Sony says, "No H.264 for Blue Ray"

[Helevitia]

As if I didn't have enough reasons to dislike Sony.

The article says it all...

http://engadget.com/entry/1234000293070178/

[schmosef]

Sony's really tripping over themselves lately...

[Sasq]

having similar issues with my sony clie, no damn sdk, and they have closed the dev site.
mutter

[Dr Mordrid]

Now for the funny part:

in order to further showcase their committment to quality Sony's first Blue Ray movie will be the classic "Charlies Angels: Full Throttle".



Between this and their "little" DRM problem it makes you wonder about who's driving that bus.

Dr. Mordrid

[Dr Mordrid]

Also; here's a very interesting article on C|NET;

http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-5969815.html?tag=st.prev

How in the world they can justify a 10:1 more expensive format like BlueRay when existing hw can be recycled is beyond me. Common sense dictates that before it pays for itself something cheaper/better will be in the pipeline. The Hitachi/InPhase/Maxell holographic discs coming out in 2006 are just one example.

Dr. Mordrid

[Helevitia]

And to add a little more...

The FCC went out to a bunch of different stores such as Best Buy, Circuit City, Walmart, etc... and they are still able to purchase CDs with DRM technology in them even though Sony has recalled them. If I find the article again, I'll post the link.

[Jammrock]

Also; here's a very interesting article on C|NET;

http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-5969815.html?tag=st.prev

How in the world they can justify a 10:1 more expensive format like BlueRay when existing hw can be recycled is beyond me. Common sense dictates that before it pays for itself something cheaper/better will be in the pipeline. The Hitachi/InPhase/Maxell holographic discs coming out in 2006 are just one example.

Dr. Mordrid

I don't have a link to the article, but the Blu-ray consortiuum is considering Blu-ray DVDs ... i.e. putting high-def content on a standard DVD-9 disc using H.264 or VC-1 ... as a short term solution to keep prices down until the Blu-ray disc printing can be sorted out and fall in line with HD-DVD/DVD prices.

Jammrock

[Fluff]

Maybe the Dr. can comment on this. But reading the comments off the article suggest, that

MPEG-2 was chosen because the codec's are more mature.
Alot of HD content has already been mastered in MPEG-2.
The player can be simpler with cheaper chips, less strain to decode.
With a capacity of 50GB and a 54MBps data rate for movies. compared to 36MBps for HD-DVD (source http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/ ) DVD-video bitrate limit is 10MBps

By a crude calculation. (very)
8500MB / 10MBps /60s - about 14 minutes constantly at max bitrate DVD
50000MB / 54MBps /60s - about 15 minutes contatantly at max bitrate BD-ROM

720x480p = 0.34Mpixels
1280x720p = 0.9Mpixels

.92Mpixels /.34Mpixels = 2.7 more bandwith required for video
54 MBps / 10MBps = 5.4 more bandwidth provided by BD rom.

Comments?

[dZeus]

- bitrate is in bits per second, not bytes
- resolution and bitrate don't have a linear relationship (larger resolutions are relatively easier to compress)

personally I don't interpret the article saying that Sony will abandon H264, but rather that Sony is trying to make Blu-Ray look better than HD-DVD (as the latter doesn't lend itself for HD-res MPEG2 storage because if capacity restrictions). The matureness of MPEG2 encoders and the installed base will of course lead to lots of MPEG2 releases on the Blu-Ray camp and we'll see a switch to AVC later when those encoders start to mature and studios will compete with more 'extras' on the disc.

[Fluff]

...oops. Should have noticed they were out by a factor of 8 whilst using the term bitrate.

[Dr Mordrid]

The chipset issue is moot. Most new deck chipsets are supporting H.264 either outright or will support it in either the DivX or WMV_HD, so it'll be in both Blue Ray and HD_DVD given the upcoming standards include it and M$ VC-1 (WMV_HD).

In terms of content quality in H,264, aka: MPEG-4 AVC with the key being AVC...advanced video coding, the quality is astounding....nothing like what you've seen before with "conventional" MPEG-4.

In fact some H.264 profiles (a profile defines the encoding properties) have such high quality you can use them as editing sources.

This is also true of some MPEG-2 profiles, HDV (high def MPEG-2 transport streams) is an example. It uses the High1440 profile instead of the Main Profile @ Main Level profile of DVD.

The problem is that HDV requires much higher bitrates; 25,000kbps or 2.6x that of the max setting for DVD of 9600kbps. In real world use most DVD content is encoded at only 5000-6000 kbps, an average of a 4.5x lower bitrate than HDV.

This is why such high end systems or proxy files are necessary to edit HDV. Proxy files are lower quality versions (DV, lo-rent MPEG-2, MJPeg, WMV etc.) used on the timeline only with the editing changes being made to the sources during the render to HDD.

The same quality could be achieved at much lower bitrates and hardware specs in an MPEG-4 AVC environment.

Dr. Mordrid

[Nappe1]

hmmh.... interesting... Blu-Ray consortium is showing some cooperation with consumers and/or clearing some air about problematic stuff.

http://www.digitaltvdesignline.com/howto/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=174403090

Most interesting part to all blu-ray haters as snipped:

Shifting gears somewhat, the discussion then focused some digital rights management issues that have recently been singled out in the press by Microsoft and others. The first area touched upon was Mandatory Managed Copy (MMC). MMC is a function of AACS, which is the basic content protection system for Blu-ray Disc. Once compliance and robustness rules are received from the AACS founders group, the Blu-ray Disc Association can include MMC in the Blu-ray Disc format. These rules are expected shortly. A second DRM issue was discussed also: BD+. BD+ is an additional layer of content protection for BD-ROM titles. Reportedly, BD+ is totally transparent to the end user, and does not interfere with "untampered with" titles or players. It was pointed out that an Internet connection is NOT required for BD+ to operate or playback of any BD title. It was further noted that BD+ will not interfere with mandatory managed copy.

and those who are too lazy even read this (because it's a Sony document anyway), I'll snip the major parts once more:

1)

...Mandatory Managed Copy (MMC). MMC is a function of AACS, which is the basic content protection system for Blu-ray Disc. Once compliance and robustness rules are received from the AACS founders group, the Blu-ray Disc Association can include MMC in the Blu-ray Disc format. These rules are expected shortly...

2)

A second DRM issue was discussed also: BD+. BD+ is an additional layer of content protection for BD-ROM titles. Reportedly, BD+ is totally transparent to the end user, and does not interfere with "untampered with" titles or players.

3)

that an Internet connection is NOT required for BD+ to operate or playback of any BD title. It was further noted that BD+ will not interfere with mandatory managed copy.

There's a lot of more interesting stuff as well in same article. check it out.
and hey... come on, this Blu-ray consortium report. Not Sony report. (pretty much same companies gave us Compact Disc. It is just that philips was the drum player back then and it became Philips' format. Now it looks like blu-ray will be called Sony format, though there's whole bunch of companies doing the work. (and holding Sony back not to implement craziest ideas they can come up with. )

[Jammrock]

If it holds true that no internet/dial connection is needed to play BD's, it may restore some hope that Sony isn't f'ing up Blu-ray. Just maybe ...