WMV HD

Soldato
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Yes its possible but wont happen the market doesnt need yet another optical format or the confusion it brings.

Many people already download what your talking about from USA HDTV shows and movies, even HD-DVDs have appeared, all illegal of course.

WMV9 or VC1 works fine from a DVD (burned as a UDF disc) or of course even simplier just transfer it to a USB key and play directly from your media blade.

1080p works fine from either and includes the full 5.1...
 
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Associate
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That Terminator 2 disc will not work in this country. Even if you have a multi region player as it has online DRM.

Blu-Ray is the future and HD-DVD will live beside it.
 
Associate
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I've ordered 3 of those WMV HD discs from the states to view through my new 32" Samsung LCD....

that will tide me over until I buy a HD DVD / BluRay combo player later this year when I'm in the USA.......
 
Soldato
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Terminator 2 WMV HD isn't even that good quality, if you've seen it. HD-DVD is worlds apart from it.

It's also a hassle to play, as you need to appear to have an American IP address in order to get the license to watch it. Also, because of the DRM, the Xbox 360 won't play it (even if you are in the US).
 
Soldato
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Goatboy said:
You make it sound like something new, it came out about three years ago and didn't make an impact. It's not suddenly going to re-appear now.

but now many ppl have xbox360's

you obviously need a 360 or a computer to play back these files
 
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Bigpops said:
Terminator 2 WMV HD isn't even that good quality, if you've seen it. HD-DVD is worlds apart from it.

It's also a hassle to play, as you need to appear to have an American IP address in order to get the license to watch it. Also, because of the DRM, the Xbox 360 won't play it (even if you are in the US).

so hd-dvd > wmv hd
 
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neocon said:
but now many ppl have xbox360's

you obviously need a 360 or a computer to play back these files


10 million isn't much of a userbase for Hollywood films for a format that's been given up on a long time ago.

It's also limited to 8.4GB discs, most HD films are clocking in around the 20GB mark on the new formats.
 
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neocon said:

Wmv-hd movies are nowhere near the quality of blu-ray and hd-dvd movies, even apple 1080p movie trailers use a higher bitrate.

Max bitrates for a 2 hour film:

Dual Layer dvd = 9.44Mb/s
Dual Layer Hd-dvd = 33.33Mb/s
Dual Layer Bd-rom = 55.5Mb/s
 
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Energize said:
Wmv-hd movies are nowhere near the quality of blu-ray and hd-dvd movies

Many of the latest HD DVD & Blu ray disks are encoded with VC1 (aka WM9 HD)

Some blueray are H.264, the older ones were MPEG2, but WMV HD is the predominant format for the new HD disc releases.

Quality is down to bitrate. Bit for bit, WMV is a more efficient compression codec than H.264 or MPEG4 ASP.
 
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Sclodion said:
Many of the latest HD DVD & Blu ray disks are encoded with VC1 (aka WM9 HD)

Some blueray are H.264, the older ones were MPEG2, but WMV HD is the predominant format for the new HD disc releases.

Quality is down to bitrate. Bit for bit, WMV is a more efficient compression codec than H.264 or MPEG4 ASP.

Wmv-hd is worse then mpeg4 avc just look for video comparisons and you'll find them everywhere, it's also why mpeg4 avc needs such high specs to play. Mpeg4 avc needs a lot more time to encode and more powerful computers which is why it isn't used in hd-dvds. Since hd-dvds and blu-ray use much higher bitrates than wmv-dvds they are better regardless of wether they use wmv or mpeg4 anyway.
 
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Energize said:
Wmv-hd is worse then mpeg4 avc just look for video comparisons and you'll find them everywhere, it's also why mpeg4 avc needs such high specs to play. Mpeg4 avc needs a lot more time to encode and more powerful computers which is why it isn't used in hd-dvds. Since hd-dvds and blu-ray use much higher bitrates than wmv-dvds they are better regardless of wether they use wmv or mpeg4 anyway.

Nearly all HD DVD disks on the market today are VC-1 encoded. Dont get hung up on WMVHD DVDs (5mbit/sec encoding), thats different to an HD DVD encoded with VC1 where the bitrates are typically between 18-25 Mbit/sec (as they are with H.264 encoded HD DVD & Bluray titles)

Currently H.264 encoders are not producing the results that they could be and further development is ongoing on the encoder side to create better pictures @ given bitrates. Current H.264 encoders consume over 10% more bits per frame than a VC1 encoder for a given image quality and as you say, they consume a lot of processing power (currently about 8-10 times realtime for an H.264 2 pass encode @ 1080p on top end dual core dual cpu servers) Consequently, the costs of H.264 encoding are prohibitive for many of the authoring houses today, hence they're using VC1.
 
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Sclodion said:
Nearly all HD DVD disks on the market today are VC-1 encoded. Dont get hung up on WMVHD DVDs (5mbit/sec encoding), thats different to an HD DVD encoded with VC1 where the bitrates are typically between 18-25 Mbit/sec (as they are with H.264 encoded HD DVD & Bluray titles)

Wmvhd is vc1 so they will be far worse quality than blu-ray disks encoded at much higher bitrates.

All wmv-hd movies are encoded with vc-1 aka windows media video 9 and we all know than h.264 is better than wmv9 hence why it is used in situations where bandwidth is top priority such as torrents, it is a better codec than vc1 at all bitrates.
 
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Energize said:
Wmvhd is vc1 so they will be far worse quality than blu-ray disks encoded at much higher bitrates.

All wmv-hd movies are encoded with vc-1 aka windows media video 9 and we all know than h.264 is better than wmv9 hence why it is used in situations where bandwidth is top priority such as torrents, it is a better codec than vc1 at all bitrates.

You're trying to compare a 5mbit file (WMV HD) to a 20mbit one (VC1 & H.264 on HD DVD / Bluray). Of course its going to look worse!

To make the comment that H.264 is better than VC1 at the same bit rate is subjective at best.
 
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Sclodion said:
You're trying to compare a 5mbit file (WMV HD) to a 20mbit one (VC1 & H.264 on HD DVD / Bluray). Of course its going to look worse!

Which is exactly what I said in my first post, since wmvhd films are released on dvds.
 
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Energize said:
Which is exactly what I said in my first post, since wmvhd films are released on dvds.

WMV HD is just a codec. the bitrate can be anything. it just so happens that WMV HD has been used to create films that will fit on a DVD, but its the same codec used in HD DVD just at a much higher bitrate.

Also doesnt justify H.264 being better than WM9, if anything, @ 5mbit and 1920x1080 24fps, WMV looks dramatically better than H.264 and at 15-24 Mbit, you need a really expert set of eye balls to spot the difference between WMV & H.264 encodes at the same bitrate.
 
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