What is the significance of VC-1 ?

[JimPullan]

It's wonderful to have all this intellect here, something like an engineer talking to another engineer, or writers of owners manuals - which looses the consumer when they open the first page. Is there someone here on the forum who can explain all this hoopla about VC-1 ? AVC ? and HDMI 1.3 ?. What is it?. How will it benefit the SONY BDP-S1 ?. Is the delay of the launch because of these ? PLEASE, provide your insight and explanation in 'laymen' terms we can all understand, comprehend and appreciate. Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Jim Pullan
Ocala, FL

[JTK]

Originally Posted by JimPullan

It's wonderful to have all this intellect here, something like an engineer talking to another engineer, or writers of owners manuals - which looses the consumer when they open the first page. Is there someone here on the forum who can explain all this hoopla about VC-1 ? AVC ? and HDMI 1.3 ?. What is it?. How will it benefit the SONY BDP-S1 ?. Is the delay of the launch because of these ? PLEASE, provide your insight and explanation in 'laymen' terms we can all understand, comprehend and appreciate. Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Jim Pullan
Ocala, FL

Here's some fairly easy reading to get you started.

VC-1:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VC-1

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...2005/VC-1.aspx

HDMI 1.3:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/06...3_spec_posted/



We can all sift through some of that mess together while we wait for the English translations.

AVC:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264



The short answer to all this techno jargon is: HDMI 1.3 means HD audio over one cable WITH HD video, of course.

BUT: You need to have equipment that has the HD audio codecs built into it for it to even matter at all on the audio side. If I understand it right, the player (at least) needs to have those codecs for HD audio or you can forget about it.


The rest of that refers to these advance/more efficent video codecs that ultimately mean amazing HD picture quality.

How's that for real simple?

The key word here is "futureproofing." If the first gen BR players lack the capabilities or lack the capability of being easily upgraded to support any of the above? It just means that that player will become obsolete that much faster.

People don't want to spend upwards of a grand on a player they'd have to replace in a year or so.

There's always certain risks that come when you're the first kid on the block to get the new toys, but it sure would be nice if the higher end BR players from Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer Elite, etc. were at least upgradeable to cover these bases down the road.

[BTBuck1]

Originally Posted by JimPullan

It's wonderful to have all this intellect here, something like an engineer talking to another engineer, or writers of owners manuals - which looses the consumer when they open the first page. Is there someone here on the forum who can explain all this hoopla about VC-1 ? AVC ? and HDMI 1.3 ?. What is it?. How will it benefit the SONY BDP-S1 ?. Is the delay of the launch because of these ? PLEASE, provide your insight and explanation in 'laymen' terms we can all understand, comprehend and appreciate. Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Jim Pullan
Ocala, FL

Im no techno mumbo jumbo dude either, but i'll try and put it best lame mens terms i can.

First off, Sony's BDPS-1 will have HDMI 1.2 not 1.3. the only benefit of 1.3 is that it can pass more color information (more than the human eye can detect) and that it can also pass Uncompressed audio tracks over it, I.E. Dolb TrueHD /DTS HD when connected into your reciever via HDMI 1.3. This will be beneficial when receivers are capable of decoding these audio tracks and the actual players start dropping the decoders. Right now, you will have to use 6 channel analogs on the back of your receiver in from the 6 channel out on the back of a BR player. This is a good band aid until most of us upgrade in a couple-3,4 years. I wouldn't let it stress you out.

Next, vc-1, mpeg2 & mpeg 4 are just compression tehniques. The BR format is capable of all of them as standard. VC-1 is touted as the most sophisticated and "Best" of the bunch, Mpeg4 is suppossed to also be good but not much tweeking has been done with it, and apparently it's not "perfected" mpeg2 is the oldest of the three and most used industry wide.
The problem right now is that HD uses alot of capacity. Mpeg 2 isn't as efficient, so while we are in the Single Layer disc era of this launch, some of the Bit rates on the disc vary because of space limitations, causing inconsitancy in the picture quality. Once we get into the dual layer discs (50gb) mpeg2 vs. VC-1 should be a non issue. If MFR's where smart though, they'd probably just use SL discs with VC-1 to keep costs down. But once production ramps up on DL 50gb it shouldn't matter.

Sony uses mpeg2 for several reasons, most being political. Microsoft owns it, and Sony and MS are fightinhg for next gen Video game supremecy. MS wasn't going to adopt Blu-Ray and slit their own wrists with the 360 so they jumped into the HDDVD camp late. Sony doesn't want to use VC-1 as they wan't nothing to do with MS (for now) that however does not mean that other hollywood studio's won't choose to do so.

Thats the best i can do...if others have more enlightment or I missed something, let us know =)

[AV_Integrated]

I would call MPEG2, MPEG4 (AVC/H.264), and VC-1 (Windows Media Fomat) kind of like shorthand.

You can't put a full length movie onto a disc without using something that makes the movie smaller...

It is like shorthand - you have 4 pieces of paper and a person speaks and you write it down using shorthand and eventually all 4 pieces of paper are filled up with writing - that is the maximum that you can handle with shorthand. That is like MPEG2. Now, let's take away 1... or 2... or 3 pieces of paper. You still want to get the entire conversation, but now, quite clearly, if you use shorthand, a good bit of the conversation will be lost. So, to get the full conversation you need a better form of shorthand. Something that can really get all the information down on paper and do it accurately in half the space... That is what VC-1 & AVC allow. They squish the video down so instead of needing 40GB to look phenomenal, they can do it in 20GB of space.

Since Blu-ray doesn't currently have 50GB discs and ONLY is putting out 25GB discs, VC-1 or AVC really must be used or movie quality suffers dramatically - as currently seen on all Blu-ray movies.

[Psiweaver]

Yes like everyone above me said just means of compressing or shrinking down the amount of data required to view a movie.

[hometheaterhookup]

Originally Posted by Brian@BBY

Dolby TrueHD /DTS HD when connected into your reciever via HDMI 1.3. This will be beneficial when receivers are capable of decoding these audio tracks and the actual players start dropping the decoders. Right now, you will have to use 6 channel analogs on the back of your receiver in from the 6 channel out on the back of a BR player. This is a good band aid until most of us upgrade in a couple-3,4 years.

So HDMI receivers out right now can't accept 7.1 Dolby TrueHD /DTS HD audio tracks?

[BTBuck1]

Originally Posted by hometheaterhookup

So HDMI receivers out right now can't accept 7.1 Dolby TrueHD /DTS HD audio tracks?

they can just not over HDMI....6 channel anny's 4tW!

[Psiweaver]

yeah just do a nice 6 or 7 channel analog run and you'll be good to go.

[Blackraven]

Originally Posted by Brian@BBY

Sony uses mpeg2 for several reasons, most being political. Microsoft owns it, and Sony and MS are fightinhg for next gen Video game supremecy. MS wasn't going to adopt Blu-Ray and slit their own wrists with the 360 so they jumped into the HDDVD camp late. Sony doesn't want to use VC-1 as they wan't nothing to do with MS (for now) that however does not mean that other hollywood studio's won't choose to do so.

Sony won't use VC-1 since their rival, M$ owns it. Perhaps other companies would use it (such as Warner Brothers) but definitely not sony.

Either they'll use MPEG-4 or H.264 AVC while other Blu-ray companies add VC-1 as a table option.

[Psiweaver]

Yeah who knows what'll happen with the encoding situation.

[hmurchison]

Originally Posted by Blackraven

Sony won't use VC-1 since their rival, M$ owns it. Perhaps other companies would use it (such as Warner Brothers) but definitely not sony.

Either they'll use MPEG-4 or H.264 AVC while other Blu-ray companies add VC-1 as a table option.

h.264 "is" MPEG4. It's longer name is MPEG4 Part 10. Kind of ironic that a company that's claiming "Beyond High Definition" is failing to use the hottest codec of the moment.

If they don't wish to use VC-1 then how about getting move on towards AVC(h.264).

[Blackraven]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

h.264 "is" MPEG4. It's longer name is MPEG4 Part 10. Kind of ironic that a company that's claiming "Beyond High Definition" is failing to use the hottest codec of the moment.

If they don't wish to use VC-1 then how about getting move on towards AVC(h.264).

That I agree.

This is why I'm not considering on purchasing the first set of Warner titles for Blu-ray after hearing that these first 3-4 titles will use MPEG-2. Rather wait for them to release their VC-1 for BR.

In the meantime, while Sony can't bring out the BD-50 DL discs yet, I suggest that they improve on their MPEG-2 for the SL 25 GB discs. Atm, I only hear Underworld 2, Ultraviolet and Punisher to be the only ones that are worth it on the MPEG-2 @ 2 5 GB. The rest, as I've heard, are CRAP (kinda includes Hitch as well)

Hopefully, they would apply changes (I hope they do!)

[Shadowself]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

h.264 "is" MPEG4. It's longer name is MPEG4 Part 10. Kind of ironic that a company that's claiming "Beyond High Definition" is failing to use the hottest codec of the moment.

If they don't wish to use VC-1 then how about getting move on towards AVC(h.264).

My understanding is H.264 is only one of two allowed variants of MPEG4. There is MPEG4 Part 10 (aka AVC and H.264) and MPEG4 Part 2. Part 10 (i.e., AVC/H.264) is the more advanced compression technology. Both methods compress into a file format based upon Apple's QuickTime. So stating H.264 "is" MPEG4 may lead to a bit of confusion as stated.