High-definition pre-recorded media and compression

Last updated April 26, 2024

The first attempt at producing pre-recorded HDTV media was a scarce Japanese analog MUSE-encoded laser disc which is no longer produced (see MUSE-LD).

In the U.S. market, the first currently^{[ when? ]} available prerecorded HD media was D-Theater. Comprising less than 100 titles and utilizing a 28-Mbit/s MPEG2 stream at 720p or 1080i with either Dolby Digital 5.1 or DTS encoding, D-Theater is an encrypted D-VHS format, and only D-Theater-capable D-VHS players can play back these tapes. This format is superior to broadcast HDTV due to its higher bandwidth and, of course, the ability to do non-realtime optimization of the encoding, which is not possible with broadcast HDTV. D-Theater is currently a small niche market even within the niche HDTV community, and it appears as if the final D-Theater title was published in 2005 with the 20th Century Fox release of I, Robot .

In 2006, the first pre-recorded digital optical HDTV media were introduced. There were two competing standards, Blu-ray and HD DVD. The first HD DVD players and discs were released in the United States on April 18, 2006, while Blu-ray was released on June 20, 2006.

HD DVD and Blu-ray

Since the DVD Forum and the Blu-ray Disc Association failed to agree on standards for high-definition 12-cm discs, a format war was under way between the DVD Forum's HD DVD (formerly "Advanced Optical Disc") standard and the Blu-ray Disc Association's Blu-ray Disc standard.

Although there was disagreement about physical format technology, both the HD DVD and Blu-ray factions selected the same three video codecs to be mandatory in their designs: specifically, MPEG-2 Part 2, VC-1, and H.264/AVC.

They were engaged in a format war up until February 2008, to determine which of the two formats will become the leading carrier for high-definition content to consumers. This situation was similar to the VHS/Betamax format war in consumer video recorders in the late 1980s. The manufacturers of HD DVD, Toshiba, announced in February 2008 that they were ceasing production of their HD DVD players indefinitely, citing low demand for HD DVD and the growing use of Blu-ray, which had become popular due to its inclusion as part of the PlayStation 3 among other things.

There are now some DVD players that will output enhanced or high-definition signals from standard-definition DVDs. This upconversion process can improve the perceived picture quality of standard-definition video.

Compression codecs

Many codecs are in contention such as Microsoft's Windows Media 9(VC1), H.264/AVC (MPEG-4 Part 10) and the VP6/VP7 codecs from On2 Technologies.

Microsoft VC-1

In an attempt to provide a bitrate-compatible high-definition format for high-definition video on standard DVD-ROMs, Microsoft introduced their Windows Media 9 Series codec with the ability to compress a high-definition bitstream into the same space as a conventional NTSC bitstream (approximately 5 to 9 megabits per second for 720p and higher). Microsoft is marketing its high-definition Windows Media 9 Series codec as WMV HD. It remains to be seen if the codec will be adopted for widespread use, if only as a Wi-Fi industry standard. As of November 2003, this format required a significant amount of processing power to encode and decode, and the only commercially available movie that used the codec was the Terminator 2: Extreme Edition DVD (see 1). Since then, more titles have become available in this format, such as the acclaimed surf documentary Step Into Liquid . As of the start of 2005, Microsoft recommends a 3.0 GHz processor with 512 MB of RAM and a 128 MB video card for 1080p playback on Windows XP, though there are now commercially available DVD players, like the KiSS DP-600, that will play back WMV HD DVD ROMs in high definition on HDTV sets. The codec has been submitted to, and approved by, SMPTE and is now officially SMPTE Standard 421M, also known as VC-1.

MPEG4/H.264

H.264 as a standard has already been selected and adopted by the biggest broadcasters in the U.S. (DirecTV, DISH Network) and Europe (BSkyB, Premiere, Canal+, TPS, ...). H.264 was chosen for several reasons: The standard was validated as an open standard at least a year before VC-1 was seriously considered as a potential open standard, and, then, there is a lot of uncertainty on the levies Microsoft may want to impose once the algorithm is adopted.

VP6

VP6 was reported by On2 to have been chosen by China for use in the Enhanced Versatile Disc (EVD) format initiative. As reported, this was a result of China's desire to avoid royalties on WM9 or AVC. As an advantage, VP6 would not require royalties on recorded media (although royalties would be charged for player devices at a similar cost as for other codecs).

As China starts to dominate manufacturing of TV and DVD units, the country's choice of standards becomes more important for everyone. A low cost for the codec itself is not a significant advantage over DVD, however, as the standalone hardware players will be incompatible with standard DVD-Video unless the manufacturer pays the royalties for the technologies necessary to make the player DVD-compatible.

Very few titles were made available in any market for this format, although it is presumed that many would be needed to drive purchase of incompatible players. Because of this, it is unlikely any major U.S. studio will commit to movies in this format without some form of copy-protection, which is not yet specified.

Soon after the announcement that VP6 would be used on EVD, negotiations between On2 and E-World (the consortium pushing EVD to become a standard) broke down. On2 filed multiple breach of contract claims for arbitration, but in March 2005 the arbitrator ruled that E-World had not broken the contract and owed nothing to On2. It was unclear to On2 and the arbitrator whether the Chinese government ever approved the EVD proposal as a standard.

HDV

The standard for consumer/prosumer HDTV acquisition is HDV (High Definition Video). It records MPEG-2 TS compressed HDTV video on standard DV media (regular DV or MiniDV cassette tape) and transfers it using FireWire. At this time all consumer/prosumer HD camcorders only record at a maximum resolution of 1440x1080. The image is then stretched from a 4:3 aspect ratio to a 16:9 aspect ratio. This means that even consumer or prosumer camcorders that claim 1080i resolution do not include the full horizontal resolution of 1,920 pixels per line. All major prosumer and consumer camcorder vendors provide cameras in this segment.

Broadcast-level HD camcorders and other cameras sometimes record to hard drives via a raw input/output or to tape or flash cards in formats that support higher bitrates than standard DV cassettes such a DVCPro HD. Recording at 100 Mbit/s, it uses a better color compression method to give better color representation than a standard MiniDV or other DV25 cassette and less compression artifacts.

Sony HDCAM tape format records 4:2:2 YPbPr 1920 x 1080P at up to 30 frame/s at 140 Mbit/s (using compression).

Sony HDCAM SR tape format records 10-bit 4:4:4 RGB 1920 x 1080P at up to 30 frame/s at 880 Mbit/s (4.2:1 compression).

Broadcasters

So far, only a handful of very minor broadcasters are seriously considering VC-1. It has been thought for a while that VC-1 was better adapted for the IPTV world than H.264, but press announcements have also already been made by some of the largest STB manufacturers like Amino, Pace, Kreatel demonstrating solutions based on H.264 standards.

The main areas of dominance of VC-1 seem to currently be in the Blu-ray Disc and, for obvious reason, the home PCs.

In fact, there is some concern in the community that Microsoft may have appropriated itself the H.264 standard, modified and improved upon it and are trying to resell the solution as VC-1, without providing dues to the MPEG LA. However, this is currently a rumor and has not yet been challenged.

Online HD

H.264 has made significant progress towards becoming a widespread video format on the internet thanks to Apple Computer's QuickTime software supporting the format as of version 7. Since many movie trailers are released in QuickTime format, when movie distributors started releasing HD trailers on the web the format they chose was H.264. H.264 is also used by some for encoding video podcasts. Some recorded shows, series and movies are shared via P2P-services.^[1]

Related Research Articles

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Windows Media Video (WMV) is a series of video codecs and their corresponding video coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows Media framework. WMV consists of three distinct codecs: The original video compression technology known as WMV, was originally designed for Internet streaming applications, as a competitor to RealVideo. The other compression technologies, WMV Screen and WMV Image, cater for specialized content. After standardization by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), WMV version 9 was adapted for physical-delivery formats such as HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc and became known as VC-1. Microsoft also developed a digital container format called Advanced Systems Format to store video encoded by Windows Media Video.

A camcorder is a self-contained portable electronic device with video and recording as its primary function. It is typically equipped with an articulating screen mounted on the left side, a belt to facilitate holding on the right side, hot-swappable battery facing towards the user, hot-swappable recording media, and an internally contained quiet optical zoom lens.

The Enhanced Versatile Disc (EVD) is an optical-medium-based digital audio/video format, developed by Beijing E-World, as a rival to the DVD to avoid the high royalty costs associated with the DVD format. Its development was supported by the Chinese government. While it was intended to replace the DVD standard in China by 2008, the format had failed to gain traction and ultimately faded into obsolescence.

On2 Technologies, formerly known as The Duck Corporation, was a small publicly traded company, founded in New York City in 1992 and headquartered in Clifton Park, New York, that designed video codec technology. It created a series of video codecs called TrueMotion.

Versatile Multilayer Disc was a high-capacity red-laser optical disc technology designed by New Medium Enterprises, Inc. VMD was intended to compete with the blue-laser Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD formats and had an initial capacity of up to 30 GB per side. At a physical level, VMD is identical to DVD, but with the possibility of using more layers.

SMPTE 421, informally known as VC-1, is a video coding format. Most of it was initially developed as Microsoft's proprietary video format Windows Media Video 9 in 2003. With some enhancements including the development of a new Advanced Profile, it was officially approved as a SMPTE standard on April 3, 2006. It was primarily marketed as a lower-complexity competitor to the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC standard. After its development, several companies other than Microsoft asserted that they held patents that applied to the technology, including Panasonic, LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics.

D-VHS is a digital video recording format developed by JVC, in collaboration with Hitachi, Matsushita, and Philips. The "D" in D-VHS originally stood for "Data", but JVC renamed the format as "Digital VHS". Released in December 1997, it uses the same physical cassette format and recording mechanism as S-VHS, but requires higher-quality and more expensive tapes and is capable of recording and displaying both standard-definition and high-definition content. The content data format is in MPEG transport stream, the same data format used for most digital television applications. It used MPEG-2 encoding and was standarized as IEC 60774-5.

XDCAM is a series of products for digital recording using random access solid-state memory media, introduced by Sony in 2003. Four different product lines – the XDCAM SD, XDCAM HD, XDCAM EX and XDCAM HD422 – differ in types of encoder used, frame size, container type and in recording media.

High-definition video is video of higher resolution and quality than standard-definition. While there is no standardized meaning for high-definition, generally any video image with considerably more than 480 vertical scan lines or 576 vertical lines (Europe) is considered high-definition. 480 scan lines is generally the minimum even though the majority of systems greatly exceed that. Images of standard resolution captured at rates faster than normal, by a high-speed camera may be considered high-definition in some contexts. Some television series shot on high-definition video are made to look as if they have been shot on film, a technique which is often known as filmizing.

1080p is a set of HDTV high-definition video modes characterized by 1,920 pixels displayed across the screen horizontally and 1,080 pixels down the screen vertically; the p stands for progressive scan, i.e. non-interlaced. The term usually assumes a widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9, implying a resolution of 2.1 megapixels. It is often marketed as Full HD or FHD, to contrast 1080p with 720p resolution screens. Although 1080p is sometimes referred to as 2K resolution, other sources differentiate between 1080p and (true) 2K resolution.

AVCHD is a file-based format for the digital recording and playback of high-definition video. It is H.264 and Dolby AC-3 packaged into the MPEG transport stream, with a set of constraints designed around the camcorders.

This article compares the technical specifications of multiple high-definition formats, including HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc; two mutually incompatible, high-definition optical disc formats that, beginning in 2006, attempted to improve upon and eventually replace the DVD standard. The two formats remained in a format war until February 19, 2008, when Toshiba, HD DVD's creator, announced plans to cease development, manufacturing and marketing of HD DVD players and recorders.

Blu-ray is a digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of high-definition video. The main application of Blu-ray is as a medium for video material such as feature films and for the physical distribution of video games for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. The name refers to the blue laser used to read the disc, which allows information to be stored at a greater density than is possible with the longer-wavelength red laser used for DVDs.

The following is a list of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC products and implementations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HD DVD</span> Obsolete optical disc format

HD DVD is an obsolete high-density optical disc format for storing data and playback of high-definition video. Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the standard DVD format, but lost to Blu-ray, supported by Sony and others.

PureVideo is Nvidia's hardware SIP core that performs video decoding. PureVideo is integrated into some of the Nvidia GPUs, and it supports hardware decoding of multiple video codec standards: MPEG-2, VC-1, H.264, HEVC, and AV1. PureVideo occupies a considerable amount of a GPU's die area and should not be confused with Nvidia NVENC. In addition to video decoding on chip, PureVideo offers features such as edge enhancement, noise reduction, deinterlacing, dynamic contrast enhancement and color enhancement.

.m2ts is a filename extension used for the Blu-ray disc Audio-Video (BDAV) MPEG-2 Transport Stream (M2TS) container file format. It is used for multiplexing audio, video and other streams, such as subtitles. It is based on the MPEG-2 transport stream container. This container format is commonly used for high definition video on Blu-ray Disc and AVCHD.

DVD-Video is a consumer video format used to store digital video on DVDs. DVD-Video was the dominant consumer home video format in Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia in the 2000s until it was supplanted by the high-definition Blu-ray Disc. Discs using the DVD-Video specification require a DVD drive and an MPEG-2 decoder. Commercial DVD movies are encoded using a combination of MPEG-2 compressed video and audio of varying formats. Typically, the data rate for DVD movies ranges from 3 to 9.5 Mbit/s, and the bit rate is usually adaptive. DVD-Video was first available in Japan on November 1, 1996, followed by a release on March 26, 1997 in the United States—to line up with the 69th Academy Awards that same day.

AVCREC is a format for recording and playback of high definition video in BDAV format using conventional DVD recordable discs as recording media. Presently, AVCREC is tightly integrated with ISDB broadcast standard and is not marketed outside Japan.

References

↑ "Will HDTV saturation be reached before the first channels are on air?" . Retrieved 2007-08-10.

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[1] "Will HDTV saturation be reached before the first channels are on air?" . Retrieved 2007-08-10.

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