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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).
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
Sigs cause cancer.
MPEG video is encumbered by patents for a few more years, but at least the details are publicly available.
I can see it now at K-Mart -- "Blue light special on LongHorn in the bed&bath^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^hstereo department.
Fight Spammers!
"Guess I'll have to buy the White Album again."
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.
I'm glad that Microsoft will support this :)
English is easier said than done.
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. ;-)
Time travel -- as the OS gets postponed further into the future, efforts are underway to have built in time-travel.
Space travel -- care of Paul Allen. Everyone who can afford to purchase a copy of Longhorn will get vouchers for a free ride on SpaceShip-ME.
OogaBoogle will be built in. This is Microsoft's next generation search engine. Incorporating Yukon into the filesystem, folks will be able to wade through all the metadata they could ever want, and more!
Plug and Play support for the USB 5.0 matter transmogrifier. We don't have a prototype yet, but um...by the time Longhorn is stable, I'm sure we'll have the transmogrifier supported.
IE will be fully xhtml 1.0 and CSS1 compliant.
Lastly, each package will be bundled with Duke Nukem Forever.
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...
Microsoft's Japanese Division reported that its upcoming operating system, code-named Longhorn, will support HD DVD format.
How else would we be able to download and install all the new features and security patches?
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Why does MS do so much talking about what they're going to do instead of actually getting it done? What is the point of all these endless "sneak peeks" and feature announcements and blah blah blah. I'm not just asking this as someone who (admittedly) dislike MS and their products, but rather as someone who just doesn't get why so much blabbing is being done about a product that is supposedly years away from release? One could make the argument that this is potentially harmful to MS in the long-run. They're announcing support for feature X today, but given that feature X may be yesterday's news two years from now, the announcement may actually be harmful to perception of their products. I mean, really: how does this benefit anyone?
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
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?
I've waited as long as I can... but what's with an "IT" category on Slashdot? Is there *any* story here that doesn't have to do with Information Technology? Or will we soon have a category for the latest on J.Lo and Britney Spears?
(Please don't mod me into oblivion before someone answers my question... thanks...)
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
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?
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.
HD DVD is a blue laser disc format but the manufacturing techniques are similar to those for red-laser discs.
As explained the main difference is that BluRay places the recording layer 0.1 mm below the surface of the media to maximize data capacity at around 27gb for single and 54 gb for dual layer. This will require disc manufacturers to build new factories because this is completely different from DVD and CD specifications. Because of this the layer of protective plastic will be very thin which some have speculated will initially require either a special layer of protective plastic which has been reported to decrease reliability or it will require the discs to be contained in a cartridge (think magneto-optical). Carts would, of course, increase production costs and REALLY increase end user costs.
HD DVD places the recording layer at 0.6mm below the surface which is currently the standard used by DVD so that DVD manufacturing plants can make either format discs on the same assembly lines. This is at a cost, though, with a reduced capacity at 15gb for single layer and 30 gb for dual layer. And, of course, the existing protective layer will be sufficient as it is the same as the standard DVD.
The actual codecs supported will be the same for both formats. Both will support MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and (probably) Microsoft's WM9 codecs. As part of Microsoft's deal to get WM9 included in the HD DVD spec it was forced to open the specification to allow competitors to make products for encoding and decoding. Their benefit will be a share of the royalties for products that encode or decode HD-DVD content and sales of encoding/decoding software that they produce, but the deal does not include in any way a monopoly on encoder/decoder software.
The main difference, as stated, is the distance for the recording layer from the surface of the media which changes the maximal capacity because of the effect on the intensity of the laser as it passes through the media.
MIcrosoft's fulfillment department announced that a serious effort will be made to ship the Longhorn operating system before the emerging HD DVD standard becomes obsolete.
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 ----
Today developers announced that the upcomming 3D Action game "Duke Nukem" will require a computer with blu-ray enabled technology. "Due to the size of bitmaps and the advancements made in technology lately gamers will need much more storage capacity for the product we are about to deliver" said one enthusiastic developer. The game is due to be released just after the long anticipated next-generation Microsoft operating system codename "Longhorn", which is expected to fully support Duke Nukem.
Does it go on forever?
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.
H.264 is an international standard from MPEG and ITU, sometimes known as MPEG-4 Part 10 or MPEG AVC (Advanced Video Codec).
And yes, if they're supporting HD DVD, they will be supporting H.264, since it's one of the required codecs for HD DVD, along with VC-9 and MPEG-2.
Bad stuff:
8 individual DRM regions not enough any more.
These fuckers are gonna nail it down - not just to your street, or your house, but to a room in your home on a particular day of the week!
Good stuff:
The proposed Sony extension: limiting the colour of pants you can wear whilst over-hearing somebodies brother talk about a work collegue who read an article in another country regarding the disc in question is not expected to make it to the final standard
Phew!
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?
The rest of the industry likes Blu-Ray because it has a higher storage capacity (54 GB vs. 30 GB), uses MPEG-2 so movie/television companies don't need to re-encode their HDTV streams and has Sony behind it (movie studio/music label).
Being only MPEG2, the common player is not able to play DivX/XviD (MPEG4) content. How it may be preferable for the MPAA not to use an efficient compression, is left as an exercise to the reader. Hint: Security through bloat.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
Letter To Iran
Wrote this on my blog a while ago...
Although I'm not a particular "conspiracy theory" freak, I'm starting to smell a rat on the latest moves on the DVD arena. First, the industry tries to play good sport and announces (also here and here, and discussed on Slashdot) out of a sudden it's going to "tolerate" limited copy of DVD, allowing them to be backed up and to transfer content to portable devices. The "gift" is based on technology being developed by a consortium that includes IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Sony, Toshiba, Matsushita, Warner Bros. and Disney, and is being labeled Advanced Access Content System (AACS). Trying the usual PR stunt of passing a consumer right, upheld by most Worldwide copyright laws that for a long time have entitled consumers to private copy (something that has up to now, and as you will see, in the future, been denied), as their "gift" to society, they have just, as usual, forgot to mention some "little details".
The same industry that brought us region encoding, supposedly to avoid the possibility of buying a movie in a given place before it premieres at the cinema, although it is available elsewhere, in practice a cover-up to allow regional pricing of DVD (what else justifies 20, 30, 40 year old movies being region encoded?), has "forgot" to stress that this "feature" will only be available on the upcoming new-generation DVD format, still being cooked up by the DVD Forum, former DVD Consortium. So, to keep it short, they want us to buy all over again our DVD collection, now in a neat DRM crippled format.
After failing miserably with the CSS content encryption of current DVD, quickly cracked by the uber-reverse-engineer DVD Jon, and being at the present time little more than a nuisance, they want to have another go. But this time they are making their homework. Lets take the steps and see.
A little more than one year ago, Microsoft unveiled its plans for a new DRM system, nicknamed Janus. One year later it is confirmed and Microsoft lets out a few more details on the features, licensing and partners. A few weeks later, the DVD Forum announces it is going to include Microsoft WM9 codec in its upcoming HD-DVD specification (as a mandatory requirement). Although it may seem they are going down the same road and bound again to be reverse-engineered and fail miserably all over again, things are now different: of course Microsoft is going to patent its DRM scheme. So, while CSS was qualified as a "trade secret", not allowing the ones who cracked it to be prosecuted, reverse-engineering Microsoft DRM scheme will be violating patent law, and the all-mighty DMCA, what makes it a completely different scenario.
Microsoft has already shown it is very interested in the media turf. After developing its own audio and video codecs and using its dominating position to spread them to the web and hardware devices like portable players and even some standalone players, and after including its Media Player in all current Windows version (earning them the current EU law suit), that will of course support both the WM9 codec and the Janus DRM, we can already see they are trying to broaden their scope. This can be seen on their Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004, and it would not surprise me to see it ported to standalone devices, either on its current packaging or by porting it to Windows CE.
So what can we see as the outcome of this scenario?
I suspect we'll have more "declarations of intent" from MS over the next couple of years so that we don't forget about Longhorn, like:
"Gates says 640GB should be enough memory for anyone running Longhorn"
"Ballmer dresses in a tu-tu and chants 'Longhorn' repeatedly on stage at an MS Developer conference"
"Microsoft say Longhorn will be more secure than Windows"
etc.
I don't know about "Longhorn" but thinking about it just gives me a "floppy"...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
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.
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
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?