HD-DVD SPECS AND CODECS APPROVED BY DVD FORUM
Despite often-heated opposition, HD-DVD’s backers succeeded in securing approval of the prerecorded version of the format and all 3 video compression systems they had sought in votes by the DVD Forum’s Steering Committee (SC) June 9-10 (CED June 9 p5). Audio codecs, though, were tabled by the SC until its next meeting, due to a late request on the subject by the music industry, sources said. Meanwhile, an unconfirmed report circulating Mon. said the DVD Forum’s SC also approved the DualDisc hybrid DVD/CD test marketed in Feb. by 5 major music labels. But no such vote was reported in the SC’s minutes and sources said the report might be premature or overly simplistic.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
By the simple majority vote needed, the SC approved the final spec for HD DVD-ROM Ver. 1.0 -- prerecorded version of the DVD Forum’s HD standard. The preliminary Ver. 0.9 was approved by the SC at its previous meeting in Feb., and the spec for rewritable HD DVD-RW also has been approved. In comparison, the rival Blu-ray camp has yet to propose a spec for its prerecorded BD-ROM, although Sony has been selling a recorder for rewritable BD-RW since last year. Neither of the opposing camps has proposed standards for write-once HD discs, although specs are in the works.
The HD DVD-ROM spec received 11 yeas among the 20-member SC, with Blu-ray supporters Samsung and Thomson once again siding with Disney, IBM, Intel, Taiwan’s ITRI, Microsoft, NEC, Sanyo, Toshiba and Warner in backing HD-DVD. The sole nay vote came from Philips, sources said, while other Blu-ray backers Hitachi, JVC, LG, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Sharp and Sony abstained. One source present at the voting speculated the abstentions among Blu-ray companies might have been prompted by antitrust concerns.
Approval of the 3 video codecs for HD DVD-ROM didn’t come without a fight at last week’s SC meeting in Seattle, hosted by Microsoft. In Feb., the SC had provisionally approved 3 compression technologies that content owners could use for prerecorded HD-DVD, and which hardware makers would have to incorporate -- something co-developers NEC and Toshiba maintain can be done with a multipurpose chip. The codecs are Microsoft’s Windows Media Video 9, also called VC-9, the MPEG-4-based “Advanced Codec” H.264, and a variant of MPEG-2 used for today’s DVDs.
Before the vote, Matsushita argued not enough information was available on VC-9 licensing and that the royalty was too low, but Microsoft disagreed, sources told us. Matsushita then moved to delay a decision on the codecs until the next SC meeting, slated for Sept. 22-23 in Taiwan. Matsushita’s motion lost in the voting, garnering support only from Hitachi, JVC and Sharp, with 5 abstentions against 11 nays from same SC members who had approved the HD DVD-ROM spec. As a result of the motion failing, the original resolution to standardize the codecs was approved automatically without need for a vote, sources said.
HD-DVD’s supporters didn’t sweep the table in Seattle, as approval of the 3 audio compression technologies proposed didn’t come to a vote. Those codecs were Dolby Digital+ (DD+), DTS+ and the Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP) used for current DVD-Audio. A late request by the music industry to have MLP mandated for HD- DVD Video as well as HD-DVD audio hardware prompted requests to table the vote for further consideration.
It was expected that the MLP proposal would stymie deliberations, sources said. The movie studios want MLP for its high quality, “lossless” compression, and some back either “lossy” codecs DD+ or DTS+, making it likely all 3 will be needed in HD-DVD hardware. But that has hardware makers roiled, namely over the costs of royalties for 3 codecs. On top of those, CE makers still would have to pay royalties for the current Dolby Digital and DTS used for today’s DVD, as all HD-DVD machines would have to be backward compatible. Sources said the late request by the music industry appeared motivated to ensure that any future HD-DVD Audio software will be playable in all HD-DVD hardware, unlike the case today where playback of “Advanced Resolution” multichannel DVD-Audio isn’t universal among DVD hardware.
In other areas, the SC approved the use of the High- Efficiency Advanced Audio Codec (HE-AAC) for the DVD-ROM zone of DVD-Audio discs. The DVD-Audio spec already includes MLP, but the addition of a “zone” for HE-AAC -- used in Apple’s iPod -- would let music labels incorporate lower-resolution versions of tracks for PC playback.