[tluxon]

With MPEG-4 allowing the same quality (apparently) video as MPEG-2 in a fraction of the space, will DVR's ever use that format? It seems to encode quite quickly (VDub with DivX 5.04 codec) and yield very good results. What are the barriers to this being a viable format for streaming HDTV?


Tim

 

[rugby]

I would like to see mpeg-4 support HOWEVER, not DivX as it's not true mpeg-4. I want it to be as complian as possible and not some hacked up version.

 

[seank]

I think MPEG4 compression takes more processing power. However, I think a great feature would be to record in MPEG2, but the PVR could recompress existing recordings to MPEG4 in its spare time, thus resulting in tremendous disk space saving.


-Sean

 

[j.m.]

Personally, until such time as MPEG-4 support becomes part of the official next gen DVD format and is widely supported on standalone players, I would rather have MPEG-2 recordings and a larger hard drive in my RTV. That way, it is easy for me to archive recordings on DVD+/-Rs for playback on any DVD player.

 

[bob645]

Check out this post on Slashdot:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=61935&cid=5806612


He is saying that MPEG4 is dead, this H.264, or Advanced Video Coding he is talking about seems like the answer.


But processing power has a long way to go before any real-time encoding will be possible:

Quote:

My dual Xeon 2.8Ghz takes around nine hours (yes, I said hours) to encode a single ten second 1080i sequence

I do like the encoed in the backgound idea, even if they manage to get VBR MPEG2. Still would be a plus.

 

[bwall]

The fact that a super-fast general purpose processor (i.e. Xeon) takes 9 hours to encode a particular video codec means nothing.


The general purpose processor in a ReplayTV unit would take a month to encode an hour of video into MPEG2. It's the MPEG2 encoder chip that allows video to be encoded in real time. A special purpose encoder/decoder chip could be made that could handle the newer formats (MPEG4 or H.264 or whatever) in real time as well.


Apex is going to start selling a PVR in a few weeks that can encode MPEG4/Divx real time for less than $200......

 

[TomCat]

The Xeon statement doesn't mean nothing. Its an example of what kind of horsepower is needed to do a particular task. But you are correct in saying that this is not relevant to the "processor" in the Replay STB, if you mean that we may be confusing the processor that runs the OS with the processor that runs the encode/decode circuitry.


Apex. Intriguing. Links, please!

 

[Ol Dirty Wes]

unpopular but true belief:


New Windows Media Codec is as good if not better than DIVX

 

[rugby]

Quote:

Originally posted by Ol Dirty Wes unpopular but true belief: New Windows Media Codec is as good if not better than DIVX

I won't dispute this statement, but WMV codecs are pretty much single-platform. Sure, MS makes Media Player for Mac, but it won't touch a lot of these newer files.


Take a look at 3ivX for a good crossplatform codec.