Sony sticks with MPEG-2 for Blu-Ray
By Kevin C. Tofel 
posted Nov 30th 2005 3:38PM
posted Nov 30th 2005 3:38PM
Hope you like oldies but goodies in terms of technology since Sony has made this initial decision for Blu-Ray
movies. Part of me is surprised that Sony would go with the eleven-year
old compression technique of MPEG-2 when they could realize increased
compression with MPEG-4 or H.264. Those related technologies generally maintain video quality while taking up less space.On the other hand, I want to say this is a smart decision by Sony. MPEG-2 is currently in widespread usage: think DVDs, over the air HDTV, and satellite signals just to name a few places. So if it's not broken, why fix it? Additionally, with the large storage capacity of a Blu-Ray disk, perhaps compression and file sizes aren't the first priority.
Again, I'm still on the fence here, so help me decide: was this a wise move by Sony or should they adapt newer and more advanced compression techniques for Blu-Ray?
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This is just aweful. I reference a typical HD broadcast. MPEG2 at 19 Megabits suffers bad artifacting in fast motion shots, and changes in a scenes lighting. Makes you go from a clear as hell picture, to one that looks like you're using a videophone from 5 years ago.
Screw the savings on storage for a minute(altough it is kinda nice), MPEG-4 h.264 has much more advanced processing. MPEG-2 was developed for DVD, when digital HD was being worked on, appearantly they were also working on a new MPEG standard, MPEG-3 because they new that MPEG-2 wasn't up to par. MPEG-3 was later ditched. In the end, someone just figured the quality problems were acceptable at the 19 Megabits that fit inside of a VHF or UHF broadcast channel.
If just guessing here, but unless the movies on Blu-ray in MPEG-2 are of at least like 24 Megabit streams, and the encoder does like 15 passes, I don't want it. MPEG-4 and its successors are the future, and to not use it, means that Sony is really screwing up all around. Videophiles are going to buy HD-DVD and Blu-ray for the first 3-4 years, the average consumer thinks a regular DVD with an upconversion player looks pretty damn good on an HD set. Then again, the wow factor of the new stuff for people may just be the color depth, and they may forget about all the macroblocking and motion artifacts/blurring, right?
This is like when all DVDs were supposed to be anamorphic, but not everyone did. Now they do it... bastards...
Sony has never been one to adopt "other" people's standards very quickly. That said I don't see a huge problem with sticking with MPEG2. Right now OTA caps off around 20Mbs, there's no reason they could increase that number to deliver higher quality video content. The artifact problems on MPEG2 (when using high bit rates) are still present in MPEG4, such as flashing lights. Going the route of MPEG4 would mean more development in H.264 decoders to produce good quality images at the same level of MPEG2.
That all said I think they should have pushed for H.264 as I'd like to see it more commonplace. It makes a good replacement for MPEG2 and is more scalable (video iPod to HD).
In my opinion this is a really dumb move given how the Blu-Ray group spends morning, noon and night touting how they have greater capacity than the HD-DVD group. If they plan on adding 50% more space than need-be, what's the point of Blu-Ray? If I'm in the HD-DVD camp I send out a release explaining how H.264 and their capacity can't be matched by RB and MPEG2, etc.
My guess is that they want to reduce development time/cost. If they can shoehorn in the old MPEG2 compression then they get Blu-Ray on the shelves sooner and cheaper (likely). Someone in their finance department probably gets a promotion out of it too.... Somehow it doesn't seem right though.
Wow, talk about not be educated. #1 I can't believe you don't know what MPEG3 is.
Look it up buddy, your wayyy off.
Actually the article is talking about Sony Pictures, the movie studio (Columbia/Tri-Star) and not Sony Electronics. Blu-Ray supports h.264 and VC-1, but the Sony movie studio will be using MPEG-2 for THEIR movies. Other studios can still use the better codecs. One reasoning behind this is likely because they know how to work with MPEG-2, (transfers in the early days of DVD are terrible compared to now) so out of the gate, Sony's movies will look perfect on Sony's format. And they wait a couple years to get the kinks out of h.264 etc. then rerelease the same movies in 'new improved bitrate/superbit/ultra definition/new transfers because we know you'll pay for them' editions. And also if the other studios follow their lead, they'd just forget about HD-DVD as (hopefully to Sony) they would have to then encode each of their movies twice. And you know how they like to save a buck.
Yeah, the article is just talking about Sony Pictures. Blu-Ray will still support the other MPEG-4 formats, but Sony Pictures have decided that for their initial releases they'll use MPEG-2. The quality will still be top-notch but I have a feeling that there won't be many extras (or they won't be in HD). As soon as you need to release 2+ hour movies and also have a lot of extras MPEG-2 will not suffice. This is when the newer codecs will come in handy (same quality much less space).
As far as MPEG-2 HD video quality goes, it can be completely flawless given enough bandwidth. I have movies on DVHS in MPEG-2 1080i format that look totally amazing. Fast motion doesn't break up the image one tiny bit. So, given enough bandwidth, there is no noticable difference between MP2 and MP4. MP4 gets good when you care about storage space (like putting HD on a red-laser DVD-9), and really only then. Look, the spec for MP4 allows for still graphics superimposed on the moving image that are rendered in the processor but defined in the bitstream--sure, mp2 doesn't have anything like that, but then again, I just want to watch a movie in this case.
This is another move to by Sony the ensures that Blu-Ray will never become a mainstream technology. Sony is on a roll with terrible decisions. First installing malware one people computers and now this? Plus, unlike HD-DVD there will be a very resticted DRM. What's amazing, thanks to the choice HD-DVD with h.264 has more video storage at the same quality than Blu-ray even tho blue ray has more phisical storage
Let's do the time line. Blu-ray comes out at the end of 2006, it takes a year for the low priced units to come out (2007) and another year for a breadth of titles to launch. Does anyone really believe that we wont be getting most of HD movies via IP (internet protocol) by 2008/2009???? Why would I ever buy one of these?
the processing power required to decode h.264 is huge. And that's just to decode at regular play speed. The nature of the codec makes the hardware and software requirement for rewinding and scrubbing extremely high. consider the 5G ipod for example. With mpeg-2, you get low cost hardware requirements and crystal clear rewinding and scrubbing.
when you jump to a particular spot in the stream, with mpeg2, you're guaranteed an i-frame. that means no lag, no wait. with h.264, the wait time is dependent on how far back the last i-frame is from your deisred spot, and how fast the hardware can process the p-frames up until your desired spot. this puts the owness on the encoder and the middleware programmer for user satisfaction. not a good idea if bandwidth/storage isn't your primary concern.
Are you MS/Mac fanboys at hdbeat on crack!? Mpeg4 is still on the spec list. And content released is based on what the studio releases.
P.S by the way only SONY ENTERTAINMENT chose to release it on Mpeg, you retards, so this ain't Blu-Ray news
The less compression the better. I am quite sure they will be using at least 36mbps rates to create the 1080P video and i am quite confident that it will be flawless (including explosions, fireworks etc).
MPEG-2 is the way to go. I'm certain if you put the same movie in both compression formats next to each other, the MPEG-2 will look superior. I want to be able to fast forward and rewind looking at a crystal clear picture and frame by frame slow motion is also something i do not wish to sacrifice. I don't know what other peoples problems are with MPEG-2 but it's in the Industry's advantage to keep movies in this format as they will make for bigger files which will deter people from downloading online (at least for a little while). I wouldn't want to waste 50gigs of bandwidth to download a single movie... I'd rather pay 25$ and buy it. 10gigs however might make me reconsider...
The less compression the better. I am quite sure they will be using at least 36mbps rates to create the 1080P video and i am quite confident that it will be flawless (including explosions, fireworks etc).
MPEG-2 is the way to go. I'm certain if you put the same movie in both compression formats next to each other, the MPEG-2 will look superior. I want to be able to fast forward and rewind looking at a crystal clear picture and frame by frame slow motion is also something i do not wish to sacrifice. I don't know what other peoples problems are with MPEG-2 but it's in the Industry's advantage to keep movies in this format as they will make for bigger files which will deter people from downloading online (at least for a little while). I wouldn't want to waste 50gigs of bandwidth to download a single movie... I'd rather pay 25$ and buy it. 10gigs however might make me reconsider...