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."

Comments

The URLs of the samples

[inaeldi]

I don't know if these are static or not, but they seem to work.

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:This just proves...

[ryanwright]

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.

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".