NEWBY rants on standards

[Nelson37]

was just rereading posts discussing XVCD, VCD, SVCD, XSVCD "standards". I believe this confusion is causing some serious problems. Anybody remember MGA - CGA - EGA - MCGA - SEGA - VGA - PGA - XGA? At a certain point, the terms become MEANINGLESS. Video on CD needs to be defined, ie a 352x480 MPG1 VBR 2400 @29FPS, and/or graded on a visual scale, A-1=best DVD, B-1 = best VHS, etc. I think VoCD has been used for something else, but the general public needs something like "video, A-1" or "Video, B-2" instead of XSABCDEFGVCD. From a marketing standpoint, this confusion will never fly.

To those who do not care about the general public, consider that if Joe Sixpack knew the capabilities of 480x480 A-2 quality video, then MY BLEEPING SONY BLEEPING PS2 WOULD NEVER HAVE LEFT THE FACTORY UNABLE TO PLAY ANYTHING BUT DVD!

Also consider if DVD player MFGs could choose a single standard of anything up to 720x480 at whatever bitrate could be supported on standard DVD drives (3000-4000?) and again if Joe Sixpack asked for it, how much simpler life would be?

[Bong]

First off - yes too many standards is not a good thing.
However - without any open standards we, the home users, wouldn't be able to burn a cd in any mode since all methods would be proprietary and available only by licence fee. As technology gets better, new (open) standards are introduced.

Second - don't confuse standards with quality. We have all seen excellently encoded VCDs and poorly encoded DVDs. Both would have met the encoding standard, however didn't meet subjective quality standards.

Third - if you insist on a single standard, something better will never come around. Many standards mean more choice. What we need are flash upgradeable DVD players not fewer standards.

Bong Rant

[Sefy]

Nelson37, there aren't that many standards as you may think, for example, there is VCD/SVCD/DVD, those are the basic common used STANDARDS, for each you have regions: PAL/NTSC/FILM
But each is a specificly and strickly defined standard!

CGA/MGA/EGA/VGA are all display cards, and again, each is a specificly defined standard.

XVCD/XSVCD and all other strange names you see, are NOT standards, they are user created settings to boost/improve quality or make fit into single CD, and those will always be changed on a daily basis

[vitualis]

As what Sefy said.

To the original poster, I'm sorry, but you really only did "rant" and did not do much more.

There are only 3 standards of any importance in terms of digital video on a disc: Video-CD (VCD), Super Video-CD (SVCD) and Digital Versatile/Video Disc (DVD).

Each one is strictly defined.

If a player says that it is "VCD compatible" that means a very specific thing... not just some loose non-tangible concept.

"XVCD" and "XSVCD" are not standards at all -- and needless to say, no player is "XVCD compatible".

The PS2 states that it is DVD compatible and so it plays DVDs. It does not state it is VCD or SVCD compatible and not surprisingly, it isn't.

Regards.