There’s something disingenuous about the announcement this week from Microsoft Japan that it will make Longhorn, the company’s next major operating system release, compatible with the High Definition blue laser DVD from NEC and Toshiba, which is also backed by the DVD Forum. Since when was Longhorn written in Japan? And since when did an operating system company decide on support for a peripheral which will need its own dedicated drivers and which can be made almost plug compatible with the current DVD drives, as far as the operating system is concerned.
In our view it was a major non-announcement. The competing Blu-Ray specification is already streets ahead of the NEC Toshiba standard, and it has already established support from Hewlett-Packard and Dell, which is far more significant than Microsoft, since they are the customers here and they will actually buy the drives. Microsoft is hardly likely to turn around to its two biggest customers and tell them, no the operating system won’t recognize their DVD devices.
News source: The Register
In our view it was a major non-announcement. The competing Blu-Ray specification is already streets ahead of the NEC Toshiba standard, and it has already established support from Hewlett-Packard and Dell, which is far more significant than Microsoft, since they are the customers here and they will actually buy the drives. Microsoft is hardly likely to turn around to its two biggest customers and tell them, no the operating system won’t recognize their DVD devices.
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What right does microsoft have to impede on netscape? Everyone knows they control the browser market and were there first. They have more than 90 percent of the marketshare, why would Microsoft even try to make an entrance into the web-browser market when netscape is so dominent?
Get over it, it'll support all the drives...
One word:
BETAMAX
BETAMAX was and still is vastly superior to VHS. If a TV Station or other media company uses tape it's *not* VHS but BETAMAX. But VHS won over BETAMAX in the consumer market for a variety of reasons, those of which are too many to even begin to list here.
Consumers *always* lose when standards become compromises - get used to it.
--ScottKin
So far the Blu-Ray group has decided only to use MPEG-2 for their video codec. While the DVD Forum selected MPEG-2, VC-9, and MPEG-4 AVC!
VC-9 is somewhere around 175% more efficent then MPEG-2. So, basically that extra space on the Blu-Ray side is useless, it's just being used to enable the crappy MPEG-2 video to fit on the damn disc. Now, if the Blu-Ray group would be smart, they would adopt VC-9 for a codec, then that extra space difference will really make a difference!
Also, I think the Blu-ray group currently is planning on 1080i video, are they stupid? 1080p should be used to get rid of the interlacing for good.
I dont mind having my TV or projector at 96hz instead of 100
Erm what? HD-DVD has nothing to do with 'hard drives', what are you talking about? It just means 'high density' - or something similar. HD for the increased amount of data you can fit on a disk - not hard drive.
GJ
thus, why should MS supporting HD-DVD be a shocker when HD-DVD supports MS?
maybe since its DVD then players will work in linux hmm
i dont like idea of M$ owned formats taking over.
What this means is that Linux dev's will have to look into writing the decoders for VC-9 and not forget about it just becuase it's from MS.
M$ is really MS, the DVD Forum must have throught the quality has good, you as a consumer should support that. Do you really want MPEG-2 video in your next DVD format?
Blue Ray has more space for data, but if you think Video wise, it use the good old MPEG2 and all it's old problems will be back, Chroma Bug the worst of them. And i've seen sat capture of HD movies at 27mbits rate and i see saw Mpeg2 compression artefact in the R,G,B channel, were VC9 you don't get any even a 8mbits rate! for the same resolution.
Remember, HD-DVD is toshiba, toshiba is Warner Brother/New Line groups and Blue Ray is Sony witch is Columbia. I'am pretty sure that ie 'spiderman 1 and 2' will come out only on Blue Ray and Matrix, LOTR only on HD-DVD for a while, this will be very confusing for the people..
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