[M4IF News] EETimes: Picture's fuzzy for DVD

[Rob Koenen]

Some relatively good news about MPEG-4 amidst the licensing turmoil.
For media like DVD, the announced license is not too far from MPEG-2
practices, and it doesn't seem to raise controversy.
See http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/OEG20020301S0091
Will be on our website shortly.
Rob
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Picture's fuzzy for DVD
By Junko Yoshida
EE Times
March 1, 2024 (3:55 p.m. EST)
PARIS - The look of the next generation of digital video disks got 
harder to call when the DVD Forum's Steering Committee voted this 
week to approve the use of low-bit-rate compression for 
high-definition DVD.
The DVD Forum's decision, made at a meeting Tuesday (Feb. 26) in 
Tokyo, to stick with a red-laser-based scheme but switch to 
low-bit-rate compression, came only a week after nine of the world's 
biggest electronics companies agreed to promote a blue-laser-based 
format for next-generation video and computer optical disks. That 
format, the Blu-ray Disc, was developed outside the forum, but all 
nine of the initial backers are forum members.
Looking to avoid what they say would be a costly shift to blue-laser 
technology, steering committee member Warner Bros. and other 
content-production companies are behind the new DVD Forum proposal, 
which uses low-bit-rate encoding technology such as MPEG-4 to cram 9 
Gbytes of high-definition video content onto a two-layer DVD. Blu-ray 
uses MPEG-2 compression, as does the current DVD standard. A 
single-sided 12-cm Blu-ray Disc would store 27 Gbytes of computer 
data, record 13 hours of broadcast TV or hold two hours' worth of 
high-definition video.
Of the 17 companies that sit on the DVD Forum steering committee, 11 
approved the low-bit-rate encoding approach. The remaining six - 
including Matsushita, JVC and Philips - reportedly abstained.
The nine steering committee members backing the Blu-ray Disc are 
Hitachi, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial, Pioneer, 
Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, Sony and 
Thomson Multimedia. Aside from Warner Bros., the other committee 
members are IBM, Intel, Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research 
Institute (ITRI), JVC, Mitsubishi, NEC and Toshiba.
It is clear that the DVD Forum did not arrive at its decision this 
past week without some pain. Sources disagreed not only on what the 
vote meant but even on what had been decided.
Some sources involved in the developments insisted that they saw no 
contradictions in pursuing both blue-laser and low-bit-rate 
approaches. "I don't think it's confusing. It's only natural" to 
pursue both paths, since both encoding and blue-laser technologies 
continue to evolve, said Jan Oosterveld, a member of the Philips 
group management committee responsible for corporate strategy.
Blu-ray is a recording format for real-time interlaced TV programs, 
including HDTV programming, while low-bit-rate encoding is positioned 
as a prerecorded HD-DVD playback format for movies, said Chris Buma, 
program manager for A/V disk recording at Philips. "We don't see 
Blu-ray as replacing DVD; rather, it complements the next-generation 
DVD format."
Buma added that the steering committee's decision to go with 
low-bit-rate encoding - as low as 7 Mbits/second - would not 
necessarily preclude the use of blue lasers in the future.
Difficult distinctions
But an industry observer who spoke on the condition of anonymity 
warned that industry efforts to draw distinctions between playback 
and recording formats, while helping some companies rationalize their 
technology decisions, might confound consumers seeking to make sense 
of the new standards. "It all depends on the timing," the source 
said. If Blu-ray-based recorders come to market sometime next year, 
consumers will likely expect [those] recorders to be able to play 
back a prerecorded Warner Bros. HD-DVD movie disk based on MPEG-4."
The industry thus walks a fine line between advancing DVD performance 
and fragmenting what to date has been an aggressively robust market 
for DVD disks and equipment.
The use of blue-laser technology is a natural fit for the many 
consumer electronics companies worldwide that have already invested 
heavily in its development. Further, some companies would like to see 
the use of MPEG-2 compression continue in the new-generation disks to 
provide continuity with the current DVD standard.
But the world is also full of new ideas for lower-bit-rate encoding, 
including wavelet, MPEG-4 and such proprietary codecs as Microsoft 
Corp.'s Corona. The DVD Forum's technical working group has already 
proved that encoding rates as low as 7 Mbits/s will yield HD video of 
acceptable quality. And one movie studio executive argued that while 
MPEG-2 continuity would be desirable, switching to blue-laser 
technology to achieve it would involve a "very costly" overhaul of 
disk-manufacturing operations that would jack up the price of DVD 
disks and equipment to levels unlikely to be accepted in the 
marketplace.
Philips' Oosterveld declined to discuss blue-laser costs but did 
acknowledge that the technique "would be far more costly than the 
current red laser."
Conclusions vary
To complicate matters, while Warner Bros.' low-bit-rate proposal got 
the nod this week, those who attended the Tuesday meeting apparently 
came away with varying conclusions about what would be the forum's 
chosen technology for low-bit-rate encoding.
Some said the steering committee had moved to back MPEG-4. Others 
asserted that no clear decision had emerged about whether to use 
MPEG-4 or an improved version of MPEG-2 - MPEG-2 Main Profile @ High 
Level for HD Encoding - integrated with pre- and post-processing 
capabilities. Philips demonstrated the latter approach in December at 
the forum's technical working group meeting.
"We are still in the starting phase," Philips' Buma said about the 
codec discussions. "We are far from coming to a decision" on a 
definitive compression scheme.
"We are not interested in a low-bit-rate encoding shootout," said a 
Japanese senior executive who asked not to be identified. The 
executive said forum members have seen demos of a number of encoding 
technologies, including a wavelet-compressed HD-DVD movie. "We want 
to test further how either MPEG-4 or an improved version of MPEG-2 
would eventually fare at 7 Mbits or lower," the source said.
Given the strong representation of consumer electronics companies on 
the steering committee roster, the door is likely closed to 
proprietary schemes like Microsoft's Windows Media codec, code-named 
Corona. The decision will likely boil down to MPEG-4 vs. the 
souped-up MPEG-2 variant.
Progress continues
Several DVD Forum members said they have been pleasantly surprised, 
every time the two MPEG standards have been reviewed and compared, to 
find that both approaches have continued to make marked progress.
"It's remarkable what an increased computational processing power can 
do to pre- and post-processing of video images," the Japanese 
executive said of the MPEG-2 version tweaked for high-definition 
video. "Once you clean up images by filtering before encoding, you 
can really squeeze a lot onto a disk without changing the fundamental 
encoding algorithm."
On the other hand, MPEG-4's object-based coding capabilities open the 
door to the interactive applications for DVD. Object-based coding can 
also be used to allocate more bits for certain objects - such as a 
fast-moving object within a frame - thereby improving coding 
efficiency.
"One can use advanced motion-detection filters for that," said 
another executive who works for a Japanese consumer electronics 
company.
Although the first Japanese source said the forum intends to decide 
on a low-bit-rate scheme within three months, the DVD Forum's 
tendency to require "further study" before every crucial decision 
could open the door to the Blu-ray Disc.
Blu-ray prototypes have been demonstrated by Philips, Sony and 
Panasonic. Licensing for manufacture is expected to start in a couple 
of months. Although Blu-ray promoters have refused to say when they 
plan to ship Blu-ray based systems, the first recorders could hit the 
market next year, some observers said.
Oosterveld, reach this past week, called the recent unveiling of the 
Blu-ray Disc agreement in Tokyo a "technology announcement."
"Everyone knows that blue-laser technology exists," he said. "We've 
decided that it's best to announce our technology agreement early on, 
in order to avoid confusion and speculation." In the meantime, he 
said, Philips will "continue to focus on promoting our DVD+RW."
The low-bit-rate camp believes its approach will benefit nearly 
everyone involved in the DVD industry. "Hollywood studios can 
repurpose their content one more time for HD-DVD, without making a 
costly investment in brand-new replication equipment based on a blue 
laser," said a U.S. executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Further, as Chinese companies make strides in DVD players at the 
expense of Japanese and European companies, the inventors of the DVD 
standard are seeking ways to protect their margins and differentiate 
their products from Chinese imports.
The U.S. executive claimed a switch to blue-laser equipment would 
make advanced players prohibitively costly, whereas a red-laser-based 
player that could handle both MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 decoding would carry 
a palatable retail premium of $25 to $50.
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