Home Theater Forum - View Single Post - Paramount BD titles... will they be VC1/AVC?

Rob_Walton · 08-23-2006, 01:36 PM

I suspect the Sony patent reason often given for MPEG2 usage on BD is a red herring. Certainly at the licence cost per disc I've seen Sony would be getting very little money on even huge numbers of discs. The most likely reason is the last one that David mentions: that the other codecs were added to the spec late in the game, and that the lauch has happened earlier than the organisers had originally planned. It's my understanding that many HD cable and satelite providers will continue to use MPEG2 for quite some time (due to their entire network being configured for it's use) and BD was developed from the ground up to be a recordable medium. That is what required the 50Gb capacity on dual layer discs: to be able to fit an HD movie compressed in OTA MPEG2, and at a decent quality. I believe the other codecs were added later on and only due to pressure from other companies. And thank God they did apply that pressure!

08-23-2006, 01:36 PM	#7 of 15
Rob_Walton Member Join Date: Nov 2004 Local Time: 04:28 AM Local Date: 01-09-2009 Posts: 299	Re: Paramount BD titles... will they be VC1/AVC? I suspect the Sony patent reason often given for MPEG2 usage on BD is a red herring. Certainly at the licence cost per disc I've seen Sony would be getting very little money on even huge numbers of discs. The most likely reason is the last one that David mentions: that the other codecs were added to the spec late in the game, and that the lauch has happened earlier than the organisers had originally planned. It's my understanding that many HD cable and satelite providers will continue to use MPEG2 for quite some time (due to their entire network being configured for it's use) and BD was developed from the ground up to be a recordable medium. That is what required the 50Gb capacity on dual layer discs: to be able to fit an HD movie compressed in OTA MPEG2, and at a decent quality. I believe the other codecs were added later on and only due to pressure from other companies. And thank God they did apply that pressure!