Has Paramount doomed HD-DVD?

[berck]

No, I don't. Do you?

Yes

Thanks.
Vista plays MPEG-2. It can't do MPEG-2 encodes. Same about Cyberlink, Intervideo, Nvidia, ATI etc.
x264 is a H.264 encoder. It doesn't play the result. VLC decodes everything and encodes nothing.

Software design. OS X can do both with all of those codecs installed. It just depends on how one implements the codec in the software being used. Once a codec is installed in the system, it can be used for both encode and decode if you have software that will use it. There are some times licensing issues about encoding. Generally, allowing decoding is free, but encoding cost money.

I believe Windows Movie Maker comes with many codecs for encoding content, including MPEG2 so you can create HD content.

 

[diogen]

Generally, allowing decoding is free, but encoding cost money.

IIRC, ability to play (decode) MPEG-2 - being it software or hardware - costs $2.50 per case. Don't know whether there is a cap...

I believe Windows Movie Maker comes with many codecs for encoding content, including MPEG2 so you can create HD content.

No.
Prior to Vista, not a single Windows version had the ability to even decode MPEG-2 (i.e. out of the box wouldn't play DVDs). But almost any DVD burner in a store would have some sort of MPEG-2 decoder included. Same about brand name PCs. So, on the user end hardly anything was lost.
AC3 decoding was also implemented in Vista for the first time.

It's probably true that the term "codec" is used loosely when often only the decoding abilities are implied.

Microsoft was wrestling into the codec market the way it does best - by giving away software. The very first free WME9 (Windows Media Encoder), now almost 5 years old, for the first time offered a chance to see what software encoding is all about. The DivX/XviD encoders were not quite suited for hidef encodes.
I still use WME9 today: after installing the latest commercial offer from Microsoft WEE (Windows Expression Encoder), WME will use its libraries and take advantage of the latest features in codec development and spit out VC-1 compliant streams. Authoring tools will probably never come from Microsoft.

Diogen.

 

[BobMurdoch]

Something like that. But people always want "better" even if it really doesn't matter.

Greater space and bandwidth is future proofing. And the future is already here.

I think a few folks with old Betamax VCRs might disagree with you...

 

[teamerickson]

Heres a good quote from this article

Commentary: Specs vs. Reality | High-Def Digest

"However, Dolby Digital Plus, especially the 1509 kb/s variety found on a disc like the 'Transformers' HD DVD, uses much more efficient encoding techniques at a very high bit rate. The people who actually make these movie soundtracks have found it pretty impressive, and yet average home listeners seem to believe with absolute certainty that the home theater speakers in their living rooms would be capable of resolving with precision the mathematical difference between a high bit rate Dolby Digital Plus track and a lossless one, and that their golden audiophile ears would also be capable of discerning it. Personally, I would like to put these people to a properly-controlled blind test, where all of the audio levels have been carefully matched to the same volume, and then see how well their hearing fares."

 

[mike123abc]

The people that have systems that playback well enough to tell some difference are getting fewer and fewer. Much of the high end audio business has gone out of business, HDTV switched the money to video playback. Even then not many people close their eyes and listen critically to movies.

When is the last time you played a movie, with the video off to listen to the soundtrack to see if you could identify flaws? Another issue is that you are not able to compare it to reality to know what you are missing, movie soundtracks are all artifically produced anyways.

Uncompressed or lossless audio is a great sales tool, but probably 99% of the consumers would not be able to tell if you took a compressed soundtrack and decompressed it and put it on the title.

Video on the other hand people do notice. You can pause video and study it.

 

[navychop]

Yet there is certainly value in well utilized 7.1 sound.