| Video Noise April 2005
New Home-Theater Disc Formats
CDs and DVDs are the only disc formats most people know
about, but there are others. DVD-Audio and SACD are high-resolution audio surround-sound
formats (except for some SACDs, which are two-channel only). DTS 5.1 music discs have been
around for four or five years; they’re a lot like DVD-A discs, but playback of them
requires a DTS surround processor rather than a DVD-A decoder. DVD-A sounds noticeably
better than DTS music discs. And still other, newer disc formats are appearing with
surprising speed. Here’s what you can find now, or later in 2005.
Windows Media 9 HD
Windows Media 9 is a special DVD format capable of
delivering high-definition video resolution in 720p or 1080p from common computer DVD
drives. WM9 brings MPEG-like compression to HD video to reduce huge, uncompressed HDTV
files to sizes that can be stored on a standard DVD and played by a conventional,
red-laser DVD drive. The only way to play these discs is on a computer running Windows XP
and Windows Media 9 or higher, with a compatible DVD drive. Microsoft is selling a limited
selection of HD Windows Media 9 discs -- a few movies and a number of IMAX titles. So far,
the prices of these discs are no higher than those of conventional DVDs.
HDTV fans may find WM9 HD interesting enough to experiment
with, but the few titles available will limit the format to little more than novelty
status for the foreseeable future. The video quality of WM9 HD is far higher than that of
a DVD image displayed on the same computer monitor. It takes a moderately powerful PC to
play these HD discs without hiccups. See Microsoft’s system requirements for details.
DualDisc
 A DualDisc is DVD-Audio/Video on one
side, conventional CD on the other side. The marketing thinking behind this is that you
can buy a single disc and play its CD side in your car or Walkman CD player (is anyone
still using these?), and its DVD-A/V side in your home DVD player, with the benefit of
better sound quality and, possibly, video content. DualDiscs are just a tiny bit thicker
than normal DVDs and CDs, and won’t play in some players, though most can handle them
with no problem.
HD DVD
 The HD DVD format has not yet been
released in North America, but is coming later in 2005. It requires a new HD DVD
player that will also play DVDs and, presumably, CDs. The higher capacity needed for the
highest-quality HD video image is enabled by the use of blue lasers (all earlier
optical-disc formats use red lasers). Using a DVD player and monitor with DVI or HDMI
interfaces will provide an all-digital video data path for images of the highest quality.
Blu-ray Disc
 This
HD optical-disc format also headed for North America in 2005, in direct competition with
HD DVD. The discs will require a new player with a blue laser, though Blu-ray is
incompatible with HD DVD. Many manufacturers of home and computer electronics support
this format, though the film studios’ support of Blu-ray seems to lag behind their
support of HD DVD. Format wars are hard on consumers, and we’re about to have
another one. Blu-ray has more capabilities and capacity than HD DVD, but there’s no
telling if this will be a factor in the outcome of the war. With a DVI- or HDMI-equipped
DVD player and video display, Blu-ray also offers an all-digital video signal path.
EVD -- Chinese Red Laser HD
China, reluctant to let go just yet of their immense
production capacity for red-laser and low-cost DVD players, are fighting blue-laser HD
with their own red-laser HD format. They call it EVD, for Enhanced Video Disc (or Enhanced
Versatile Disc), and are already selling DVD players for less than $200, packaged with two
to eight free HD movies. This pricing far undercuts Blu-ray and HD DVD players, which
have been on sale in Japan for almost a year at prices well over $1000. The Chinese system
uses video compression similar to what is used for conventional DVD-Video compression.
It’s too early to tell if this fourth HD optical-disc format will become available in
North America, but China is already poised to release the second generation of these
players, with improved video compression.
Five hundred movies in EVD format are expected to be
released by the end of 2005, selling in China for 28 Yuan each (about $3.40 USD). I was
unable to determine if these were Hollywood movies or original Chinese titles.
...Doug Blackburn
db@hometheatersound.com |
