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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.
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?
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?
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.
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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