High-definition pre-recorded media and compression
Although there was disagreement about physical format technology, both the HD DVD and Blu-ray factions selected the same three video codecs to be mandatory in their designs: specifically, MPEG-2 Part 2, VC-1, and H.264/AVC.
Microsoft is marketing its high-definition Windows Media 9 Series codec as WMV HD.
As of November 2003, this format required a significant amount of processing power to encode and decode, and the only commercially available movie that used the codec was the Terminator 2: Extreme Edition DVD (see 1).
As of the start of 2005, Microsoft recommends a 3.0 GHz processor with 512 MB of RAM and a 128 MB video card for 1080p playback on Windows XP, though there are now commercially available DVD players, like the KiSS DP-600, that will play back WMV HD DVD ROMs in high definition on HDTV sets.
H.264 as a standard has already been selected and adopted by the biggest broadcasters in the U.S. (DirecTV, DISH Network) and Europe (BSkyB, Premiere, Canal+, TPS, ...).
VP6 was reported by On2 to have been chosen by China for use in the Enhanced Versatile Disc (EVD) format initiative.
As China starts to dominate manufacturing of TV and DVD units, the country's choice of standards becomes more important for everyone.
Very few titles were made available in any market for this format, although it is presumed that many would be needed to drive purchase of incompatible players.
It has been thought for a while that VC-1 was better adapted for the IPTV world than H.264, but press announcements have also already been made by some of the largest STB manufacturers like Amino, Pace, Kreatel demonstrating solutions based on H.264 standards.
The main areas of dominance of VC-1 seem to currently be in the Blu-ray Disc and, for obvious reason, the home PCs.
In fact, there is some concern in the community that Microsoft may have appropriated itself the H.264 standard, modified and improved upon it and are trying to resell the solution as VC-1, without providing dues to the MPEG LA.
