Microsoft And Amazon Team Up On High-Def DVDs

Slimy on 02 July 2007 - 23:18 · 7 comments & 2996 views

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Amazon.com and Microsoft have announced the 1,000 HD DVD Indies Project: an effort to make it easier for independent filmmakers to produce and distribute movies in high-definition. Amazon's CustomFlix unit plans to bring as many as 1,000 feature-length indie films to Amazon customers using its CustomFlix DVD On Demand technology. The technology allows for the production and shipment of DVDs as soon as they are ordered online, cutting down costly inventory requirements, Amazon said. The DVDs will be formatted in Microsoft's VC-1 video codec format.

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News source: InformationWeek

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(1 reply) #1 Julius Caro on 02 Jul 2007 - 23:24

Are both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs compatible with AVC, VC-1 and MPEG-2?

#1.1 TRC on 03 Jul 2007 - 00:21

Yes, both formats can use the same codecs.

(1 reply) #2 Croquant on 03 Jul 2007 - 01:10

Both disks are really just storage media. Data being read of the disk is just that: Data. Ones and zeros. The Codec doesn't come into play untill the computer tries to deal with the data. So, while the set-top box players may or may not support a certain codec, it's not the HD-DVD or Blu-ray disk itself that's got anything to do with codec compatibility. The confusion comes becasue the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray standards also specify that certain codecs are standard-issue for the playback machines, so some people assume that it's the disk itself that's got the codec associated with it.

#2.1 joeydoo on 03 Jul 2007 - 06:31

Indeed. To further confuse there's 3XDVD.. which is part of the "HD DVD.. format". It basically allows anyone with a DVD burner to make a DVD which is read as a HD DVD when you put it into a HD DVD player, complete with menus. It's smaller, obviously, but you could still fit a pretty good quality 1080p VC1 film onto a dual layer DVD... if it's 720p then it's really good quality.
I would think that this amazon deal is going to use single layer HD DVD discs. Their cheapness for printing is on a par with a dual layer DVD at this point.

(2 replies) #3 EduardValencia on 03 Jul 2007 - 02:09

when will this war end,for the sake of consumer!

#3.1 +vlsi0n on 03 Jul 2007 - 07:33

mauhahaa soon.. soon.

Actually I have no idea, i don't even know where the line above came from.. haha.

#3.2 TRC on 03 Jul 2007 - 22:55

Two competing formats is bad for consumers? Look at how cheap HD-DVD players are already, I doubt that would be the case if they were the only format.

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Microsoft And Amazon Team Up On High-Def DVDs

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