Lasse Penttinen
11 Jan 2005 7:28
Both camps of the next video format war have been busy at the expo. Prototype devices have been shown by all key players, including Philips, Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba. From the HD-DVD camp, Toshiba demonstrated the interactivity functions of the HD-DVD.
The prototype machine – work on which was only finished days before CES – was decoding a high-definition Mpeg4 AVC movie and overlaying onto it a standard definition director's commentary video that was also being decoded in real-time from a standard-definiton Mpeg2 file on the disc. The same player also supported interactive game play and the ability to purchase access to locked content stored on the disc, both of which were demonstrated.Sony's and Philips' show seems like a more ordinary one. Sony demonstrated video decoding from various formats with a Blu-ray player, while Philips had a PC BD-ROM drive on their stand.
Of the three (Sony players), each supported one of the three BD-ROM standard's video codecs. One model was showing a movie encoded at 26Mbps (bits per second) in Mpeg2, another showed content encoded in VC1 (the Microsoft Windows Media-based format) at a constant bit rate of 12Mbps and the final prototype played content encoded in Mpeg4 AVC format at a variable bit rate of between 10Mbps and 15Mbps.Source: PC Advisor