The H264 Codec and The Future of DVD

[Mels_Smileys45]

Ive been harping on how I think Blu Ray and HD-DVD are for stupid consumers who will buy anything that the electronics industry throws at them as long as it costs alot of money and promises a bunch of shit that no one needs for any good reason except to brag to their friends about what they have at home. Bluh. I fling a booger at these people or at least in their general direction and heres why.

The movie industry wants a new format so they can 1) resell all those old titles everyone already owns , 2) Jack up the prices on an already too expensive product and 3) make a medium that is not download friendly and infected with the latest DRM.

The electronis industry wants to sell a new expensive toy because everyone already owns one or two DVD players. The devices are in cars, vans, trucks and almost everywhere one can think of these days. Sales have slowed and the prices have got very low so they feel its time to thrust a new piece of over priced hardware to go along with the now cheaper HD TV sets being sold. What better way to sell idiots another high priced POS. Yes, POS!

DVD9's have enough space to do alot of things, including producing HD movies for those new HD TVs. New movie hardware is not the answer. Better movie software is. Better compression should always be taken advantage of but the powers that control, well everything, largely seem to ignore the elephant in the theater.

Enter H264

I myself have only just watched my first H264 format movie, Alien, and it is outstanding. The blacks are black without a single halo when a bright lightsource is used. To watch it on my monitor is a real treat, I must admit. At 2 hours the movie still weighs in at just over 1 Gig in size. AMAZING! Outstanding HD could be delivered on a single DVD9 with even a ton of extra features thrown in.

Now the Motion Pictures Expert Group (MPEG) has chosen H264 to be the key choice for MPEG4 and now Blue Ray and HD DVD have chosen H264 to be "The key codec for the next generation of Optical disc formats".

What the Hell? Why now and why is it needed with Blu Ray or even HD DVD? A cheap DVD player with the software to play H264 is all the masses need to get outstanding results for their new fancy HD TV's but we will not get that. DRM Infested , over priced, warmed over, non internet friendly products are in our futures. Well not mine! I refuse to fall in line and buy this crap! Not anymore. Ive played ball far too long but like Nancy Reagan once barked "Just Say No!" Let the Twisted Sister song " We're Not Gonna Take It" be our Mantra! Don't give these jerks your money, give them the finger and then let them know what we really want or rather what we don't want.

[-0-BACKLASH-0-]

that's a good way of looking at it. I never thought of it that way. I'm very satisfied with my dvd's and am not getting any new player or media any time soon.

[etabeta]

You won't be able to upgrade the firmware of a regular DVD player to play an Mpeg4 H.264 stream, although I would not exclude the possibility of doing so with a player that supports Divx playback.
The entertainment industry is still kicking themselves in the rear for the CSS fiasco, their "uncrackable" copy protection was hacked and they just couldn't do absolutely anything about it. If they would have changed the copy protection mechanism in newer DVD releases they would not have been playable on all the previously manufactured players, so they have had to rely on very lame easily circumvented copy protection methods since then. But these methods just don't work, just the same way that they don't work for CDs.
...So the BluRay and HD-DVD were invented for 2 reasons:
1) To replace the CSS with something they think won't be hacked for a long time
2) So that the electronics industry could start selling something new to play a movie, as the DVD player market is saturated with made-in-China $ 25.00 players, and there is no more money in them.

[Psilaxs]

The problem with trying to retro fit current players is not with software rendering or firmware upgrades, but in the actual hardware, it takes a monster video processor to play back 1920x1080 PROGRESSIVE. That is why the move to new hardware is being pushed.

[Mels_Smileys45]

Maybe I did put down new hardware a bit too much or not in the right context. A new medium is not needed at all as DVD9 is enough space with the right compression. I think with the right compression even a modest set up could still playback high Def video with no problem. A new line of DVD players that does support H264 is all that we need. Just as DVD players that support alot of AVI formats are already out there, it would be but a simple upgrade for to new hardware, not a whole new expensive format. Thats my main beef. Blu Ray is not needed. It would be great, if it was cheap, for PC storage. But its not nor will it be for anytime soon. Its shite

A 2.4ghz CPU with 64megs of video ram is what is recomended to run 1920x1080 on your PC. Thats far from a monster by todays standards ( or else I must own a supercomputer!). You can grab one of those with a monitor and speakers for 300 bucks. But to be fair my videocard did cost over 300 bucks by itself. lol My PC played H264 amazingly well. Very very nice indeed but I need a new monitor. Mines about 5 years old now.

Here is some awesome High Def vids you can test your system out on http://www.skytimelapse.com/hidef.html

I did notice that the video was very CPU intense for sure. VLC did have a problem with i1920x1080 progressive but I think that has to do with the way it handles compression to begin with. MPC was smooth as silk. They give lots of warnings about system specs but I built my pc about a years ago and it plays all these amazing videos. .But I jammed my PC with lots of ram and 512megs of DDR3 video ram. Not badass by now but still my pride and joy.

I think it would be very easy for a company to come out with a DVD player that could play this video at the 200 dollar level.

[Psilaxs]

ok, you would still have to buy a new player in order to play H264 and secondly, HD DVD and Blueray players support standard dvd playback... so i really do not see why it is such an issue, it is not as bad as the vhs to dvd conversion.

[Mels_Smileys45]

ok, you would still have to buy a new player in order to play H264 and secondly, HD DVD and Blueray players support standard dvd playback... so i really do not see why it is such an issue, it is not as bad as the vhs to dvd conversion.

Thats a good point but my grief is I just don't think this is the way to go. A new optical drive and a very unfriendly format loaded with crap just irks me. They could give us a great quality product at a much lower price. Im sure in 10 years it will be cheap as dirt and everyone will have a fast enough connection to download full movies that have been de-crapafied but they will be pushing some newer tech on us by then.

Im probably just being stuborn as always.

BTW, its good to see you posting Psilaxs. You were always good for a debate.

[DigitalJunkie]

I'm still waiting for Wireless N Protocol & Products, that will come out next year so I can stream videos from my over 1TB computer hard drives to all three HDTVs in the house. That's heaven! :)

[Mels_Smileys45]

I'm still waiting for Wireless N Protocol & Products, that will come out next year so I can stream videos from my over 1TB computer hard drives to all three HDTVs in the house. That's heaven! :)

Wow, that sounds cool. I bet it cost an arm and your first borns soul for that set up!

[Signa]

ive been saying the same thing for quite some time now. when you consider everything you just said about the new formats, it makes blu-ray even more of a joke. not that HD-DVD is *that* much better, but blu-ray is being pushed so hard by sony that they are running themselves into the ground financially for something yet to be adopted. and really now, being able to see the pores in the skin of the actors isnt going to make any movies better at all. in fact, i doubt most movies were filmed well enough to be able to see the "HD" detail.

[the great one]

I won't replace the Dvd's I have with blue ray or HD Dvd.

[RACKnRAIL]

Ive been harping on how I think Blu Ray and HD-DVD are for stupid consumers who will buy anything that the electronics industry throws at them as long as it costs alot of money and promises a bunch of shit that no one needs for any good reason except to brag to their friends about what they have at home. Bluh. I fling a booger at these people or at least in their general direction and heres why.

The movie industry wants a new format so they can 1) resell all those old titles everyone already owns , 2) Jack up the prices on an already too expensive product and 3) make a medium that is not download friendly and infected with the latest DRM.

The electronis industry wants to sell a new expensive toy because everyone already owns one or two DVD players. The devices are in cars, vans, trucks and almost everywhere one can think of these days. Sales have slowed and the prices have got very low so they feel its time to thrust a new piece of over priced hardware to go along with the now cheaper HD TV sets being sold. What better way to sell idiots another high priced POS. Yes, POS!

DVD9's have enough space to do alot of things, including producing HD movies for those new HD TVs. New movie hardware is not the answer. Better movie software is. Better compression should always be taken advantage of but the powers that control, well everything, largely seem to ignore the elephant in the theater.

Enter H264

I myself have only just watched my first H264 format movie, Alien, and it is outstanding. The blacks are black without a single halo when a bright lightsource is used. To watch it on my monitor is a real treat, I must admit. At 2 hours the movie still weighs in at just over 1 Gig in size. AMAZING! Outstanding HD could be delivered on a single DVD9 with even a ton of extra features thrown in.

Now the Motion Pictures Expert Group (MPEG) has chosen H264 to be the key choice for MPEG4 and now Blue Ray and HD DVD have chosen H264 to be "The key codec for the next generation of Optical disc formats".

What the Hell? Why now and why is it needed with Blu Ray or even HD DVD? A cheap DVD player with the software to play H264 is all the masses need to get outstanding results for their new fancy HD TV's but we will not get that. DRM Infested , over priced, warmed over, non internet friendly products are in our futures. Well not mine! I refuse to fall in line and buy this crap! Not anymore. Ive played ball far too long but like Nancy Reagan once barked "Just Say No!" Let the Twisted Sister song " We're Not Gonna Take It" be our Mantra! Don't give these jerks your money, give them the finger and then let them know what we really want or rather what we don't want.

It's all about marketing. Look at how VHS out marketed Sony's Beta, which by far was the superior device. It's stupid, but true.

[Afn]

Holographic storage will replace cd,dvd and various flavors of hd-dvd.

http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/P...cle.asp?ID=118

[Andrew110]

I know I won't be buying HD DVD or Blu Ray probably ever. How much better picture quality do you need, honestly? What comes after High Definiton? Ultra Definition, where you can see a person's individual cells? Then what? There has to be some sort of limit. And that holographic storage looks like it will be pretty fucking expensive if you ask me. I think I will be sticking with regular old fashioned DVD's for as long as I can.

[Mels_Smileys45]

Its good to see so many others arent going to take this shite either. The only way I will ever switch from the format I now use (for my PC only) is if the new medium is cheaper and the device is cheap too.