T2 extreme edition in HD!!! - Page 3  

So in order to get 5.1 you have to have to run analog out? Or does WMP9 support SPDIF out? (I dont use WMP so I havent bothered with 9)

-pd

So here is my prediction - Microsoft has found the key to the Media business vault.

Bandwidth is highest prized asset in media, anything that squeezes more into it is GOLD. Disk space and DVD space is secondary benefit.

As long as WMP9 holds a 2:1 compression advantage, they will have broadcasters attention. As soon as the decoding hardware for WMP9 becomes mainstream - watch of WMP9 showing in all kinds of broadcasts - Internet first, then Cable and Satellite, and finally maybe even OTA.

They are already trying to get it into movie theaters.

And they will try to become the content standard for DVD's before Blu-ray gets more than 1% market penetration.

I have no affinity to Microsoft - I am just watching this with fascination.

5.1 output is currently only available through analog, and only through windows media player. playback on any other front end (zp, etc) that works based on directshow will not play back the full 5.1 - only the stereo. this is because multichannel wma doesnt work over directshow. requests to ms from blight et. al. have apparently gone unanswered as to whether (or if) the ds issue will be fixed.

right now, even if it was passed over spdif, it would not be readable by most receivers. wma is a proprietary format, and receivers dont have chips that can decode it. i am sure that will change soon enough, particularly as it seems ms is pushing wm9 (video and audio) very hard.

kevin

You guys are going to *really* regret buying the T2 Extreme Edition when the T2: Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious Edition becomes available in about 18 months :D

"Bandwidth is highest prized asset in media, anything that squeezes more into it is GOLD"

Absolutely. Disc storage is a only small part of the equation, and becoming less important all the time. MPEG2 is a huge bottleneck. The sooner we get away from it, the better.

Joe

Hmm, I am curious if that cmedia audio chipset, or if the NForce2 chipset could reencode this wma 5.1 out to AC3.

Otherwise I guess I may have to pick up a revolution, or something similar as drivers still seem to be a problem. doh.

-pd

I am a disk storage purist. I prefer larger disk storage to better compression.

Why?

I want to watch T2 in all its uncompressed 333 GB glory.

RE: MS vs BluRay:

What I would like to see is the COMBINATION of MS and BluRay - with that combination we could have 12 or 16 bit per channel color depth video without chrominance subsampling or aggressive compression (within WM9/10 context) and 7.1 32/192 discrete surround and yet perhaps having enough room for mobile device and standard definition and 720p and 1080i or 1080(24p) versions to fit on a single piece of media, with all the angles and audio tracks.

Can you say T2 Obscenely Gorgeously Overdone Edition?

Alec

Yes..:) efficient codec such as WM9 with large storage of medium such as Blu-ray seems like the best way to go.

I agree that Blu-ray and WM9 combo will be storage heaven.

Don't hold your breath for blu-ray though:

http://storage.ziffdavis.com/article...1016307,00.asp

16-bits per channel? Heck, why stop there. Future video cards are touting floating point RGB values.

Of course, it would help to have an MPEG standard that can take advantage of it (MPEG-FP?) -- and when one appears, I sure hope they don't constrain themselves with DVD's storage limits or data rates.

I don't yet have permission to give you the full stats on the WMV9 HD Encoding. As soon as I have that, I will post the details. But let me put it this way, I am feeling pretty good about our quality here :).

And yes, the resolution will definitely be higher than the Shadows clip.

As to other questions posted, D-VHS is usually encoded at 24 Mbit/sec using MPEG-2 (28 Mbit/sec with overhead). We would be using a fraction of this data rate. In general, WMV9 matches D-VHS at 7.5 to 8 Mbit/sec. Depending on the data rate of this disk, the quality should either match it or be close to D-VHS.

Note that as I have posted before, the choice of the data rate (as in commercial DVDs) is up to the content owner. In our case, there is also the variable of the actual resolution. Here, we work with the content owners to encode at different rates/resolutions that fit the amount of space they allocate. In other words, we balance the resolution and artifacts to arrive at the most pleasing picture. And no, we don't do the encoding but work closely with the outside post production shop.

I can also confirm that the 1080p designation is for the source, not WMV.

Our spec for 1080p is a 3Ghz PC with a proper graphics card (bus bandwidth to memory card is crucial here as all decoding is done in software and then a ton of data is moved from main memory to GPU frame buffer). Requirements for 720p are lower and is what was posted in this thread an our alias (2.4Ghz P4 typically). You can imagine the CPU requirements would be between these two extremes.


Amir
Microsoft

Amir,
Do you have any idea how long before hardware acceleration for WMV will becomes available

hgodwin

We are hoping for hardware acceleration later this year. But since I was wrong once when I predicted this before, you should take this with a grain of salt :).

BTW, I just played a sample of the T2 clip and it played just fine on my Dell C640, 2.2Ghz laptop! Not sure if the rest of the clip is the same level of difficulty but there is hope that a lot of PCs should be able to play this without too much difficulty, and without needing hardware acceleration (and no, this doesn't mean the clip is at 720p :D).

One more thing. Beyond the improved quality of this clip, another advantage of the WMV9 version is that you can store it in your hard disk/media library and run it from there. Kind of hard to do this with other formats -- including blue laser (which will most definitely not be transferable to PC hard disks). Looking forward to taking the T2 clip on my next business trip and make everyone jealous next to me on the airplane !

Amir
Microsoft

Amir,
Could it still be considered 1080p when you add back in the black bars that the WM9 version does not need to encode because they will be added back in when by the playback software?

hgodwin

"(and no, this doesn't mean the clip is at 720p :D ). "

So...is it 1080i/p or is it less than 720p?? The suspense is horrible.

Lets give Amir the benefit of the doubt

Amir has stated that the processing power is between those necessary for 720p and full 1080p. One must also rememeber that it doesnt necessarily need to be either 720p or 1080i/p due to the scaling possibility of computers.

hgodwin

Amir - since you are reading this thread, I hope you don't mind if I take the opportunity to bend your ear on a related matter.

If you have spent much time with DVDs, and I suspect you have. You know about the difference between widescreen and fullscreen (some call it foolscreen). The spec for regular DVDs includes the option of a pan'n'scan track - the idea being that you can have a movie encoded with the correct widescreen aspect ratio on the disc, but during playback you have the option to crop it to fit a regular 4:3 display in a smart-way - the cropping will track across the complete widescreen in a way that keeps the 4:3 image centered on the action in the frame.

For some reason, this pan'n'scan track option has been implemented in few, if any DVD titles or consumer DVD players. Instead we get studios issuing two different editions, - widescreen and foolscreen. That has got to be wasteful of resources, not to mention confusing, if not down right aggravating to the consumer.

In your group's planning for world domination of the high-def video market, it would be a really good idea if you were to learn from this particular mistake of the consumer DVD market. As part of whatever spec MS comes up with, make encoding in the original aspect ratio mandatory and make a pan'n'scan track mandatory - even if it just a dumb track that sits centered on the widescreen image.

As it is now, some good movies get released in only one version -- 4:3 foolscreen because a bean-counter somewhere who doesn't care a thing about artistic vision or intgerity thinks the he'll make more money for the studio by butchering the DVD release. The amount of good that such a requirement in a mainstream video forma would do for the artistic principles of the film industry is huge. Not to mention the major good-will that it would generate among sophisticated buyers, which is certainly your target audience with these initial releases.

OK, guys. I shouldn't say this but I will. The resolution will be >= 720p. Is this enough to have you wait for the final news :)?

As for JerryW's comment, you are right that DVD spec allows for dynamic pan/scan at playback. But as you also rightfully note, it is a feature that is left unused since a human being can usually do a better job than a DVD player in manipulating the video frame. Higher quality resizers can also be used at encoding time than the cheaper version in the player, leading to more consistent results.

Given the experience with DVDs, I do not expect content owners to want to use dynamic pan/scan even if we offered. Fortunately, the current target is widescreen presentation so for the time being at least, this should not a concern. But your point is well taken.

Amir
Microsoft

Amir, Please can you pass on the requirement for some basic AR control before this title is released...

It will kill me to have HD content and not be able to use it in my HT !!!

Phat Preddy, what does AR control mean

hgodwin

AR = aspect ratio

I can wait, but just for fun I'm going to take a guess. I'll put my chips down on 2.35:1 with either 1360x768 or 1600x900. One reason I say 1600x900 is that I checked my work PC and it supports this. Also, I think it has a lot of marketing advantages. Even math impaired people could figure out that 1600x900 would fit the 16x9 TV that they just bought.

The marketing angle I would take if selling 1600x900 is that 1280x720 isn't enough data for the great images and 1920x1080 is too much for most of today's processors, but 1600x900 is perfect. So, you should want 1600x900 :) Just a wild guess.

Amir,

If Microsoft keeps getting these sources out I will support it by buying a fast enough PC, buying the WM9 products, etc. I was watching an IMAX DVD tonight (Mountain Gorillas) and thinking about the fact that the image quality of most IMAX DVDs seems lower than film based DVDs, yet HD video seems clearer than film. As we've seen around here, the preferences for video look vs film look are very personal, but most people who don't know a lot about this stuff see the video based material and then wonder why the film based stuff doesn't look as good (I tend to show film based stuff first so that I don't get complaints). I think one way for Microsoft to get people to really be impressed with their stuff would be to release some video based DVDs. This could be nature stuff, documentaries, etc. Basically, the kind of stuff that gets shown on Discovery Channel or IMAX movies. Then people could say, "Wow, this looks way better than anything I've ever seen" instead of "Wow, this looks better than any film based stuff I've ever seen". Animations could do the same thing, but they already look great from regular DVD.

BTW: I hold some shootouts at my house up in Bothell with different projectors. I have a 116" wide screen, a 1360x1024 D-ILA, a 1024x768 HT1000, a couple of 30k VCRs with about 100 tapes of HD material, and I'm planning on holding a comparison with somebody else's InFocus 7200 in a couple of weeks or so. If you are interested in seeing these or some of your stuff on them just shoot me an email.

Thanks,
Darin

Your CSII decoder on your REVO will decode it from the DD-EX mixdown. It should sound great.

I'm still surprised and kind of bummed that the Extreme edition doesn't have DTS ES 6.1.

Amirm -

Is it bigger than a bread box? ;)

But as a wild guess, I'd go with my wide PAL forecast again, like I did with Shadows of Motown. But this time maybe in a 2.35 ratio of 1360x576 or something. I think there is a push to implement Macrovison for 576p resolutions and the horizontal dot rate can easily be jiggered for compatibility with progressive TV's electronic requirements when required.

And that's more pixels than 1280x720 with the black bars cropped off.

- Tom (another 720p@24 fan)

edit: and 576 lines happens to be the 16:9 area within a 1024x768p standard 4:3 resolution.

And this is what scares the bejeezus out of me. I don't care what the codec is. Better than MPEG-2 is fine, but... OTA HD canNOT take another speedbump and survive and anything that holds back progress to blue laser is a disservice to the consumer technology progression. And yes, hypothetically I would love to see a 720p (or 768p) BluRay WM9 movie with AR control on my plasma. The nearly lossless experience would be a wild ride.

Tim

I've been wondering how they will handle the anamorphic AR of the HD version, too.

For talking purposes, lets say the resolution of the T2 HD WMP9 DVD will be 1280x720 square pixels.

If the HD T2 release will be truly anamorphic, this means that the 2.35 movie will be vertically stretched to fill the 1280x720 pixels in the frame.

If I set my desktop to 1280x720 and send this to my PLV60 16:9 LCD projector, (where it would be scaled to 768p of course) the image would still look tall and skinny.

If I used aspect ratio contol on the PC to correct the image, I would lose vertical resolution.

The aspect ratio controls in the projector are disabled for 720p inputs (and would also result in a loss of vertical resolution if the AR controls weren't disabled).

I guess someone with a 16:9 projector and Panamorph 1.78 lens (or a CRT) would be able to correct the vertical dimension and retain vertical anamorphic resolution.

I just don't see how those of us with fixed pixel 16:9 displays of 720p or higher would be able to retain all the resolution in an anamorphic 2.35 transfer framed in a 16:9 pixel resolution.

And to be legally called an "HD" release, there has got to be at least 921,600 pixels in the image (letterboxed or not).

So, either we're going to get some funky non-standard resolution, or it's not going to be anamorphic, but letterboxed 2.35 within a 1270x720 resolution (this is OK with me), or some of us will be forced to re-scale vertically in the computer, losing vertical resolution (which I guess is no worse than the 2.35 letterboxed-within-16:9 option).

Amir,

please answer rgb's question, but then please answer my question

Will hyperthreading technology help when playing T2? Just out of curiosity....

Would an SMP (dual CPU) motherboard help accelerate WMP9- i.e. does WMP9 have SMP optimizations?