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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.
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!
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.
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.
"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.