Sharper discs coming our way with MPEG-4 H.264 AVC

[Deciazulado]

Blu-ray, HD DVD Encoder Sharpens Image

Thomson's Technicolor Content Services division rolled out Monday an encoding system for high-quality compression of high-definition video for use in HD DVD and Blu-ray disc products.
TIGER AVC, co-developed by Thomson Corporate Research laboratories and Technicolor, is an optical disc compression tool that supports both HD DVD and Blu-ray high-definition DVD formats. Technicolor will use the technology in-house to support post production for movie studios.

"We developed many new algorithms to get the quality we're trying to achieve," said Jeffrey Cooper, general manager for Thomson Corporate Research. "Think of compression standards like a toolbox with hundreds of tools."

Developing the compression technology required tradeoffs. It took Technicolor and Thomson more than a year to develop the 50 algorithms required to achieve the perfect picture quality. The video encoding technology is based on MPEG4-H.264/AVC.