"HD DVD" Secret Weapon Against "Blu-ray Disc"

[Jerry Jones]

http://tinyurl.com/2dpgzu

Is "3X DVD" HD DVD's secret weapon against Blu-ray?

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[paulw]

Interesting. Does that mean that a standard DVD9 can be used for HD DVD ??

Software upgrade to the authoring software / burner or regular DVD player??

Here's more info on it.. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070219-8882.html

[Apulo]

I doubt this will have much success. Only HD DVD players will be able to play this and a lot of the current ones in the market don't play this format, locking out early adopters.

And I'm personally not very interested in a movie compressed to 8.5GB. VC1 will make it a very fuzzy experience. Already HDDVD has problems with the single layer limit of 15GB, which won't fit a decent sized movie at good quality. Double layer discs are more expensive than single layer BD discs, so distributors already push the envelope by squeezing movies onto single layer discs anyway.

And then you go and halve the available space again?

Secret weapon? For their sake I hope not - if they're THAT desperate already, they're doomed.

Apulo

[Jerry Jones]

VC1 will make it a very fuzzy experience. Already HDDVD has problems with the single layer limit of 15GB

Strongly disagree with these statements.

The Windows Media HD (VC1) clips on the following page...

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo/contentshowcase.aspx

...are quite good.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Apulo]

I've read many discussions and the general thought seems to be that VC1 is a good codec to hide artefacts at low bitrates by making the image more fuzzy. You still have a very watchable picture where MPEG2 would show many artefacts, but the details (and we want those, it's supposed to be HDTV) are gone.

It depends on content, level of compression and care taken in compressing the material, but VC1 isn't a wondercodec, it still needs space to show detail.

[Technoid]

I've read many discussions and the general thought seems to be that VC1 is a good codec to hide artefacts at low bitrates by making the image more fuzzy. You still have a very watchable picture where MPEG2 would show many artefacts, but the details (and we want those, it's supposed to be HDTV) are gone.

It depends on content, level of compression and care taken in compressing the material, but VC1 isn't a wondercodec, it still needs space to show detail.

Wich is why I prefer mpeg2 over all mpeg4 derivatives, I rather have the artifacts than the fuzzzzziness

[DGhost]

Just so you know, both Blu-Ray and HDDVD use the VC1 codec. In fact, most movies coming out now use it.

VC1 is composed of three different "profiles" for encoding - Simple, Main, and Advanced. Advanced can scale up to 135MBit/sec for 1920x1080@60FPS.

XBox Live features movies @720p encoded using VC1. They generally run somewhere between 4 to 6gb depending on the movie. Visual quality is excellent, especially on 720p sets. Honestly, videos encoded on that look as good as most HD-DVD disks.

To make a movie available on 3x DVD that looks good is quite possible - the difference in resolution of the video can turn 20GB of 1080p VC1 into being able to fit on a dual-layer DVD without a problem. Tweaking the encoding as well could result in even better compression.

The biggest thing 3x DVD has going for it is that it allows them to produce cheap movies. Instead of having people pay 30-40 for a BluRay or HD DVD disk, they can buy a $20 one that looks about as good if you are using a 720p display.

It's not going to be the big turning point of format. But it does open the platform up a little bit to the average person (ie, the consumer who doesn't have the money to buy a 1080p set, and doesn't like spending $30-40 for a movie).

[Hulk]

I know I'm going to catch a lot of hell for this but I think there is more difference in the final resulting video due to the quality/preperation of the source than the actual compression format. H.264, wmc, heck, even MPEG-2 when done right looks right.

Really great, robust video, with good color information, detail in the shadows with good contrast holds up well to just about any compression.

Also, the compressionist must know how to preprocess the source for the compression technology being used. Some compression formats make the output lighter, darker, less contrasty, less saturated, more saturated, etc...

If the compressist has experience and does some testing the result will be much better.

I know I've said this before but the Sci-Fi series "Farscape" is some of the best SD video I've ever seen.

My point is that I am cautious at this point in time to judge different compression formats based on the early HD movie releases. I think a lot of them are getting rushed to market.

I have seen excellent examples of all of the compression types so I know they are all capable of excellent results.

[Nowhere]

Wich is why I prefer mpeg2 over all mpeg4 derivatives, I rather have the artifacts than the fuzzzzziness

Uhmm...at the same resolution and bitrate mpeg4 will be always better than mpeg2, no?

[DGhost]

My point is that I am cautious at this point in time to judge different compression formats based on the early HD movie releases. I think a lot of them are getting rushed to market.

You are absolutely correct in this. There are quite a few that have been rushed to release and only look marginally better than SD-DVD if anything. Hell, look at most of Sony's Blu-Ray line up to get a good indication of this.

And you are right that source material plays a huge part in it. One such example is the new Miami Vice. Some scenes are crystal clear and perfect, whereas others were shot in a style made to mimick home movies and consumer video - slightly blurry, "fuzzy", and generally lacking good color depth. Unfortunately most of that style does not carry over well to HD and in several cases results in a picture that is annoyingly noisy.

Anyways... one of the reasons that Microsoft's VC-1 is taking off so well is that their compression tools are so outstanding. From what I understand they can modify the compression attributes on selected portions of individual frames, allowing the compressionist to really fine tune the picture quality that results from it.

Anyways. Some of the more recent HD movies showing up on XBox live (still within the 4-6GB frame) look outstanding at 720p. It's all about the time taken when converting/compressing it.