Microsoft's Windows Media 9 may become mandatory for HD DVD

[Eug]

Microsoft's Windows Media 9 may become mandatory for HD DVD

The Forum said Tuesday (March 2) that it has issued a ?provisional approval of MPEG-2, Microsoft Corp.-developed Windows Media 9 and H.264 as mandatory for the upcoming High Definition (HD) DVD video specification? for future HD DVD players.

 

[AIWGuru]

They may have announced it today but it was old news several days ago. It was well publicised. New HD-DVDs will be M9

 

[Adul]

it will be one of the codecs available to movie producers to use.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: AIWGuru
They may have announced it today but it was old news several days ago. It was well publicised. New HD-DVDs will be M9

Several days ago the announcement was that it was given preliminary consideration AFAIK.

 

[glugglug]

Lamest idea ever.

 

[wicktron]

Originally posted by: glugglug
Lamest idea ever.

Why do you say that? The WM9 platform is very good.

 

[Acanthus]

Its also capable of streams 7x the IQ of current HD Need a crt or very expensive LCD to take the resolution that high though

 

[Eug]

Some industry insiders suspect that the DVD Forum may be using Microsoft's Windows Media 9 as a bargaining chip to negotiate with H.264's licensing agencies to reduce royalty payments.

Indeed, the DVD Forum called its latest action to approve multiple video codecs (MPEG-2, Windows Media 9 and H.264) ?subject to an update in 60 days regarding licensing terms and conditions, and a presentation by each of the respective licensing bodies at the next steering committee.? The Forum remains held out the ?possible elimination of any of the above codecs? at the next steering committee meeting, according to a statement.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: glugglug
Lamest idea ever.

ABM, right?

WM9 encoding is already used for 2 movies in HD that I know of. One of those is T2.

 

[Dug]

Another is Coral Reef Adventure. It looks better than any other HD stream I've seen and it fits on one DVD.

Can't say that about the other HD solutions that would require all new media.

Here's some clips-

MS HD

 

[labrat25]

MP9 shouldn't be required they were required to open up the source of the spec before it would be considered

so they'll get royalties but media player 9 won't be required

As a condition to Microsoft before it could establish VC-9 as a standard, it had to strip VC-9 of proprietary status, Majidimehr said. The company satisfied that condition when it submitted the underlying video compression technology to SMPTE last year and opened up its software to developers for the first time. Now developers can download the technical spec, build on it and not be beholden to Microsoft.

(from the anandtech link to cnet)

 

[JonnyBlaze]

i love the hd t2 disc. i cant wait for step into liquid to be released.

wmv9-hd is a very good codec

JB

 

[beatle]

I wonder how they'll deal with the lame DRM issue. The codec itself is nice, but I don't fancy a DVD player that has to "phone home" for it to work. It reeks of DivX (you know, the one Circuit City used to sell).

 

[CrystalBay]

Yes, it does look great @ 1080p and also 720p . The codec is pretty amazing.... 114MB file for a two minute clip, @ 1080...

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

At equivalent bitstreams WM9 looks better than the old MPEG-2 spec, so I have no problem with the DVD-forum using an updated codec.

The issue of making a single code mandatory helps DVD-players reduce R&D costs as they won't need the necessary hardware to decode multiple standards. Also it will reduce the licensing costs as each model won't have to support multiple specs.

Honestly, I would have liked to see the Blu-Ray group alter their spec to include WM9 or H.264 support and then submit it for approval to the DVD-forum. As an end-user I would have liked the additional storage space of Blu-Ray discs over the original AOD spec. Oh well, I guess whatever is cheaper for the manufactures.

 

[arod]

Yeah but I sure as hell dont want it to be the standard unless they come out with higher rez's, I want 1080p HD-DVD and uncompressed, the blueray can do it so there wont be a need to compress the actual move but the extras would be prime target for this.

 

[Pariah]

Uncompressed 1080p would require 190MB/s throughput or 11GB for 1 minute of video. Blue-ray cannot come anywhere close to achieving that.

 

[StormRider]

Yay! I have no problems since WM9 format is technically a good format.

Hey Eug! Do you know if the new LG 8x DVD-R/+R/RAM drive can handle DVD-RAM cartridges? Their older 4x drive cannot handle DVD-RAM cartridges.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: JonnyBlaze
i love the hd t2 disc. i cant wait for step into liquid to be released.

wmv9-hd is a very good codec

JB

News to me about Step Into Liquid. Sweet. Went and saw it in the theater (was showing for 5 days in ATL).

signed, an old school sponger.

 

[glugglug]

Originally posted by: gsellis

Originally posted by: glugglug
Lamest idea ever.

ABM, right?

WM9 encoding is already used for 2 movies in HD that I know of. One of those is T2.

The biggest problems are:

a) it's a proprietary spec (although from what labrat said this is being addressed)
b) I won't even put WM9 (or WM7 for that matter) on my win2K box because it has too much annoying spyware and bloat, and if you firewall off the spyware it takes over 30s to open most videos while the attempted connections to codecs.microsoft.com and activex.microsoft.com time out. I tried putting these in my hosts file as 127.0.0.1 it ignores this and still knows the IPs....
c) It sounds like something the MPAA would be pushing because they like the DRM, not the technical merits.
d) Pretty sure DivX and Xvid are still tighter compression, and certainly more of a standard.

 

[Auteur]

Originally posted by: glugglug

Originally posted by: gsellis

Originally posted by: glugglug
Lamest idea ever.

ABM, right?

WM9 encoding is already used for 2 movies in HD that I know of. One of those is T2.

The biggest problems are:

a) it's a proprietary spec (although from what labrat said this is being addressed)
b) I won't even put WM9 (or WM7 for that matter) on my win2K box because it has too much annoying spyware and bloat, and if you firewall off the spyware it takes over 30s to open most videos while the attempted connections to codecs.microsoft.com and activex.microsoft.com time out. I tried putting these in my hosts file as 127.0.0.1 it ignores this and still knows the IPs....
c) It sounds like something the MPAA would be pushing because they like the DRM, not the technical merits.
d) Pretty sure DivX and Xvid are still tighter compression, and certainly more of a standard.

a) Divx5 is just as proprietary and just as close source
b) You know you can get the WM9 codecs without having to install Windows Media Player 9
c) Divx5 has all the DRM features WM9 has
d) Neither Divx5 or Xvid can touch WM9 at high def resolutions in either compression or picture quality

 

[Dug]

Originally posted by: glugglug

Originally posted by: gsellis

Originally posted by: glugglug
Lamest idea ever.

ABM, right?

WM9 encoding is already used for 2 movies in HD that I know of. One of those is T2.

The biggest problems are:

a) it's a proprietary spec (although from what labrat said this is being addressed)
b) I won't even put WM9 (or WM7 for that matter) on my win2K box because it has too much annoying spyware and bloat, and if you firewall off the spyware it takes over 30s to open most videos while the attempted connections to codecs.microsoft.com and activex.microsoft.com time out. I tried putting these in my hosts file as 127.0.0.1 it ignores this and still knows the IPs....
c) It sounds like something the MPAA would be pushing because they like the DRM, not the technical merits.
d) Pretty sure DivX and Xvid are still tighter compression, and certainly more of a standard.

a) And?
b) That's too bad
c) You really need to read up on it. The technical merits exceed everything out there.
d) Those can't even compete for picture quality. Which is what this is all about.

The decision would not give us anything like this or the other companies would not have voted for us. VC-9/WMV-9 has been submitted to SMPTE meaning anyone can download the spec from them to implement it without even contacting us (in other words, we will have no control over the spec). And our licensing conforms to the same standards MPEG has, namely, RAND (Reasonable and non-discriminatory terms). Even our fiercest competitor can license it at the same cost as the friendliest company. The initially terms is 10 years meaning nothing can change during that time with only a 25% max increase after that. Again, these are identical terms to MPEG.

So the only difference between MPEG-2 and WMV-9/VC-9 is who you want to pay for the usage of the technology and how much (WMV-9 costs equipment manfuactures as little as 5 to 10% of the cost of MPEAG-2). WMV also gets you better compatibility with internet formats, and video that is likely to be stored on the PC. You are not going to get that out of MPEG-2 or H.264.

WMV also brings competition to other standards such as H.264. Such competition should drive each technology to be better and have more reasonable licensing.

So as you see, the situation is opposite of what a "monopoly" situation allows. Indeed, we had to do far more than any other company to win such an endorsement, because of the fears that you state. You have to recall that Dolby and DTS were accepted as approved codecs (with Dolby being mandatory) when they were both closed technologies with non-public, non-RAND pricing! But the bar was raised for us and we lived up to it.

Amir

 

[AIWGuru]

Originally posted by: CrystalBay
Yes, it does look great @ 1080p and also 720p . The codec is pretty amazing.... 114MB file for a two minute clip, @ 1080...

That's a great size for 1080P. Wow. I mean, current DVD is only 480p. 114MB for 2 minutes. So for 2 hours you're looking at 6.8GB. Since current DVDs hold 9.6GB thats' nothing. You could fit nearly 3 hours of 1080p on a current DVD. On a blueray...rool;