MPEG on the way out?

[lgh529]

I was at a trade show recently (Infocomm - A/V Systems, etc) to see all the new projectors and plasmas coming out. Anyway, I was in a demo of a new projector when the presenter, who is a well respected industry leader, said that the Windows media format will replace MPEG as a compression format due to MPEGS inability to be flexible with metadata information and screen resolution.

At the time it caught me off gaurd and didn't quite know how to think about it. Anyone else have any feeling for this outlook?

By the way, Samsung has a new 103" Plasma and a 90" LCD display. Those monsters looked awesome, but at $20k, I probably won't be getting them any time soon.

[bugster]

define what you mean by "MPEG".

Mpeg1, Mpeg2, Mpeg4, or one of the many variants?

WMV is really just a bastardized mpeg-4 varian.

If you want my opinion, the codec of the (near) future will be H.264. But thats just MY opinion.

[BJ_M]

most presenters at those shows are only feeding lines they were told and not any real personal knowledge ..

anyway -- mpeg is not on its way out (mpeg2 or 4) for a very long time as it is used in many ways for many things ..

I still think WMV is crap except as web delivery and WMV-HD looks like crap and anyone who thinks it looks good has never seen really good HD ..

[yoda313]

Hi,

Isn't Mpeg the basis for the new hd-dvd and bluray specs?????

Kevin

[edDV]

Current HDTV is MPeg2 based and this will continue to the various HD DVD formats.

Looking to the future, specific more highly compressed MPeg4 variants will be offered as alternatives on HD DVDs.

After evaluation of all of them, h.264 and VC1 have been chosen to be the supported alternative formats for all players.

WMV-HD can look excellent and is the basis for the commercial VC1 spec that along with h.264 will be the more highly compressed formats allowed on Blu-Ray and HD DVD.

VC1 is also designed to be an infrastructure format and includes all the bells and whistles features needed by telcos, broadcasters and cable companies. Microsoft obviously wants to see the complete infrastructure move to VC1.

They missed out in the first round. DirecTV and Dish opted for a different custom form of MPeg4 and that will be the basis for the "1000 HD Channel" DBS system to be offered later this year. BTW most of those 1000 HD channels will be the locals of which an individual customer may get to see 8-15 depending on local market plus a selection of national channels.

Microsoft wants the cable companies to replace MPeg2 with VC1. This would allow many more SD and HD channels on existing cable systems. The cable companies seem in no hurry for another major upgrade.

The US ATSC DTV standard allows the 19Mbps bandwidth to use any form of data stream so long as at least one SD Mpeg2 channel (~3Mbps) is broadcast as the primary channel. VC1 or other MPeg4 formats could be used to cram 2 HD or up to 10+ SD channels into that space allowing broadcasters to compete directly with pay cable and DBS. Special tuners would be required.

Microsoft and others are busy staking territory in this future TV frontier and the presentation that you saw was part of that effort.

[BJ_M]

like i said - WMV-HD looks like crap and anyone who thinks it looks good has never seen really good HD ..

and cable HD is a good example of not good HD to compare to .. though a lot better than the over compressed crap they call digital cable that is spewed out on the masses ...

[waheed]

like i said - WMV-HD looks like crap and anyone who thinks it looks good has never seen really good HD ..

Well I think WMV HD looks good :P only because HD hasn't taken off in the UK.

[BJ_M]

well it IS better than a kick in the neck

[edDV]

VC1, h.264 and DBS MPeg4 all look about the same to me at the demos.

Those who have seen 4:2:2 DVCProHD at 100Mbps or 3:1:1 HDCAM at 135 Mbps let alone 10bit 4:4:4 HDCAM-SR at 440Mbps on a 1080p plasma will have cursed eyes and may not be able see the fine differences in fullscreen consumer HDTV at 8-25 Mbps rates but that is what the general consumer will see on TV and DVD.

Consumers will need to go to the Multiplex Digital Cinema to see any better.

If you can calibrate your eyes to consumer level, these formats all look pretty good. Some would say VC1 or h.264 at 6-8Mbps is as good or better than ATSC MPeg2 at 15-19Mbps.

[BJ_M]

the min. i use for mpeg2 HD is about 30Mbps , but more often no less than 44 ...

I can see things i dont like below that ..