http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/18/tv-calibration-expert-joe-kanes-take-on-high-def-video-format/ Engadget HD Comments for TV calibration expert Joe Kane's take on high-def video formats http://hd.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://hd.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2009 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/18/tv-calibration-expert-joe-kanes-take-on-high-def-video-format/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/18/tv-calibration-expert-joe-kanes-take-on-high-def-video-format/Jul 18th 2006 2:09PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/18/tv-calibration-expert-joe-kanes-take-on-high-def-video-format/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/18/tv-calibration-expert-joe-kanes-take-on-high-def-video-format/Jul 18th 2006 2:24PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/18/tv-calibration-expert-joe-kanes-take-on-high-def-video-format/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/18/tv-calibration-expert-joe-kanes-take-on-high-def-video-format/Jul 18th 2006 2:38PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/18/tv-calibration-expert-joe-kanes-take-on-high-def-video-format/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/18/tv-calibration-expert-joe-kanes-take-on-high-def-video-format/
Joe said:
1. Many TV's that are labeled as HD Ready aren't really HDTV capable. That's absolutely true, but he didn't explain why. Just because a TV can except the input doesn't mean that it can display it in all it's glory. I'm sure many people came away confused by what he was trying to say.

2. He said that HD-DVD's can deliver much higher image quality than terrestrial or satellite broadcast. Once again that's absolutely true, but he didn't explain why. To the general public HDTV is HDTV. They don't realize that broadcasters need to compress the source material to conserve bandwidth.

3. He implied that Blu-ray is an MPEG-2 only format. He did qualify it slightly by saying that the initial Sony movies would be using MPEG-2, but he didn't explain that Blu-ray also supports H.264 and VC-1.

He's a very plugged in guy, but I don't think it was a very good interview.]]>Jul 18th 2006 3:25PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/18/tv-calibration-expert-joe-kanes-take-on-high-def-video-format/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/18/tv-calibration-expert-joe-kanes-take-on-high-def-video-format/Greed? HD-DVD is all about greed. First they tried to use a red laser instead of blue. Then the powers-that-be claimed it would cost too much to make discs to the specifications of Blu-Ray. Then, to shore up its patent gravy-train, Toshiba sold itself out to Microsoft like a $5 street walker to back the format in exchange for not using Java for the menu screen graphics and to pimp VC-1 as its defacto codec. Does anyone really think H.264 is going to be widely used on HD-DVD titles? Dream on. Sure, Sony is going to double-dip by shipping MPEG2 encoded discs until their Blu-Ray player hits the market, but you can best bet that with the influence of Sony and Apple on the format, there will be relatively few Blu-Ray titles shipping encoded in the inferior-to-H.264 VC-1.]]>Jul 18th 2006 5:21PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/18/tv-calibration-expert-joe-kanes-take-on-high-def-video-format/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/18/tv-calibration-expert-joe-kanes-take-on-high-def-video-format/Jul 18th 2006 7:16PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/18/tv-calibration-expert-joe-kanes-take-on-high-def-video-format/http://hd.engadget.com/2006/07/18/tv-calibration-expert-joe-kanes-take-on-high-def-video-format/
Apple has a better track record at backing quality than Microsoft. Dolby's AAC audio format - which Apple uses for the iTunes Store files - is certainly better than Microsoft's tin can sounding WMA audio format. And most people would prefer Quicktime7 content over Windows Media9 (aka VC-1) content if they were shown side-by-side.

As for DVD-RAM, plenty of companies supported it. I seem to recall that Creative shipped such drives as well. At least Apple backed DVD-R (instead of DVD+R) which proved to be more compatible with most consumer DVD players, unlike the other scheme (DVD+R) that was backed by, yep, you guessed it, Microsoft.
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