Next-Gen Blu-Ray DVDs to Use Ancient MPEG2 Codec? Sony Says "Yup!"

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.com.com/New+high-definition+DVDs+to+use+old+video+technology/2100-1025_3-5974348.html?tag=st.num' target='_blank'>http://news.com.com/New+high-definition+DVDs+to+use+old+video+technology/2100-1025_3-5974348.html?tag=st.num</a><br /><br /></div><i>"As Hollywood readies its new and controversial high-definition DVDs, at least one major studio is leaving some of the most advanced parts of the new disc formats on the table in favor of technology that's more than a decade old. That could mean disappointment for some of the tech industry's biggest names, particularly if other studios follow suit. Companies such as Microsoft and Apple Computer have been betting that their work on advanced video software formats, called "codecs," will help them sell their own products."...Last week, studio giant Sony Pictures quietly voted for "none of the above," and took a swipe at the new codec formats. The new advanced codecs aren't immediately necessary for discs released in Sony's high-capacity Blu-ray format, Sony Pictures executives said in an interview with CNET News.com, and the studio would instead use the 11-year-old MPEG-2 video codec used on today's DVDs."</i><br /><br />Well, that explains why Sony needs so much storage - they're using a very old codec that has been surpassed several times over in both quality and space saving functionality. Sony, you never cease to underwhelm me.

[stevehiner]

First the DRM scandal.

Then we find out Sony has taken out a patent on technology that would allow them to lock PS3 games to the box they're played on first thus killing the rental and used game market.

Now they use MPEG2 in Blu-Ray.

I hope we get to watch Sony crumble.

[jeffd]

Hmm.. I think you guys failed to look at the bigger picture here. First, MPEG2 seems to have no quality problems as long as it's given enough bitrate. Unlike mpeg1, mpeg2 isn't limited by resolution nore bitrates. Obviously the files will be bigger, but have you actually researched how big? Unlike you, Sony has done the test. Apparently they feel the increase in mpeg2 size is easily handeled by their increased disc capacity.

Then there is the liscensing fees and your platform options. I think most of us would agree that Divx would probably be best. Very flexable, multi OS compatible, and are very much what the other 2 big guns arnt...

... and that brings me to those 2 big guns. Apple and Microsoft. One thing is clear... neither play well with their formats. Each have created a proprietary player for each others OS, but other then those, you can't play WMV9 on macs and you can't play the "good" quicktimes (sorenson, newest mp4 codec, what ever the hell they call it now) on windows. NEITHER formats can be playd in any way on linux/unix operating systems. Both of these companies have such a strangle hold on their codec technology that it would be impossible for the stand alone player market to survive. Fees would probably be fine for Apple, but MS would charge extortion rates. Not to mention microsoft would have some retarded requirement like an online connection so its player could get DRM updates.

Mpeg2 is been around awhile.. the liscense is affordable, easy to get, and decoder hardware is much cheaper for it. Requiring new decoders however is a little cloudy. Manufacturers who use very cheap decoders probably don't have the cpu power (or ability) to handel the increased bitrates and resolutions of the new mpegs, but I am sure there are some decoders out there based off a DSP powerfull enough to do it, and are even based on FLASHROM for its code, so introducing the new code to decode the new mpeg2 streams would be very easy. And theres not really an OS that dosn't have an mpeg2 player (on hardware that can decode it. ;) ).

[Jason Dunn]

Thanks for the thoughts Jeff, you have some good points.

[Felix Torres]

Fees would probably be fine for Apple, but MS would charge extortion rates.

Lots of things to debate there but I'll start with the one thing you don't seem aware of. MS WMV licensing fees are about half the MPEG4 fees.
http://news.com.com/Real+Licenses+could+kill+MPEG-4/2100-1023_3-892219.html
http://news.com.com/License+terms+set+for+Net+video+codec/2100-1025_3-5108651.html
As of april 2004, 12 cents per player bought a complete Windows Media codec license pack. The MPEG-LA group screamed bloody murder and threatened to take MS to the DOJ for "predatory pricing". ;-)

They were just blowing smoke of course; MS can be cheaper because they own all of VC-1, while MPEG4 is owned by 16 separate contributors, each of which would like to make 5 cents per license. And, since WMC/VC-1 development costs are already amortized through the online streaming revenue streams it generates.

Also, do keep in mind that it is the MPEG-LA group that sets licensing fees for Mpeg4, not Apple. Apple is a licensee, not an owner. They don't control the spec, much less own it.

Also, all MS media formats exist independently of DRM; if you have a problem with the copy protection, take it up with the content providers, not MS; DRM is *optional* on WMA/WMV/VC-1 and LIT, even though the formats do provide for embedded DRM, not external wrappers the way Fairplay works.

Finally, the merits of MPEG4, Divx, Motion JPEG2000 and VC-1 vs MPEG2 are *not* limited to their higher compression rates, but extend to the display quality, the color gamut, color space rendition, internal object structures, and embedded metatags. (MS's MS-PVR format is actually just a raw MPEG2 stream metadata tags embedded in it; they needed to do this because MPEG has no object-based substructure like modern CODECs do.)

On pure image quality basis, irrespective of cost or compression rate or originating organization, the winner among video codecs is by quite a bit VC-1. Followed by Divx. Which is why the LA group last year went back to the drawing board to improve the basic MPEG4 codec and produce the much better advanced video codec approved (along with VC-1) by both the DVD forum and (over Sony's objections) the BluRay steering committee. So as you can see, VC-1 is both better and cheaper than the alternatives and is already supported by dedicated decoder hardware. The only knock on it (and the reason the movie studios chose the admittedly inferior Motion JPEG2000 spec for digital theater content distribution) is that MS is the licensing organization.
ABM!!
&lt;shrug>

May I suggest a simpler explanation for Sony going with MPEG2 instead of the superior advanced codecs? Namely the idea that, having sold BD-ROM on the back of its 25GB per layer capacity, Sony needs to justify that decision to the content providers that are facing the added production costs of BD-ROM vs HD-DVD and red-laser HD video distribution so they need to use up as much of the available 25GB and MPEG2 is perfect for that.

Notice that in the same article it points out WB is going with VC-1 and fitting its BD-ROM movies on cheaper 9GB discs?
Sony has valid (to them) business reasons for spurning VC-1 but they *own* a big chubk of MPEG4 to start with so thevonly reason I see for choosing the older, lower-quality codec is spin control.

Believe or disbelieve as you will; I don't have the time to dig up the sources for all the above (I'm working off memory of two year old news reports), but if you search online for WMV licensing terms and VC-1 endorsement by SMPTE, you'll find them.

$0.02 worth.
Peace.

[jeffd]

Hmm, interesting spin on the need to use the entire disc. I could definetly see someone in sonys department actually pulling that off. Even though now, a common problem is movies can no longer fit their bonuses on the same disc because viewers demand the high quality video so they max out the bitrate on the movie disc. But at this moment that is not a problem for blu-ray.. blu-rays problem is convincing the suppliers why they should use blu-ray.

Thise news post are kinda old, I don't think WMV9 was out in 03? I know microsoft codec is custome, but yea I'm a bit hazy on quicktimes and divx. Quicktime has supported mpeg4 for a while.. but is that what we see it using? Cause the quicktime container is not and issue... its ther compressions.. so if it was mpeg4 then I don't see why common universal decoders like libavcodec couldnt be used to play back todays quicktime files.

Divx.. god where to start. Divx started as illegal software made by microsoft. Now apparently at divx4, they rewrote it from scratch, but currently divx's discription makes it out to be an "enhanced" mpeg4 codec, and that a native mpeg4 stream is a divx stream without most of the enhancement options (and not in the hacked .avi container). So why does divx seem to be able to seperate themselves from mpeg4's liscensing fees and sell their product as their own?

[Felix Torres]

So why does divx seem to be able to seperate themselves from mpeg4's liscensing fees and sell their product as their own?

Because they have good lawyers? ;-)

As for the age of WMV9, my first encounter with Corona, the codec that would be WMV9, was in an article in Winformant in november 2001.
A quick search there found this April 2002 article that talks about MS retargetting it from streaming video to standalone files, which is what VC-1 is about.
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/24715/24715.html

So yes, WMV9 was available starting in early '03. But more importantly, MS was showing it to industry partners and drumming up support for it in the hardware community since '01. (Its pedigree actually stretches back to 1994-95, when in the midst of the browser wars, MS went on a shopping spree and bought four separate start-ups working on streaming video tech; not just for the products they were working on but to grab the people developing them. The DOJ was concerned enough to investigate but given the "big lead" that REAL and Apple had in streaming media decided MS had done nothing wrong. :-) )

Basically, whether you like MS or not, the only reason the current MPEG4 advanced Codec exists at all is because Corona lapped the competition in 2003 and forced the MPEG-LA group to go back to the drawing board, just as MS forced them to scale back their pricing on the licensing so we as consumers benefit from better codecs at lower costs, whether we use WMV or MPEG4.
But only if the content providers *use* the tech available to them.

Obviously, the multi-headed hydra that is Sony has its own set of criteria of when and how to use available tech.