I am not sure why there is all this MPEG2 bashing lately when talking of the next gen optical formats. I was at CES last year and all the 'high end' new codecs (VC1/WMV and H.264) looked awful compared to good ol MPEG2. Mostly the problem is the content producers seem to think they need to bit starve their content with MPEG4 codecs. I saw one demo of Blu-Ray with all three codecs - MPEG2 at 25Mbps, and WMV/VC1 and H.264 each at 12Mbps. The MPEG2 feed looked far better with no false contouring (banding) or macroblocking artifacts. Who cares if it uses more space on a 25GB platter. Burn it all, I don't care but I want clean video. MPEG2 is very mature and there are excellent hardware encoders. It will take years for the other codecs to be tweaked to match the quality and consistancy of MPEG2.
Let the hive mind of Engadget get that for you.
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