The future, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray

[mpucoder]

Reading another thread prompted this, but it was OT for that thread.

Many of you may be aware that there are four possibilities being considered for HD-DVD. They are:
1) Blu-Ray using MPEG-2
2) red laser using MPEG-2 with pre/post processing
3) red laser using MPEG-4
4) red laser using Microsoft codec.
You know how much choice 4 would suck, so let's hope it never sees the light of day.
All 4 require new players, so it doesn't matter which one as far as that is concerned. I have my doubts that choice 2 could produce the quality we expect from HD-DVD.
That leaves Blu-Ray or MPEG-4. As much as we love new technology, Blu-Ray will require the replicators to retool, adding a huge expense to the distribution. I'd like to see it eventually, but my choice for easing into HD would be MPEG-4. It already exists, is proven, and the existing DVD standard can accomodate it (there are "future expansion" areas, such as 2 more choices for video encoding method, etc)

And what prompted this really was another optimistic look at how Blu-Ray would solve the 4.3GB barrier problem. It will not. Why? True, it will have enough capacity, but do you really think a standard based on Blu-Ray would be backward compatible? Besides greater resolution, the HD-DVD will have more interactivity, improved navigation, etc. That means the current structures will be gone, replaced by newer ones. So, we may not have to transcode, or encode, or strip, due to size limitations, but we will need new tools to restructure our poor standard definition DVDs (not to mention, who will be happy anymore with them?)

[Atamido]

My vote was always for:

5) Blu-Ray using MPEG-4

At 30GB, it only gives you three times the amount of space as a standard Dual-Layer DVD. But, its okay because even though you are encoding 4+ times the amount of screen area, you are doing it more efficiently.

[The Belgain]

It'll be a long time till we actually get blueray discs though, and it seems that MPEG4 or WM9 gives pretty good results at bitrates needed for red-laser DVDs (see MS's HD demo clips).

So maybe it's not a bad compromise for now...?

[trbarry]

I like red lasers because we can make them ourselves. But that may be true with blue lasers also in the future.

So generally I'd vote for H264, on both formats.

- Tom

[int 21h]

Hm. Simply increasing the read speed (for higher bitrates) and using High Level (1440 or the 1920) with Main Profile, in Mpeg-2, would seem to be the most likely of outcomes in the short-term.