Will Warner Bros. ever use MPEG-4 AVC?

[Mr. Joshua]

I was curious if WB has used MPEG-4 AVC? All WB movies I've seen on Blu-Ray are VC-1. I'm hearing MPEG-4 AVC is much better and I believe it is from what I've seen. I think it would be a shame if Batman Begins is not released in AVC format. What's your take on it?

[Proteus]

My guess is only when HDDVD is dead and they aren't simply porting titles around anymore.

Warner is all about the money on this one. They are making the whole encoding process as cheap and formula as possible to maximize their profitability.

Just be happy they are putting the lossless tracks on some BD's now instead of the HDDVD lossy.

[Slapper]

Originally Posted by wsciv123

I was curious if WB has used MPEG-4 AVC? All WB movies I've seen on Blu-Ray are VC-1. I'm hearing MPEG-4 AVC is much better and I believe it is from what I've seen. I think it would be a shame if Batman Begins is not released in AVC format. What's your take on it?

If they do, I think they will start with those titles that are currently on HD-DUD but NOT on Blu-ray. I think they will throw in this little extra for making us wait for those hot titles like Batman Begins, Matrix, et al that they have "promised" to release on Blu-ray (crosses fingers).

Hopefully, in a couple years when HD-DUD is long dead and buried all these companies will rerelease their films in some type of "Super-Bit" format, maybe "Super-Blu" with high bitrate AVC encodes. Ah, to live in a perfect world...

[WickyWoo]

They'll simply do new compressions on the next reissue

[raginranger]

Ah, I was wondering about this as well. From my experience, any movie encoded in MPEG-4 AVC has always looked the best. The movies that amaze me most (casino royale, bridge to terabithia, and pirates of the c: black pearl) all use this video codec. All movies, especially Warner, like 300 and the departed that use VC-1 do not look as good. I am really hoping all companies switch to the AVC format that Sony and Disney use soon.

[jorg]

yes i think they will just like paramount started to (BOG was mpeg-4 avc)
but i don`t think till the spring

[Luis_A51]

I agree, I hope warner uses MPEG4 AVC soon. I big chunk of my collection (35-40%) are WB movies, but none are close to matching my Sony and Disney movies in terms of PQ, and those are mpeg4 avc.

Its not even just VC-1, its the fact that it seems they use medium-bitrate (HD-DVD level) too. Maybe high-bitrate VC-1 would be ok, but who knows.

Id gladly take high-bitrate MPEG 2 (such as Crank) over VC-1 any day even, but high bitrate mpeg4 avc would be my prefered.

[Slapper]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

They'll simply do new compressions on the next reissue

That makes more sense.

[gvortex7]

Originally Posted by wsciv123

I was curious if WB has used MPEG-4 AVC? All WB movies I've seen on Blu-Ray are VC-1. I'm hearing MPEG-4 AVC is much better and I believe it is from what I've seen. I think it would be a shame if Batman Begins is not released in AVC format. What's your take on it?

I'm pretty sure Batman Begins will be ported over from the HD DVD version. That would be the most logical thing for WB to do. I'm not saying it's right, not for Blu-ray owners, but it seems like WB will uphold the trend of releasing everything on HD DVD first using VC-1.