Suhit Gupta
07-21-2004, 03:00 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-5263776.html' target='_blank'>http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-5263776.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"An obscure contest over futuristic video technologies is beginning to unfold in the broadcast industry, with dramatic consequences for the future of television, Hollywood and Microsoft. The battle for now is visible only on the fringes, where experts are carefully weighing the pros and cons of two new candidates for delivering emerging applications such as Internet movies on demand, video over cell phones and high-definition TV (HDTV) programming."</i><br /><br />There are two candidates - (i) MPEG-4 AVC or H.264, the latest successor to the standard video format currently used by virtually all cable and broadcast TV stations; and (ii) Microsoft's Windows Media VC-9 format. This is new ground for Microsoft but it is interesting to note that both Microsoft's VC-9 and the MPEG-4 AVC formats purport to deliver DVD-quality video at as much as half the bit rate of MPEG-2, the current industry standard. Read the article to see the pros and cons of each technology but this is an are of digital media that I know little about and would like to learn more, i.e. video format in broadcast industry. It is insteresting to see how these two technologies are facing off.