-DVD-quality from-source encodes on a CD, maybe even three movies at good quality is the eventual potential of the stuff they're working with now - they're aiming at becoming 6 or 7 times better than MPEG-4, and it might be ambitious but it probably isn't going to suck. Shove that in your pipe and smoke it, MS, Real and Apple.
And the next release of the Vorbis encoder, with the optimum peelability and the good cross-channel coupling, will eat WMA9 Pro alive (and streams will be correctly decodable with Vorbis 1.0). Vorbis has the architecture to do it, there's just lots of tweaking and testing to do in the encoder.
Pirates have grown frustrated of the blockiness of Divx as they have grown used to it. DivX+SBC/MP3-CBR128 1CD rips no longer really suffice, as many AC3 rips have emerged - these take up 2CDs because of the increased audio bitrate and there's no harm in chucking in more video bitrate too. XviD is becoming very common in these circles too, with Divx 5.0.2 being used by the amateurs who can't understand XviD, but 2CD, 3CD, 4CD rips are bloody annoying.
Hopefully Theora will signal a return to 1CD rips if it gets good, especially with OGM having integrated subs and chapters, very quick seeking, and (shortly) a best-in-class audio format (Vorbis) capable of 7.1 audio at 144kbps-odd nominal bitrate, while not sounding like utter shite. XCD support in OGM (800MB per 700MB CD using reduced CD error correction of XA mode 2 sectors) will give it the bitrate boost it needs, I think!
And if Tarkin lives up to its dream, you'd be a fool to not have gone with OGM already really...
The process of going from film to video, called telecine, can be done at any resolution to any analogue or digital master. Video resolution doesn't start to outrun the grain of motion picture film until you get over 4k. Hence, any feature film videotape/disc you've ever seen is essentially a downconversion of a film print, which has higher resolution than any pixel- or line-based machine can produce at the moment.
They probably just did a new telecine to HD, if they didn't have one already.
I would have never bought the $2000 worth of DVDs I bought this year if I couldn't rip them. Save with my CD collection, for that matter.
Take a pill Bill!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Java is slow and inefficient because it's a general-purpose language being compiled on the fly into a general-purpose native instruction set.
The WM9 HD codec requires an Intel of enormous power because IA32 is kinkier than a 50 year old hooker, but when support for the codec starts to appear in consumer-level DVD players next year, you'll see sub-gigahertz RISC processors doing the same job without breaking a sweat.
If you cut out the cruft -- if you design a machine language whole sole purpose is to transform digital media, include built-in SIMD operation and common mathematical building blocks for compression -- then you need fewer transistors running at a lower clock speed to accomplish the same tasks.
Recall how your MP3s used to stutter and skip when you played them on your 486. Recall how your first DVD drive required a dedicated hardware MPEG2 decoder. Compare your situation then to your situation today, where you can transparently decrypt and then software-decode MPEG2 video on the fly while SIMULTANEOUSLY decoding a six-channel AC3 audio stream.
Now jump forward three iterations of Moore's Law, ~ 5 years from now, and see what kind of load the WM9 codec puts on your CPU.
Perhaps I'm overly optimistic in asking for this kind of technology now -- maybe it won't be the next generation of DVD, but the generation after that. Eventually, however, I think it'll be the way to go.
I work in the video compression field. I've done a lot of work porting an advanced proprietary codec to embedded systems. All modern codecs do two things: motion comp and intra-block/atom pasting. You'd need to tailor an instruction set based on those two concepts, something that DSPs already do rather well.
Really though the reason your idea doesn't have much of a chance of happening is economic and not technical. DVD players are cheap because the MPEG-2 decoding is done by single-mindedly-specialized chips. If you add the option of upgradability (FPGA or programmable DSP) you add a LOT of cost.
There isn't much hope of allowing more than 1 generation of codec expandability on a STB player without it costing as much as a PC. So what's the point?
Dude there are a standard ways to connect things today. If he had mentioned anything about a copyright flag, etc, then I'd believe what you are saying but re-read his post. He's talking about wanting to be able to take someones file decompress it and then send it directly to a device without having to re-encode it, DVI does that today.
If you want to get into what you think he's talking about, HDMI is the new standard that consumer electronics are going to be used. Devices are probably hiting shelves end of this year beginning of next, but it is backward compatible with DVI (basically just use the DVI interconnect and run HDCP over it). There is some debate as to whether or not you'll get full capabilities if you don't honor the flag. Well whatta you know it's that pesky standard interconnect I mentioned before DVI. Hmm sure looks like I KNOW WHAT THE FUCK I'M TALKING ABOUT, since DVI is a standard today HDMI is the encrypted standard which uses DVI. Now goto school junior.
Just because I don't put some Rah Rah PHD at the end of my posts doesn't mean you should make any assumptions as to my knowledge base. How do you know I do or don't work in the industry.
Glad to know composer777 is a plain dick, that when someone puts a PHD behind their name it's a sin to disagree with him; that he like to make assumptions as to you knowledgebase because you correct someone who has a PHD behind their name.