Why no mordern video codec or hi-rez audio?

[Molin]

My understanding is that Blu-Ray will use MPEG-2 combined with Dolby Digital for pre-recorded media. Of course it is natural to support these formats for direct recording of DTV on writeable media. But why use a video codec that is even now getting old for pre-recorded stuff?

Newer video codecs, such as H.264 or Windows Media 9 are much more efficient than MPEG-2 and gives a higher quality image on even lower bitrates. If they are used, Blu-Ray would have a significant advantage over HD-DVD since can hold 20GB more date. This space could be used for more extras, high quality audio or better quality video using 10 bits or even 4:4:4 video.

And on the audio side, I think there should be support for one high resolution lossless format like MLP. When so much effort is put into high quality video, why so little focus on audio? Just listen to the difference on a recording in Dolby Digital and in SACD (where it is possible), and it is obvious that something better than DD is needed in mordern formats.

I would like to support Blu-Ray specially since it higher capacity, but as of now I prefer HD-DVD mainly since it seem to have support for high quality audio.

Best regards,
Per Molin