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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."
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!
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.
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?
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....
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!
It's about who you trust. You trust Microsoft. Have a nice day.
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."
Yeah, but some people do look through the source code. Even if we were to assume most people looking at other peopels source code are looking for exploitable security vulnerabilities, that would still eventually lead to the general public finding out about spyware type things. Also, though not for security reasons, I've read through source code for programs I installed on my computer. My reasons were to attempt to modify source code. Sometimes I did and sent in patches, sometimes I decided not to for several factors.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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
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I would mention a important limitation to analog to digital transfer... one of the major one's being that the analog masters often suffer from film degradation. I mean this isn't always a problem assuming the reel is stored in, say, a vacuum :) Moreover, we have ways of cleaning up the picture before/after transfer but it's just not nearly as good as having native digital format.
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.
Analog masters can have great quality and (in theory) infinite dynamic range.
Just as in Communism was a good idea (in theory). No, I think there are plenty of theories as to why analog do not have infinite dynamic range, one of them being the noise floor.
You consparicy theorists are funny. The reason it takes to much power to decode is because there is so much that needs decoding! Try doing an equally large stream with DivX, you'll find the same thing. A 1.6 can decode a 640x480 WM9 stream just fine, but when you are trying for something that is 1280x720, well that's a whole different deal. Lots more data so lots more power needed.
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.
How in the hell is THIS anticompetitive?
Its proprietary no doubt, but not anti-competitive.
They require you to use their browser and media player for THEIR format??
They have done plenty of anti-competitive things, but this isn't one of them.
Slashdotters love to shout FUD!, then they spread so much of it themselves.
"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.
It also can't be un-installed since they claim it's now part of the OS. I hope you like it because you're stuck with it until you format/reinstall.
"I would be a lot less anti-Microsoft if they actually put forth any effort at all to be compatible and/or interoperate with other OSes. I too am sick to death of the, "if you want to do this you have to run Windows" crap."
I hear ya. It pisses me off I can't play Dreamcast games on my Playstation 2.
Well, hopefully my AthlonXP 1.53GHz will be buff enough.
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. Delicious.
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