Windows Media 9 HD 1080p Anamorphic @ 6.8Mbps! voOm needs WM9HD compression!

[txdude]

I don't know how many of you have seen the demos but check them out here
The PQ is amazing, I can't believe it's only a 6.8Mbps stream. I'm gonna hook up my pc to my 52'' tomorrow to check it out, but it looks flawless at full screen on my 22" widescreen monitor
You do need a relatively powerful PC and graphics card to view these in 1080p Anamorphic or it will stutter, only my fastest PC will play 1080p smoothy. Oh... and I hope you have a fast connection too, the demos are kind of big

 

[Gr8Reb8]

I don't know how many of you have seen the demos but check them out here
The PQ is amazing, I can't believe it's only a 6.8Mbps stream. I'm gonna hook up my pc to my 52'' tomorrow to check it out, but it looks flawless at full screen on my 22" widescreen monitor
You do need a relatively powerful PC and graphics card to view these in 1080p Anamorphic or it will stutter, only my fastest PC will play 1080p smoothy. Oh... and I hope you have a fast connection too, the demos are kind of big

It does an amazing job. It needs a powerful processor though. On a PC it looks to be about 3Ghz Pentium 4.

 

[txdude]

It does an amazing job. It needs a powerful processor though. On a PC it looks to be about 3Ghz Pentium 4.

Yeah it does need a fast processor and plenty of RAM on a PC, but keep in mind that an embedded system like an STB is more efficient and would not require nearly as much power. Much in the same way that the XBOX & PS2 can out perform PCs with much more powerful hardware.

And the way Microsoft is about marketing, they would probably give the licenses for WM9PRO to voOm for next to nothing just to get the publicity.

 

[dfergie]

Running a Amd with an all in Wonder 1.8 ghz...into an x1 only thing I cannot watch is T2 extreme. All the trailers on the microsoft site run fine, but am going to get a better htpc(3.0 p4 with ht and 512 ram)

 

[txdude]

Running a Amd with an all in Wonder 1.8 ghz...into an x1 only thing I cannot watch is T2 extreme. All the trailers on the microsoft site run fine, but am going to get a better htpc(3.0 p4 with ht and 512 ram)

My Pentium 4 3.0 with Radeon 9800Pro & 1Gb RAM plays it flawlessly

 

[dfergie]

My Pentium 4 3.0 with Radeon 9800Pro & 1Gb RAM plays it flawlessly

strangly my athalon would play it with skips before I put in the ati with the onboard chip, the ati has 128mg ddr.

 

[txdude]

strangly my athalon would play it with skips before I put in the ati with the onboard chip, the ati has 128mg ddr.

On-board graphics chips usually perform slower than regular graphic cards even if they have better specs, because they share system memory, which is mush slower than the memory on most graphics cards. That's probably why you see better results with the regular graphics card.

 

[CKNA]

It is not real time. There are no real time WM9HD encoders. I am sure it wouldn't do nearly as good when it was real time.

 

[txdude]

It is not real time. There are no real time WM9HD encoders. I am sure it wouldn't do nearly as good when it was real time.

True... I suppose it would take a pretty big server farm to do real-time encoding with this even if it was available... Probably cost prohibitive.

It would still be awesome for cinema 10 and other channels that don't need real time encoding. Oh well, maybe in the not so distant future

 

[sampatterson]

I am running a Dell D800 laptop (1.6mhz Pentium-M) with a 64K ATI and 1GB of RAM and it can play all of them nicely on its 1900x1200 LCD display. T2 also plays fine. I think the Pentium-M is equiv to a 2.6mhz P4.

 

[orcatek]

I heard some rumors that WM9HD is still be considered for HD-DVD's. The standards people actually like this one from MS for a change.

 

[A_Noland]

I heard some rumors that WM9HD is still be considered for HD-DVD's. The standards people actually like this one from MS for a change.

I believe you are correct. I think it was approved.

 

[David_Levin]

I believe the HD-DVD standard includes both WM9 & MPEG4. It kinda has to due to it's smaller capacity then Blue Ray (around 10 gig less).

Unfortunately, the the Blu-Ray people are still whining, and I don't believe the copy protection stuff has been worked out yet. We still have a way to go.

But hey, wm9 (red laser) DVD players are due out this year. You can fit an HD move with pretty good quality (even better with the dual layer recordable DVDs due out later this year).

Microsoft has the wm9 encoder available for free download. People with firewire STBs (Motorola/Comcast) are already using a DVHS emulator on the PC to grab the video, then encoding to WM9. Sounds like a great way to archive HD.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=227837

Echostar needs to get that 921 firewire port working (which is starting to sound like it may never happen) !!!

 

[DarrellP]

VInc has the Bravo D3 coming out this year that will play WM9 DVD's. There is a full page ad in all the A/V rags this month about the new WM9 DVD's that are coming out. Right now there are about a dozen titles. T2 and Step Into Liquid (4/20 release) should be pretty awesome to watch. The D3 will also scale any DVD to any resolution from 480i to 1080i.

 

[madpoet]

Considering the new 921s have the FW port taped over, it's never going to happen.

 

[sthornto]

Windows Media 9 HD could be quite easily be incorporated into a chipset so that all of the heavy lifting would be taken off of the CPU just as it is currently done with quite a few MPEG-2 based capture cards. Hardware based encoders/decoders would greatly improve the adoption of the format throughout a number of different applications such as the venerable STB. You wouldn't need a large server or even a particularly powerful CPU.

Now, the bigger issue Microsoft faces at the moment is that of DRM (Digital Rights Management) and how it is incorporated into the WMV HD format. Currently all content needs a digital license to be viewed on a computer, and in this case, every file that makes up a WMV HD program needs the license. Some of you (like myself) may have purchased the special edition T2 DVD which included a WMV HD 1080i encoded version. There is a pause between chapters that is caused when the computer attempts to retrieve privileges to view the content from a Microsoft server. Pretty annoying to say the least to have an action sequence paused while the computer waits to obtain rights to watch the next chapter. Unfortunately it is a necessary evil due to the tendancy of copyrighted getting duplicated en mass by off-shore operations. IMHO this will be the next big hurdle for Microsoft to face before the format can become a viable DVD successor.

Of course licensing would be simplified for use with a STB. Since you would be dealing with two known entities, the proprietary STB and the proprietary content provider, licensing would be embedded in the hardware decoder itself and would likely never cause any issues for the viewers.

One final thought/acronym: WMV HD STB PVR? Thought that UltimateTV was dead? Not if Gates has his way with it. Inexpensive and large hard drives tied to a hardware based encoder/decoder sounds like a recipe for success. PPV could be downloaded and watched only a certain number of times, recordings could be stored indefinitely on the PVR but never copied to removable media, licensed content could be transferred to authorized portable devices, etc.

 

[Gr8Reb8]

The special edition T2 DVD I purchased will download a 14 day license when started. So, for 14 days, it does not connect to a MS server for a new license.

 

[Ken F]

On a 3.0GHz PC, it can take 7-8 hours to re-encode a 1080i movie in WM9 at 720p, and 10+ hours to de-interlace and re-encode at 1080p.

Chips designed exclusively for encoding (like that used in industrial equipment sold to satellite and cable vendors) can offer many, many times this performance, but the technology for real-time WM9 HD encoding is still a ways off (1-2 years). VOOM does plan to deploy MPEG-4 for SD encoding late this year, and hopes to use MPEG-4 (H.264) for some HD in 2005.

Sigma Designs now offers a chip for WM9 decoding (but not encoding), which will be used in some upcoming DVD players like the Bravo D3. It will decode and output 720p WM9 in real time.

 

[dfergie]

txdude have you checked out these?
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/content_provider/film/ContentShowcase.aspx
btw. dawn of the dead looks good, probably sucks... but

 

[dclark]

What's the big seal about wm9? I watched a little T2 on my new Sony 3.2gig pc and I found wm9 to be clunky.
There is a way better solution than going with microsuck.
There is a company (I forgot the name) that has a system that can encode both HD and SD on the same disc with no loss in quality. Meaning-the local rental place could carry one disc for both HD adopters and the trailer trash who think that SD dvd viewed through channel 3 on their 27" crt is just dandy.
There are about 19 movies on wm9. Except for T2, all are national geographic junk. Whoopee!