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Microsoft Longhorn To Support HD DVD Format
MSDVD writes "Microsoft's Japanese Division reported that its upcoming operating system, code-named Longhorn, will support HD DVD format. HD DVD is an enhanced version of the standard DVD technology. According to online reports, Microsoft is pushing the next-generation blue-laser DVD technology like NEC and Toshiba. Blue-light technology can read and write data much faster and at higher densities, which is needed for high-definition content. Few Japanese companies said they will have HD DVD content based DVDs by next year to support the players."
So with Microsoft throwing its support behind HD-DVD, does this mean that Sony's Blu-ray will go the way of Betamax (and to a lesser extent Minidisc)?
The take up of DVD and CD technologies has been driven by content. However, sales of "CD plus" technology (high resolution CD, DVD-audio) are going nowhere fast, despite the hype.
While these technologies will be nice to have for storage, I can't see that joe average is suddenly going to go out and re-buy their DVD collection.
I believe the average punter has a fairly good feel for what is 'good enough' and it won't take off.
I suspect that this is driven by Hollywood with its hand up Microsoft's bottom pulling the strings, wanting to move away from the CD and DVD debacle as soon as it can. Unfortunately the genie is out of the bag.
(mixed metaphors are the new black).
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Amazing isn't it? We have all these incredible new technologies for communications, literature and entertainment and our great cultural accomplishments are sequels to Cinderella and Scooby Doo.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
It's getting to the point where OSes will need DVD media because the installation routines are so large. XP is huge and Longhorn will make it look lean and mean by comparison. I would imagine by the time it's actually shipping, the service packs will be over a gig. ;-)
In a reasonable world, you wouldn't have to wait for a new OS release to support a new media format, because the video codecs wouldn't be part of the OS...
Any word on whether Microsoft will be incorporating the highly-touted H.264 video standard like Apple is doing for it's upcoming Tiger?
After all, The Steve did imply that Redmond was going to start their photocopiers? Or, is H.264 integrated with this HD-DVD format?
The result is that consumers and manufacturers have a real choice with Linux, whereas Windows users and OEMs are completely at the mercy of Microsoft's business plan.
Your move.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
And how exactly is Blu-ray not proprietary? Even if you use Mpeg2, you do realize that royalties is going somewhere, just not to Microsoft?
You're talking about a statement in Japanese that was put on a website halfway around the world. A better question might be, "why is /. bothering me with this?"
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
Microsoft has announced that Longhorn will support Duke Nukem Forever (which will probably ship before Longhorn does).
They just make me laugh. Every day it's something else that will be in Longhorn. Whoo-freakin'-hoo. They're all talk and no action-- this time next year I'll be enjoying Tiger on my Macs and Microsoft will still be talking about more stuff they're adding to Longhorn.
No wonder Windows is such a buggy, insecure piece of shit-- how can anyone be expected to write good code when the feature set is in a constant state of flux through the entire development process? This is just like when they were very far along doing Windows 3.0 and Gates made them go back and add full keyboard navigation capability.
MPEG-2 is patented, but the details are public, and there are existing free software and open source implementations. Due to the patents, there may be legal problems with using that software. The patents will expire in a few more years.
But by comparison, the Microsoft codec is completely proprietary, undocumented, AND covered by patents. Even when the patents expire the codec will still be proprietary.
The HD-DVD standard does not REQUIRE the use of the Microsoft codec; it does also support MPEG 2 and H.26something. But consumers will likely have no way to know when purchasing an HD-DVD disc which codec is used.
Blu-ray discs use MPEG 2, so a consumer would know that it can be played with a non-proprietary codec.
There may be other problems such as DRM preventing play of prerecorded Blu-ray discs using free software, but that's true of HD-DVD as well, and of ordinary DVDs for that matter.
Expect it to require the HD DVD just to store the install files...
....
Office, well that is another HD/DVD... and god help you if you want visual studio 20xx
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Seems Windows has the greater chance of driver and codec support here due to its much, much greater manufacturer support.
This is the second post I've seen that assumes HD-DVD will be the only supported format on Longhorn, that it won't be available for previous versions of Windows, etc. People, they make these things called codecs and drivers. I hear tell you can even install them.
All this news is saying is that HD-DVD will be supported out of the box. You know, how DVDs are supported out of the box for Windows XP? I fail to see the issue here, but I guess it allows a few Slashdotters to get up on a soapbox and bitch about nothing in the name of feeling important, so there you go.
54GB, while a tad on the small side compared to hard disks, is a meaningful amount of data storage. Dual-layer DVD might have cut it 3 years ago, but not anymore -- it's just a bigger floppy and better movie copy medium.
It'd be nice to see the better data storage medium win this time.
What difference will the end user see? likely none. im guessing they both hold about the same as far as movie content(anyone want to bother with the math?). yeah the MPEG-4 has the better compression. not only that its my choice because most MPEG-4 codecs can play information that was encoded with another MPEG-4 codec, and I believe that HD-DVDs will have the same functionality. So finally all that anime I have downloaded can be watched on a TV, not just computer. though im not completly certain on this, and im not sure how formats such as Vorbis are handeled, if at all.
as far as the re-encoding debate, well who really cares? its only a few hours for a desktop, and a cluster can do it a whole lot faster. at lease thats what i have experienced with converting MPEG-2 into an MPEG-4 codec, such as XviD
for computers, storage is a big deal, however does that 54 gig actually equal 54gig? just take a look at CDs, as we all know a 700mb disk can hold 800mb of MPEG-2, ok so the same doesnt hold true for DVDs to my knowledge, but what about blue-ray?
MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 both, at thier core, operate on the same principles as MPEG-1 (in the video layer).
That is, store only the difference between frames. Do this by spliting it into a series of blocks, and examining each block.
The devil is, as they say, in the details. I admit I'm fuzzy on a number of them, but this should be a respectable overview.
MPEG-2 uses a straightforward system of frames and partial frames (I frames, or key frames in DivX terms), and B and P frames (the two types of partial frames).
MPEG-4 adds a longer group of pictures (more P frames between I frames), additional encoding formats, and motion compensation. That last is the biggie - it means that if you're panning side to side, you just tell the codec to move the block a bit, and then give it the other bits. As compared to having to give it the scene shifted half a block.
MPEG-4 is also much more complex. I belive that any MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 bitstream is a valid MPEG-4 bitstream (or at least, is with a simple header rewrite). MPEG-4 has various additional bits, such as motioncompensation allowed to go out of frame, 1/4 pixel motion comp, B frames, variable sized motion comp blocks, mutlipe frame motion comp and other goodies. I don't think there is an actual codec that supports all of that lot, never mind the rest of the optional parts of the spec yet. That's why there are multiple MPEG-4 codecs - each can use a differnt goodie bag to try to be better than the others.
Other differences are the audio layers used. AAC is part of MPEG-4, in the same way that MP3 was part of MPEG-1.
As far as the best format for a disc goes - neither. In principle, the additional flexability of MPEG-4 should result in better picture / sound for same disk space. In practice, it's all perceptual anyway, so they turn the quality down until someone notices artifacts, and then nudge it up a touch. Sometimes, one might be better, other times the other, but as there is a human tweaking knobs at the backend, you can't tell in advance.
OK the whole point of my rant here is to alert anyone in the media arena that what will really give a better viewing experience now is to get the FPS rate up during filming. 60p doesn't help when you're just upconverting a 24 fps film source. DVD was a good compromise for resolution and frame rate at the number of bits we had. Now lets start pumping up the frame rate as well as the resolution, now that we have the headroom to do it.
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Look, I'm sorry, I really don't mean to troll... but why all this info about Longhorn?
;)
In the past, Microsoft has told us a lot about the next OS. What it'll do. How great it'll be. How safe. How good.
And then, when you had the actual CD(s) in hand, it turned out to be less, to be announced, to be patched, to be in the next version...
I don't care about Longhorn. It's years away. Many years.
When it's promised to show up within the next three months, I'll be interested. And I'll try it out. And I'll look at a lot of reviews. And I'll read the hatred from Slashdot
But not now.
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Linux, on the other hand, will support HD DVD as soon as a kernel hacker gets enough of the spec to implement the driver. Any bets on when exactly that will be?
What is the big news here?