HD DVD Hollywood Showcase

[Gregg Lengling]

By Gary Reber


 
Press Briefing

At an HD DVD Hollywood Showcase press briefing on September 15, 2004 at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, a number of executives from Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo, Memory-Tech, and other companies. presented a progress report on the HD DVD format.

High-definition DVD––HD DVD––is the next-generation DVD format that Toshiba and NEC proposed to the DVD Forum, the international association of over 220 consumer electronics, entertainment, software, and other related companies around the world, in August 2002.

The DVD Forum endorsed and approved the physical specifications for read-only HD DVD-ROM in February 2004, and the specification of Version 1.0 was released in June 2004. Also in February, the Forum approved Version 0.9 of the HD DVD-Rewritable disc, with final approval expected this fall. HD DVD-R, a one-time recordable format, is also expected to receive final approval within 2004.

At the press briefing it was announced that ALL specifications for the HD DVD format will be completed by February 2005!

A summary of the HD DVD video specifications was provided:

• New AACS (Advanced Access Content System) copy protection will be applied.

• The advanced efficient codecs will be applied to standard-definition content and high-definition content.

• New codecs will extend record time two to three times.

• The new video specification will be applied to both red-laser DVD and blue-laser DVD.

• Advanced features such as Web connectivity will be introduced.

• Three video codecs (MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC, VC-1) are mandatory.

• Three audio codecs (Dolby Digital+, DTS++, MLP) will be selected as mandatory.

Hisashi Yamada of Toshiba announced that in the year 2005, Toshiba will launch the world's first HD DVD products to the market. "We are very confident that everyone will be able to have hardware and software products ready," said Yamada.

Masato Otsuka of Memory-Tech Corporation announced that MTC had developed a DVD-HD DVD compatible manufacturing process for commercial mass production, which achieves the same level of the production yield, quality, and cost efficiency as DVD with a 3.5-second production cycle of HD DVD dual layer (3.0-second production cycle for DVD-9). MTC has achieved a 5-minute setting change between DVD and HD DVD manufacturing with a 90 percent plus production yield (HD DVD Dual Layer) without significant modification to existing DVD manufacturing equipment. This production cycle has a monthly capacity of 4 million units. Thus, "there is no additional cost and risk for adoption of the HD-capable next-generation package media format," said Otsuka. Otsuka also stated that in October, MTC will achieve a less than 3.0-second production cycle for HD DVD dual layer production.

Jordi Ribas, Director, Windows Media at Microsoft Corporation, reviewed the implementation of Windows Media Video 9 or VC-1 (formerly VC-9), which was developed by Microsoft and standardized by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE). He noted that the MPEG-2 video codec has been the key enabling technology for digital TV and DVD, but it is over 12 years old. He also pointed to HD DVD's adoption of H.264 (aka MPEG-4, MPEG-4 Part 10), which has been developed and standardized by the ITU and MPEG, in addition to VC-1 and MPEG-2 for backward compatibility. H.264 and VC-1 are state-of-the-art video codecs, which have been judged to achieve significantly higher quality than MPEG-2 at the DVD Forum Ah-08 codec tests. Ribas noted that MPEG was approved in July 2004 as an amendment (FRExt) to H.264 (High Profile), which improves both coding efficiency and picture quality. SMPTE also standardized an enhanced VC-1 Advanced profile, which Microsoft released as part of the recent Windows Media Player 10. Ribas said the DVD Forum was currently studying H.264 High and WMV-9 (VC-1) Advanced for adoption.

Yoshio Iwasa of Sanyo Electric announced that Sanyo has decided to adopt the HD DVD standard promoted in the DVD Forum. Sanyo will develop next-generation DVD players and recorders using the HD DVD standard and aims to first launch HD DVD players in Japan in 2005, followed by recorders in 2006, and then expand to the North American market.
Taizo Nishimuro of Toshiba Corporation introduced Warren Lieberfarb of WNL & Associates, whose presentation on "Future Content Business" follows.



You will find this complete article in our "Subscriber Site" or in issue 90 of Widescreen Review Magazine.

[StarvingForHDTV]

Enough talk already.....I just want the product.