scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> Anyway, there are also compression algorithms that are a lot more efficient 
> than the one used on DVDs. So in theory you could get DVD quality with a lot 
> less than 9 MBit/s if you use a better compression algorithm.

  MPEG-4 Part 10 (also know as H.264) can compress DVD video to at least
1/4th of the size without any visible loss of quality, so what you are
saying is certainly true.

  However, MPEG-4 is still such a new technology that not many companies
nor devices support it well yet. (H.264 also requires quite a lot more
computing power to decompress than MPEG-2, which means that viewing
devices need to be more expensive.) Of course since we are talking about
internet broadcasting here, and thus people wathing on their PC's, that's
mostly a non-issue.

  Digital TV could have benefited from using MPEG-4 instead of MPEG-2, but
it didn't. It's a bummer.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message