Picture's fuzzy for DVD

[J.A.F._Doorhof]

PARIS — The look of the next generation of digital video disks got harder to call when the DVD Forum's Steering Committee voted this week to approve the use of low-bit-rate compression for high-definition DVD.

The DVD Forum's decision, made at a meeting Tuesday (Feb. 26) in Tokyo, to stick with a red-laser-based scheme but switch to low-bit-rate compression, came only a week after nine of the world's biggest electronics companies agreed to promote a blue-laser-based format for next-generation video and computer optical disks. That format, the Blu-ray Disc, was developed outside the forum, but all nine of the initial backers are forum members.

Looking to avoid what they say would be a costly shift to blue-laser technology, steering committee member Warner Bros. and other content-production companies are behind the new DVD Forum proposal, which uses low-bit-rate encoding technology such as MPEG-4 to cram 9 Gbytes of high-definition video content onto a two-layer DVD. Blu-ray uses MPEG-2 compression, as does the current DVD standard. A single-sided 12-cm Blu-ray Disc would store 27 Gbytes of computer data, record 13 hours of broadcast TV or hold two hours' worth of high-definition video.

Of the 17 companies that sit on the DVD Forum steering committee, 11 approved the low-bit-rate encoding approach. The remaining six — including Matsushita, JVC and Philips — reportedly abstained.

The nine steering committee members backing the Blu-ray Disc are Hitachi, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial, Pioneer, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, Sony and Thomson Multimedia. Aside from Warner Bros., the other committee members are IBM, Intel, Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), JVC, Mitsubishi, NEC and Toshiba.

[cinepaulis]

Hmmm...wordt je niet zo vrolijk van:

Warner en andere content maatschappijen willen low-bitrate, terwijl de grote electronica fabrikanten de Blue-ray disc willen. Maar als 11 van de 17 leden van het DVD consortium voor de low-bitrate oplossing stemmen....  

groeten,
Paul

[J.A.F._Doorhof]

Dan kopen we gewoon D-VHS.
Of we gaan met z'n allen een toren bezetten  , tegen lage bitrate. (moeten we wel de goede pakken).

MvrGr.
Frank