My gripe with extras, MPEG-II

I got an issue with the extras on HD DVD movies. Its not that most of them aren't high definition, its that they all seem to be encoded in MPEG-II.


Why? VC-1 has proven to be a much more efficient codec, in the XBox 360 market place movies which are 2 hours long usually take up less than 2 GB, many of the movies on XBL only use slightly more than 1 GB. Since the MPEG-II version of the movies take up more than 7 GBs of space on a DVD disc.


Here is an Example


The Departed

The DVD side of the HD DVD/DVD Combo format uses 7.89 GB


The only extra on the DVD is a trailer, but there are 3 Audio tracks, so obviously this uses additional memory since the XBox live download has 5.1 english only, so being generous subtract ~1 GB from the DVD to compensate for the two addional audio tracks and trailer. Someone can do the math if they wish but I don't feel like doing it right now. So lets call The Departed on DVD with 5.1 audio 6.5 GB


However The Departed on XBox live uses 1.7 GB using the VC-1 codec, on XBL it also has 5.1 audio.


So if a movie has 151 minutes of extra (length of The Departed) it will take up more than 6.5 GBs using MPEG-II, but using VC-1 the same extras will shrink that file size down to a mere 1.7 GB, this would allow 5 GBs to be freed. What could the additonal memory be used for? How about more movies with Dolby TrueHD, how about 7.1 24/48 Dolby TrueHD tracks?



Dolby TrueHD (numbers from avsforum user bfdtv)

2 hours @ 5.1 16/48 TrueHD = 1.26 Gbytes @ 1.4 Mbps ABR (used on Warner HD-DVD releases)

2 hours @ 5.1 24/48 TrueHD = 3.06 Gbytes @ 3.4 Mbps ABR (used on recent HD-DVD releases from Universal)

3 hours @ 5.1 24/48 TrueHD = 4.59 Gbytes @ 3.4 Mbps ABR

2 hours @ 7.1 24/48 TrueHD = 4.23 Gbytes @ 4.7 Mbps ABR

3 hours @ 7.1 24/48 TrueHD = 6.35 Gbytes @ 4.7 Mbps ABR


So it doesn't even need to be using VC-1 for 151 minutes worth of extras, using VC-1 in lieu of MPEG-II for a mere 75 minutes worth of extras allows more than enough space for Warner's standard Dolby TrueHD 16/48 tracks, and since the 30 GB HD DVD discs are almost never completely filled up it would allow for 24/48 Dolby TrueHD tracks to be used, or even 7.1 Dolby TrueHD tracks.


I hope this sounds less like a rant against MPEG-II and more like a battle cry for VC-1 to be used more often. According to Highdefdigest almost every HD DVD which has extras has them encoded in MPEG-II, it is time for studios to change that.