Blu-Ray to use Mpeg-2
12-02-05, 12:40 PM
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Blu-Ray to use Mpeg-2
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As Hollywood readies its new and controversial high-definition DVDs, at least one major studio is leaving some of the most advanced parts of the new disc formats on the table in favor of technology that's more than a decade old.
That could mean disappointment for some of the tech industry's biggest names, particularly if other studios follow suit. Companies such as Microsoft and Apple Computer have been betting that their work on advanced video software formats, called "codecs," will help them sell their own products."
Last week, studio giant Sony Pictures quietly voted for "none of the above," and took a swipe at the new codec formats. The new advanced codecs aren't immediately necessary for discs released in Sony's high-capacity Blu-ray format, Sony Pictures executives said in an interview with CNET News.com, and the studio would instead use the 11-year-old MPEG-2 video codec used on today's DVDs.
"Advanced formats don't necessarily improve picture quality," said Don Eklund, Sony Pictures' senior vice president of advanced technology. "Our goal is to present the best picture quality for Blu-ray. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, that's with MPEG-2."
As Hollywood readies its new and controversial high-definition DVDs, at least one major studio is leaving some of the most advanced parts of the new disc formats on the table in favor of technology that's more than a decade old.
That could mean disappointment for some of the tech industry's biggest names, particularly if other studios follow suit. Companies such as Microsoft and Apple Computer have been betting that their work on advanced video software formats, called "codecs," will help them sell their own products."
Last week, studio giant Sony Pictures quietly voted for "none of the above," and took a swipe at the new codec formats. The new advanced codecs aren't immediately necessary for discs released in Sony's high-capacity Blu-ray format, Sony Pictures executives said in an interview with CNET News.com, and the studio would instead use the 11-year-old MPEG-2 video codec used on today's DVDs.
"Advanced formats don't necessarily improve picture quality," said Don Eklund, Sony Pictures' senior vice president of advanced technology. "Our goal is to present the best picture quality for Blu-ray. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, that's with MPEG-2."
12-02-05, 01:36 PM
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Not surprising. There's much better codec's, but there's licensing issues with a lot of them... plus mpeg-2 has hardware decoding options already in the parts bin, ready to go, whereas newer codecs will need hardware decoding added, and will be pretty processing intensive.
12-02-05, 01:48 PM
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Um, Blu-ray's been using MPEG2 since day one. It's necessary to maintain backwards compatibility with DVD. HD DVD uses it too. A more accurate title would be "Sony to use MPEG2 for BD-Video releases" (or something similar), since no other studio has indicated plans to use MPEG2 for Blu-ray releases.
