Terminator 2 in Hi Def, upgrade your CPU

[Pradeep]

http://dvd.ign.com/articles/393/393023p1.html

Included in the new T2:Extreme Edition is a WMP9 file that will enable you to see the complete movie in HD, using your existing DVD-ROM drive. You will need a minimum of a Pee4 1.8GHz (and I think that is a very low estimate). Sadly my laptop won't be able to make the grade. But it should look great on the dual Athlon.

Seems like a good stop gap tech until HD-DVD using blue laser comes to the market affordably.

 

[blakerwry]

I'd imagine this codec could replace DIVX in the consumer market if done right.

Personally, I don't think DVD's look all that great. It seems like alot(more than 3/4ths) of DVD's I own are poorly made (ie, they *could* look better with the same file sizes if the people who made them had taken more time to do things properly.)

The problem I see with DIVX being a high definition codec is it seems that by default the DIVX codec is made to not look perfect, it is instead made to be the best compromise between quality and file size. I don't beleive the same is true for all Mpeg4 codecs though.

 

[SteveC]

Microsoft has some samples on their site, here (IE & WMP9 needed), of 720p video encoded to WMP9 format. To me, there are more motion artifacts visible than on true HDTV. I would put the quality somewhere in between DVD and HDTV. The major drawback is most people will have to view it on their PCs. Until there are stand-alone players capable of playing it, I don't see it being terribly popular.

 

[DrunkenBastard]

The thing about PCs is they are perfectly suited to displaying high resolution video. Even an XGA rez screen is far greater than standard analog TV. Of course it's not really something the family can gather around. A good reason for WUXGA screens for everyone!

I haven't looked at the samples yet (dial up is pretty slow), but perhaps the T2 movie has been encoded at a higher bitrate? What kind of file sizes/playing times do the demos have?

TIA.

 

[SteveC]

"Step into Liquid" is 123MB for 3 minutes, and is the only live action one (the others are computer animated, and between 16-25MB for 20-30 seconds).

I was assuming that if people were buying an HDTV resolution DVD, that they would be watching it on and HDTV-capable set, instead of an analog TV. I would take any decent sized HDTV-capable set over a monitor any day, for watching movies, but they're still too expensive for most people.

 

[Mercutio]

720p or 1080i vs, say 1024x768NI? (or whatever the widescreen equivalent is. I don't know).

Not to mention the fact that a computer display refreshes twice as often on its lowest display setting.

I'd take my projector or my old presentation display over my brother's HDTV any day. Dad's 36" plasma (which has a DVI input), on the other hand...

 

[honold]

The problem I see with DIVX being a high definition codec is it seems that by default the DIVX codec is made to not look perfect, it is instead made to be the best compromise between quality and file size. I don't beleive the same is true for all Mpeg4 codecs though.

you can still crank the bitrate and get jaw-dropping results

 

[Pradeep]

What really excites me is the possibility of 1080p on computer screens. That's 1920*1080.

There is no consumer TV or projector that can handle that, so a monitor is the only possibility at this time. Apparently MS say it can be done at less than 10Mbit/sec.

Merc, is your Dad's plasma a 480p model, or a true HD 720p capable?

 

[blakerwry]

The problem I see with DIVX being a high definition codec is it seems that by default the DIVX codec is made to not look perfect, it is instead made to be the best compromise between quality and file size. I don't beleive the same is true for all Mpeg4 codecs though.

you can still crank the bitrate and get jaw-dropping results

No you cant, that's the problem. Atleast, it doesn't make my jaw drop anymore. If DIVX allowed a quantizer of 0 then we'd see good quality, as it is I think that maybe 2 is the lowest(highest quality) value that the DIVX codec will recognize..

This is kind of like having JPGs, but only being able to compress them at a max of 75% quality... it will get you good results most of the time, but for some things it's just not good enough. And a side by side comparison will yeild better looking results with the higher quality video.

as far as I know Xvid (another mpg4 codec like DIVX)will allow you to do whatever you want and probably will give you stunning results at high bitrates.

 

[honold]

Merc, is your Dad's plasma a 480p model, or a true HD 720p capable?

480p = edtv (enhanced definition)

i'm against plasmas until they can produce true black and accurate colors

rear-projection dlp is my vote for the near future of tv.

 

[blakerwry]

Microsoft has some samples on their site, here (IE & WMP9 needed), of 720p video encoded to WMP9 format. To me, there are more motion artifacts visible than on true HDTV. I would put the quality somewhere in between DVD and HDTV. The major drawback is most people will have to view it on their PCs. Until there are stand-alone players capable of playing it, I don't see it being terribly popular.

Good, but not perfect. I noticed some blocking on the lighter fades. Too bad it did not play all that smoothly on an AthlonXP 1700+ and Geforce3... If you really do need a multi gHz machine to play this then I'm thinking it won't catch on very fast.

 

[SteveC]

What really excites me is the possibility of 1080p on computer screens. That's 1920*1080.

There is no consumer TV or projector that can handle that, so a monitor is the only possibility at this time. Apparently MS say it can be done at less than 10Mbit/sec.

T2 is 137 minutes long for the regular version, and 152 for the director's cut, and this is supposed to fit into 3 GB. According to my calculations, that works out to about 3.1Mbit/sec for the regular version. I just don't see how it can be true HDTV quality (which is about 19.2Mbit/sec), especially considering their samples are encoded at 6.5Mbit/sec. 10Mbit/sec, maybe, but not 3.1Mbit/sec.

 

[SteveC]

720p or 1080i vs, say 1024x768NI? (or whatever the widescreen equivalent is. I don't know).

Not to mention the fact that a computer display refreshes twice as often on its lowest display setting.

I'd take my projector or my old presentation display over my brother's HDTV any day. Dad's 36" plasma (which has a DVI input), on the other hand...

For analog cable, I'd take an analog set over a monitor or my parent's HDTV-capable RPTV, since the static is less visible.
For digital cable, the RPTV (upconverted to 1080i) over a monitor, and a monitor over and analog set.
For DVD's, a monitor gives slightly better quality than the RPTV (because it can upconvert it) but the picture is, obviously, much smaller, with an analog as a distant third.
For HDTV, it's very hard to tell the difference between the RPTV and a monitor, but I'd take the RPTV, simply for the larger size.

 

[Pradeep]

rear-projection dlp is my vote for the near future of tv.

I just hate the thought of spending hundreds on lamps, given the amount of TV I watch.

Steve: It's Standing in the Shadows of Motown that takes 3GB, T2 takes more space (but no-one knows how much).

This will be the third version of T2 I'll buy, already got the deluxe box set on Laserdisc and T2: Ultimate Ed on DVD.

 

[Pradeep]

i'm against plasmas until they can produce true black and accurate colors

Still happy with your 2000FP? :wink:

 

[blakerwry]

What really excites me is the possibility of 1080p on computer screens. That's 1920*1080.

There is no consumer TV or projector that can handle that, so a monitor is the only possibility at this time. Apparently MS say it can be done at less than 10Mbit/sec.

T2 is 137 minutes long for the regular version, and 152 for the director's cut, and this is supposed to fit into 3 GB. According to my calculations, that works out to about 3.1Mbit/sec for the regular version. I just don't see how it can be true HDTV quality (which is about 19.2Mbit/sec), especially considering their samples are encoded at 6.5Mbit/sec. 10Mbit/sec, maybe, but not 3.1Mbit/sec.

Microsoft has a history of false claims about the quality of their codecs. Do you remember the CD quality sound in 64kbps WMA claim? Or how about DVD quality in <insert rediculsously low number here>bps?

Aparently their PR folks don't have much of a handle on what to look for.


Not that DVD is perfect, far from it. Most anime DVDs seem to have color distortions where there is no excuse for it(this was obvisouly a mistake in the mastering) And most live action movies have jpg type distortion around many lines.

However, with mpg4 and Windows media you'll get color distortion and macro blocking instead of the typical jpg artifacts.


I guess the difference is that I'd rather have the jpg distortions because they can easily be filtered out with a standard smoothing or temporal smoothing technique, while Macro blocking and color distortion are alot harder to correct.

 

[honold]

Still happy with your 2000FP? :wink:

lcds aren't plasmas, and yes

i don't mind color reproduction shortcomings on a pc, but i do mind it on dvds.

 

[SteveC]

Steve: It's Standing in the Shadows of Motown that takes 3GB, T2 takes more space (but no-one knows how much).

Oops. My mistake.

 

[Pradeep]

OK, here's a couple of clips from higher quality sources:

WM9 1280x720 trailers from Microsoft:

Confidence trailer - 7.9 Mbps 121 MB
http://download.microsoft.com/downl...4877-b5bd-e043cf8af8dd/confidence_trailer.exe

A Foreign Affair - 8.4 Mbps 122 MB.
http://download.microsoft.com/downl...1-4877-b5bd-e043cf8af8dd/a_foreign_affair.exe

 

[SteveC]

Now those clips are much better than the first ones. There's still some very noticable noise in the sky on the second clip, but other than that, they look very good. I guess we'll have to wait and see how the T2 transfer comes out. If it comes out like these, it will be a noticable improvement over DVD.

 

[timwhit]

Those are some really good quality clips. It would be around 8GB for a 2 hour movie based on the first clip. I have to say subjectively that looks about twice as good as DVD to me.

 

[Handruin]

The first clip looked good. It sure uses a decent amount of CPU time to watch the clip. It was eating about 55% during playback.

 

[Stereodude]

What really excites me is the possibility of 1080p on computer screens. That's 1920*1080.

There is no consumer TV or projector that can handle that, so a monitor is the only possibility at this time. Apparently MS say it can be done at less than 10Mbit/sec.

That's not entirely true. CRT projectors with 3 9" guns can do it. As can some of the new TFT LCD TVs from Samsung and LG.Philips. Also, Sony's new line of CRT tubes coming out this summer have increased resolution to true 1920x1080. LCOS and Sony's SXRD projection technology can do 1920x1080 also.

Stereodude

 

[blakerwry]

The first clip looked good. It sure uses a decent amount of CPU time to watch the clip. It was eating about 55% during playback.

Eating about 75-80% on my 1700+ w/ geforce3... not to mention ~ 42,000KB of RAM using WMP9

But I have to say that's the best quality video I've ever seen on my PC.

 

[Pradeep]

Well I finally managed to download the 6.9Mbit/sec Liquid trailer, my P4-M 1.6GHz completely chokes on it. F$$$$$$ POS. Hopefully the dual Athlon fares better (tho apparently the codecs are not SMP aware).

 

[blakerwry]

Designing a codec is a trade off.. you can design codecs that have a very good filesize to image quality ratio, however this is at the cost of higher CPU usage from the more complex algorithms used to compress the video.

The trick is to develop the most efficient codec so that the videos using that codec can be played on as many computers as possible.


I'd say the quality of these videos shows tht this codec uses quite an advanced algorithm for compression. But possibly it is just too advanced for today's proccessors or is just too inefficent.

Either way, I don't see mpg4 going anywhere for awhile. Even MPG2 (DVD) is a fine codec when used at higher bitrates and mastered correctly.

 

[Handruin]

Pradeep, do you have a link for the liquid trailer? I can't find it from the above link.

 

[Pradeep]

Doug: http://windowsmedia.com/9Series/DemoCenter/VideoQuality.asp?page=6&lookup=VideoQuality

I'm not really bitching about the codec, I think the more quality the better. Just buyers remorse that I got sucked in the Intel bull crap that P4-M was the best solution for laptops, I should have gone for a desktop P4 based system at closer to 2.4 GHz.

 

[Handruin]

Thanks Pradeep. Now that you point the link out to me, I see SteveC already posted it above, I just missed it.

I think someone else pointed this out, but I love how MS recommends a higher speed Intel vs. a lower speed AMD chip:

"Although other system configurations may be able to playback this content, for an optimal experience we recommend at least a 2.4 GHz Intel or AMD Athlon XP 2100+ or higher processor..."

MS admitting AMD is faster?

 

[blakerwry]

Thanks Pradeep. Now that you point the link out to me, I see SteveC already posted it above, I just missed it.

I think someone else pointed this out, but I love how MS recommends a higher speed Intel vs. a lower speed AMD chip:

"Although other system configurations may be able to playback this content, for an optimal experience we recommend at least a 2.4 GHz Intel or AMD Athlon XP 2100+ or higher processor..."

MS admitting AMD is faster?

I dont think MS has any qualms about admitting that.

 

[Handruin]

I watched the liquid trailer and I don't think the quality is that great. It's very grainy in the sky and the detail isn't as good as I hoped.

 

[blakerwry]

I watched the liquid trailer and I don't think the quality is that great. It's very grainy in the sky and the detail isn't as good as I hoped.

The video was taken with film... the fact that the codec was able to capture the detail of the film grain without distorting it (or having to add back in like later DIVX) shows that it is working extremely well. I'd like to see this codec at sub 1000Kbit/s rates..

 

[Pradeep]

Apparently MS has a hard time sourcing high quality clips that can be delivered via the Internet without copyright issues. Also they decided to try and render the noise/grain in the image, rather than processing the grain out of the image. With the new T2 DVD being sourced from a new progressive transfer, things should look pretty good.

 

[Mercutio]

Speaking of rendering grain, has anyone else seen a SuperBit DVD yet?

 

[blakerwry]

Speaking of rendering grain, has anyone else seen a SuperBit DVD yet?

wasn't panic room a "superBit" DVD?

 

[Pradeep]

I've got Air Force One and Fifth Element in SuperBit. Fifth Element is an awesome transfer.

Extra bonus that they come with DTS tracks. Personally I wish all DVDs came like this, with maximum storage space for audio/video. I couldn't care less for all the "bonus features" crap like interviews with the cast etc.

 

[Howell]

Where do they get this names? What's next Super-Duper Bit?

What is so different about the Super-Bit and am I likely able to play it will WinDVD?

 

[Mercutio]

Superbit = all pictures and sounds. No commentary, no second languages, no boring commercials (I was *shocked* the first time I saw a commercial on a DVD), no features you won't watch.

Dolby Digital and DTS sound, and all the rest is high-bit-rate picture data.

I bought Crouching Tiger. Honestly, I can't see THAT much of a difference except during the fight scenes but, holy crap, that soundtrack is unreal in DTS.

 

[Howell]

So the encoding is of better quality? Because there is more room on the DVD? Is there an unfortunate upper-limit to the DVD spec?

 

[SteveC]

Instead of using about 4-5 Mbps, they encode at 6-7 Mbps. The DVD spec allows up to 10 Mbps.