Lasse Penttinen
25 Oct 2004 9:16
Unlike the DVD, HD-DVD and Blue-Ray will both carry several codecs as an integral part of the specifications. The video codecs include MPEG-2, AVC/H.264 and Windows Media Video and now Dolby Digital and dts have been added to the audio side as well. This means that the market dominance of these widely used audio formats is pretty much secured for the future.This presents some interesting scenarios. First and foremost, it future-proofs these future-only formats; it's anybody's guess (well, actually, everybody has a guess, but those guesses tend to vary) which format, if any, will out. And it's great news for authors and content creators in the development and bit-budget wiggle room it gives them. And in terms of the audio codecs, from a consumer perspective, the inclusion of Dolby and dts means that existing audio playback equipment investments won't have to be tossed aside (HD-DVD and Blu-ray would be tossed aside first).
Source: EMediaLive