VC-1 ever?

[WriteSimply]

Originally Posted by Alan Gordon

Hasn't Microsoft somewhat abandoned VC-1?

They abandoned support to VC-1. As in they are no longer providing tweaks for VC-1 when the studio (aka Warner, Paramount and Universal) can't fit the muxed stream to fit the HD DVD bandwith.

Originally Posted by SHIELD

Thus my original question, why aren't more studios using it? & why are some even using MPEG-2?

The only reason I have been able to come up with is licensing costs.

MPEG-2 is easier to implement because the facilities are there and the learning curve has already been tweaked. So for a quick and easy job on materials that do not require BD50, MPEG-2 is fine.

Licensing costs for VC-1 is minimal. Way back then, an MS executive (a-hem) was trying to get home theater netizens to demand that studios use VC-1 because it's better than AVC and it was cheap. He's probably still trying to do that but I don't know if he's still an MS exec.

Fact is, VC-1, AVC and MPEG-2 have their own strengths and will be used depending on the material. For now though, AVC is the one more widely used for this year's batch of BDs.


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