Microsoft's Corona codec HD demo on T2 Extreme Edition? Let's discuss! (1 Viewer)

[Alex Spindler]

If it really is HD, absolutely. Just ask yourself if you can tell the difference between 640x480 resolution and 1024x768 (close to 720p). How about 1600x1200 (close to 1080p)?

I sure can. If it is HD, and works, it should be incredible.

Count me in as excited to see how it looks. I have a pretty hefty computer, so I should meet the specs.

 

[Chris Purvis]

Don['t forget that Radeon cards have all kinds of filtering. I have tons of VCDs that look acceptible on my monitor but look like crap on my TV

not if you have one of these in your PC...

http://www.wisdom-technologies.com/MP-1%20Spec.htm

 

[Joshua Moran]

I downloaded both Liquid demos and thought that they looked ok on the PC screen. Until I put it on my Mitsubishi 55" hdtv and noticed how bad it really is. I have the ATI 9700pro as well with the componet video output.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

The native resolution of the 'Motown' disc that is in the same format is only 1024x576p. With D-VHS and probably Blu-Ray headed towards native 1980x1080p playback, I'd say Microsoft better go back to the drawing board. Watered-down red-laser HD on DVD can't be missing over 2/3 of the resolution if it wants to compete, IMO.

And I'm not settling for a format without 5.1 audio of excellent fidelity.

 

[Jean-Michel]

Just to resurrect this thread, there's a discussion going on at the Evil Avatar forums about this. Somebody said he was hoping the Xbox would support this codec so he could watch HD-DVD on his TV; I said that based on the specs needed for the PC version there wasn't much chance the Xbox could handle it. Then he made this point:

Why would you need such a powerful CPU to decode the content when Nvidia has supported hardware accelerated decoding via DirectX VA since 2000? It's not like you'd want to do it by software, which I could see being a problem on the Xbox's CPU if that were the case.

Anyone care to take a shot at this? Is the PC version of this codec software-only? Why would they do that? Is it just to maintain the widest possible compatibility? And most importantly, could they get this running on an Xbox? This almost belongs in the video game forum but since the technical question isn't specifically Xbox-related I guess it could go here too.

 

[Chris Purvis]

Corona is not supported in current hardware (or in the 2-generations old hardware in the xbox) via DXVA.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/p...ideoCardPR.asp

The next generation of the xbox is another story...

 

[Jean-Michel]

Corona is not supported in current hardware (or in the 2-generations old hardware in the xbox) via DXVA.

According to the press release, as of 2002 Nvidia was just beginning to add embedded DXVA support for Corona in "future versions" of their video cards. So that rules out the Xbox hardware. But would it be possible to do nonembedded hardware accelerated Corona decoding on the Xbox? I'm pretty much clueless here and I honestly don't believe it'd be possible, but I want to cover all the bases.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

The mowtown disc, though much less than true HD resolution (only 1024 x 576P) still looks *mighty* good on my boss's PC monitor. We watched some clips in his office yesterday and it *definitely* looked far superior to a normal DVD and I saw no visible compression artifacting.

Really astonishing.

I'm not giving up my desire for true 1920 x 1080P hi-fidelity HD-DVD and will settle for nothing less in regards to a HD-DVD "format"...but as an 'extra' in a 2-disc SD-DVD SE, if it's better resoluiton than standard DVD and it is artifact-free, then I won't complain...

 

[Michael St. Clair]

I think it's a given that the XBox2 will play these movies (and convert to at least 720p and 540p).

 

[RobD]

I wonder if the fully programmable Geforce 4s could be made to hardware decode this new codec?

 

[Chris Purvis]

No, the Geforce 3 & 4 aren't "programmable" in that way.

 

[Jean-Michel]

I think it's a given that the XBox2 will play these movies (and convert to at least 720p and 540p).

The bigger question is if anybody's going to still be putting out movies in this format by the time Xbox 2 comes out. Unless the DVD Forum chooses Corona as the new HD standard (which I doubt) I honestly don't see this being an issue. Even Microsoft is playing up the non-DVD uses of this codec more than anything else.