Wow, Joe- I'm sorry, I know I was the one saying that this was not the place to be having serious BR/HD-DVD discussions, but I need to clear some things in your post up before people get the wrong idea.

This is misleading- the Blu-Ray spec supports H.264 and VC1, just like the HD-DVD spec. All Blu-Ray players will offer hardware decoding of H.264 and VC1 content from day one. It's true that the first BR discs are going to be MPG2, because the BR camp hasn't incorporated H.264 or VC1 into their authoring toolkit as of yet, but they are both inherently incorporated in the Blu-Ray spec, and will be included in the authoring toolkit before year's end.

This is not true at all. The studios have completely backed away from using the ICT (Image Constraint Token) flag, which is what would have caused downrezzing of material over a component connection. None of the movie releases for either BR or HD-DVD are expected to incorporate ICT over the next several years.

Okay, I checked some other sources and I am wrong, they do support h.264, it's sony itself that is not supporing h.264 on their releases.
I remember reading several news stories and press releases about the big fight between MS and Sony over not supporting VC-1 and not supporting copying to a home theater server. Now I can't find them.

You might also want to check out the "High Definition DVD Players" section over on highdefforum.com. No news pertaining to the new formats gets by that forum without being reported.

Thanks, I'll do that, Now I have to figure out how to make quality vc-1 with surround sound for delivery. And find those articles, hehehe.

All of the BR players have VC1 compatibility as part of their published spec for hardware decoding upon playback. If you look up the tech specs for the forthcoming players from Sony, Samsung, Pioneer or Panasonic, you'll see VC1 support in the list. As for whether or not Sony will ever implement it on the discs themselves due to "political" differences with MS is another matter. Only time will tell. H.264 is a sure bet though.

If you have the huge capacity of BR, I can't see much reason to use anything but MPEG-2. The newer codecs make lots of sense for putting HD on red-laser DVDs, but with BR and 35Mbps -- why worry use a MS (or Apple) product and go out onto the bleeding edge. That's the reason the films coming-out are MPEG-2. We know how to do it well.

As far as MPEG-4 being the "future Broadcast codec," there is zero movement to include it in the USA's ATCS standard. Every DTV unit in the ATSC world would have to be tossed and rebought. Not gonna happen in this decade!

Ditto for cable boxes. Only DBS finds it cheaper to go with new boxes -- which customers may be forced to buy -- than put up more satelites.

Hi Steve. We've been doing alot, and I mean alot, of research on the jpeg2000 codec, especially with our probable acquisition of 2 GV Infinities for on-hand cameras later this year. Have you looked into the codec and if so, perhaps you can tell us what your thoughts are.
Jonathan

Jake - I wouldn't be too sure of this - the scalers built into most HD sets and projectors (except for some very high end models) are cheap and do an exceptionally poor job of rescaling video. They generally introduce a lot of MPEG artifacting and artificial edge enhancement that is not present in the original image - especially when compared to something like a DVDO iScan. Quite often they don't even include a decent quality de-interlacer resulting in jerky motion from interlaced sources on a progressive screen.

I for one am exceptionally relieved to hear 720P will be supported - not to do so would be crazy given the vast array of native 720P displays on the market.

Steve I couldn't agree more - the attraction of the newer MPEG 4 codecs like H264 is for low data rate applications where they excel - but as you throw more and more bits at your source the difference between MPEG4 and MPEG2 becomes negligible. Why would you want to use anything else but easy to encode high quality MPEG2?

You might start by reviewing the following links:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...d/default.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...ring__codz.asp

I actually don't care who wins the video playback war, BUT
for archiving purposes Blu-Ray will win imo strictly for the ability to store much more information right off the bat.

The day a 50gb dual layer BDR drive is available and can burn data on my Quad G5 edit system, I'm gettin it. :)

This is really untrue- and you should be glad that it is. Conversion between 720 and 1080 signals is handled very, very well by the overwhelming majority of HD displays. Professional reviewers don't even bother exploring this aspect of an HD display anymore because the best processes for conversion between the two HD formats was ironed out five or six years ago. The problems with interlace tearing and artifacting that you mention above are more indicative of what happens with most HD displays when trying to upconvert to HD from standard def- that's a very different ball of wax. Bearing in mind that the majority of HD broadcasts are in 1080i- if what you're saying were true, the manufacturers of 720p displays would have a pretty hard time selling them. The reason they haven't had problems, though- is because 1080i is handled very, very well by 720p sets and, conversely, 720p signals (ESPN, ABC, FOX) are handled very, very well by 1080i sets. Also, consider the fact that the Toshiba HD-A1, which is pulling down video from 1080p/24 and converting to 1080i/30 for display, and then often being pumped into a natively 720p or 768p display, is supposedly offering the best consumer-level HD quality video available anywhere. There's no reason to expect things to be different for Blu-Ray.

This is good news- because it means that the 720p discs that you might author in the future will look outstanding on the vast array of 1080i and now 1080p displays on the market, and not just on 720p sets.

Jake - you're entitled to your opinion of course. IMO I think the majority of LCD and Plasma displays out there do not stand up. I recently found one I did like which to my eyes looked relatively smooth and artifact free: the Samsung LA40M61B, but to me most of the sets out there introduced a significant amount of post processing artifacts that were easy to see, whether from an HD box or upscaled standard def. I don't think you can say whether one point of view is "true" or not - it's an opinion.

BTW the reaon people buy them is because they are slim, elegant and big screen - quality of image is a comparative thing and they are the only game in town.

Steve, in a few years cable providers will have to replace most of their boxes anyway because of the digital mandate. That includes digital to analog boxes to work with consumers who haven't switched.
Once Conrgess approves subsidies, it will happen and h.264 will be the standard. Just MHO.
btw, at NAB it seemed all anybody talked about was mpeg4 avs.

I'm actually curious about Verizons FIOS offerings, since they are planning on running fiber optic directly to homes accross the nation.

We actually live in incredibly interesting times, and unlike the Chinese, I don't feel like it's a curse.

John, I'm sorry, but I have to respectfully disagree with regard to 1080/720 cross conversion. I don't think this is a matter of opinion at all- there's a sound technical process that has been in place for 5+ years in order to allow pristine cross conversion between the two major HD input types, and all displays do it the same way. Cross conversion between 720 and 1080 sources in HD displays is a simple matter of rescaling. No deinterlacing is required to display 1080i on a 720p set. 720p displays are fixed pixel by nature, and they run at 60hz, which is the key- the 1080i source is simply rescaled, and the fields are displayed as if they were frames at 720p/60 (59.94 fps). There's no field interpolation and no introduction of new motion artifacting caused by this process..

In the case of 720p to 1080i conversion, the process is simple as well. It's just a re-scale, and then artificial fields (artificial because inter-field motion will not be present in the signal) are simply assigned to the material as it's piped through. Again, this is non-destructive, and produces excellent results.

I would agree with you that many plasma and LCD sets sell because of ergonomics rather than performance, and all HD displays have a tendency to "junk" up their picture with post processing effects such as edge enhancement, black compression, etc.- but there's no technical reason for these displays to offer noticeably better performance when displaying 720p sources vs. 1080i ones. As a matter of fact, many of the '720p' plasma and LCD sets actually run a native res of 1366x768 or even 1024x768, and have to rescale everything you watch on them, whether the signal is standard def, 720p, or 1080i.

No matter how you want to slice it, whether our content is authored at 720p, 1080i, or 1080p, you can't escape the fact that the majority of displays you view it on will be using some sort of post signal processing to make it happen, and we need to be comfortable with that.