Brian's Brain

In an outcome that doesn't even remotely surprise me, the Blu-ray and HD-DVD camps have again declined to merge their contending blue laser-based storage approaches. This conclusion (at least for the moment; everything changes, after all) puts an interesting twist on my upcoming optical storage article, and it forces potential users to make a choice. Which technology, for example, will a movie studio bet on?

Will it be Blu-ray, which adopts a riskier clean-slate approach that promises higher per-layer capacity and has the backing of big players like Dell, HP, Philips, Pioneer, and Sony (with its Playstation 3)? Or will it be the Toshiba- and DVD Forum-backed HD-DVD, with lower (but claimed still 'good enough') per-layer storage capacity but a cost-saving DVD media legacy? The studios are clearly eager to encourage consumers to re-buy high definition variants of content they already own on DVD (and to buy more expensive HD versions of content they don't yet own), but they're understandably uncomfortable with the prospect of advocating that consumers buy expensive next-generation players that won't play other studios' material.

But they have a third option, one which I'm betting they'll sooner or later choose if the standards standoff continues past the end of next year (i.e. if both Blu-ray and HD-DVD are still strongly present in the market by the end of 2006). That alternative is to release HD versions of movies on red laser media (DVD), but encoded with a more modern video codec than MPEG-2. Options include the newly released DivX 6, MPEG-4 AVC (aka MPEG-4 part 10, or H.264) and Windows Media Video 9 (aka VC-1). DVD players from companies like Buffalo, I-O DATA, and JVC (and maybe, someday, V Inc) already support one or multiple of these codecs. In fact, you can already buy several Hollywood movies in WMV HD DVD format, although none of the current generation of players supports the necessary authorization DRM scheme, meaning that you need to play them on a PC.

DivX v6, which I first saw prototyped at January's CES, touts a content-dependent 20-40% quality-vs-bitrate improvement over the v5 codec (as measured by PSNR testing, not subjective analysis or a more advanced tool like Sarnoff's JNDmetrix-IQ) while remaining bitstream backwards-compatible. Other added superset features, implemented by v6-compliant players, include interactive video menus, chapters, subtitles, alternate audio tracks and video tags. DivX video is a proprietary enhancement of the MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile codec; certified content is bundled with two-channel MP3 audio (with MP3 Surround 'coming soon') but it's also possible to combine DivX video with an alternative audio codec such as multi-channel Dolby Digital or DTS. And according to DivX's lead codec engineer, Jerome Rota, most 720p (720-line progressive scan) content requires only a 4 Mbps average bitrate, while 1080p content demands only 6-8 Mbps, on par with (or only slightly higher than) today's 480-line standard definition bitrates using MPEG-2.

With Nero Digital, on the other hand, Nero (formerly Ahead Software) is aggressively attempting to brand an extension-based enhancement of MPEG-4 AVC. Nero, like DivX, has already branded a proprietary spin of MPEG-4 Advanced Simple, albeit in this case with a MPEG-4 approved AAC audio codec and 'wrapper'. And Microsoft's potential success with WMV9 should not be discounted; it's been talking to Hollywood for years, and Media Center Edition-powered PC shipments are rapidly ramping. Yes, consumers will likely need to buy a new player in order to experience any of these new video codecs and their associated audio codecs, DRM schemes and 'wrapper' formats in their living rooms, but it'll at least initially be a much cheaper player than the blue laser-based alternative. And here's the key; anyone with a DVD-ROM drive in his or her PC has already got a player and can experience this content today.

Hardware companies want to sell consumers expensive and profitable new gear. Media companies want to sell and up-sell consumers on high-definition movies as quickly and easily as possible. The two groups have divergent needs in the looming blue laser era. This'll be fun to watch; how are you placing your bets?