RTV71 used our news submit to tell us about an interesting Podcast given by HD Beat, in which they were able to interview Mr. Andy Parsons, Pioneer's vice president. In the interview, we get a nice, albeit slanted, take on the Blu-ray format. Some of the topics covered are the managed copy, digital rights management, and upcoming dual layer movie titles..oh, and a codec question popped up as well.
|  Ben:
You mentioned CODECs, how do you or the BDA feel about MPEG2 vs VC1? To this date most Blu-ray movies are MPEG2, which some would argue is inferior.
Andy:
I think that CODECs are all capable of delivering really good results. I think that it comes down to efficiency and I think one of the reason to use VC1 or AVC is to make better use of your space. Not because one is necessarily because one is better to achieve better picture quality. When you are looking at MPEG2 at high bit rates it can look indistinguishable from the source.
(further along the interview...) Ben:
How do you see managed copy working.
Andy:
Managed copy is optional for hardware companies and if you have a player and you are prepared to have a device that can undertake a transaction function, meaning you are going to pay someone some money to make that copy. I think a lot of people may think managed copy means free copy. That is not the case at all, but if you are going to say I would like to make a coy of this to my portable viewing device and there is a dollar amount associated with that, then you have to have a hardware device that can make that a simple transaction. If you are in your living room and you say I would like to watch this on my portable media player, how do I do that. I would have a user interface that I go into and I would I say I would like to go onto a studios site for the particular disc and give them my credit card number and pay a fee to do that. That is just a question of whether we can work that into a player in a satisfactory operation for the user. We don't want to make it that difficult compounded by problems in their network. I suspect that it may operate more frequently in a computer environment than a stand alone player. Perhaps if they get more comfortable with transactions in the living room than perhaps we will start seeing that moving into more of a consumer electronics type model. |
Oddly, this is something we have been discussing around here, as to just what impact these codecs make and why would Blu-ray opt for MPEG2. For those that are more interested in reading the transcript, rather than a podcast, you can find the entire interview posted at this location at HD Beat.
Source: HD Beat
