The HD-DVD Insider

We’re happy to announce we’re moving the HD DVD blog to on10.net – you’ll find all the HD DVD Insiders content at www.on10.net/hddvd/. On10 provides us a superior technological infrastructure to include video and audio. We’ve moved the posts from the old blog – unfortunately we had to leave the comments behind, but we welcome all our readers to comment at the new page, including for the older topics.

As promised, here’s our first audio interview, with Joe Kane of Joe Kane Productions. I sat down with Joe at CEDIA to discuss Joe’s history with VC-1 and the state of the art of consumer HD.

WMA: http://on10.net/link/6a82f288-5770-4ab8-9890-79d5bf2389e3/

MP3: http://on10.net/link/95cb21e3-8398-46a5-8f74-5c0f1e536a16/

-Ben Waggoner

The big CEDIA show is this week and weekend, and I’ll be doing an audio interview with industry luminary Joe Kane of Joe Kane Productions. Joe’s had a long history as an advocate for better video and audio quality for consumers, and our interview will  focus on HD DVD, VC-1, and where the industry stands in bringing that great video and audio quality to the home.

But in time-honored blog tradition, we want to make sure we’re asking the questions you want to hear the answers to. So, suggest some questions via a comment below by Friday evening. We’ll pick the best handful for our conversation with Joe.

-Ben Waggoner

 

Welcome to “The HD DVD Insiders,” Microsoft’s new HD DVD blog. This is our forum for our passionate employees to talk  about the format, our VC-1 codec, and what we’re doing to provide consumers with the world’s best HD content.

Microsoft is involved with HD DVD in many ways, all of which we’ll discuss here. The two big areas  we contribute technology for are VC-1, the codec used in many HD titles, and HDi^TM, Microsoft’s implementation of the advanced interactivity specification for HD DVD.

• The VC-1 codec is being used to compress the video in the vast majority of HD DVD titles. VC-1 is the SMPTE [421M ]standard based on Microsoft’s Windows Media Video 9 technology. We work with the studios and authoring houses to enable the visually transparent compression quality to the master that’s become a hallmark of HD DVD titles.
• HDi^TM is Microsoft’s implementation of the HD DVD advanced interactivity layer. HDi^TM provides the  interactive menus, picture-in-picture commentaries, in movie experience and other features that make HD DVD not just better video and audio than DVD, but  a more compelling and immersive experience.
• Microsoft announced the Xbox 360 HD DVD Player will be available this holiday. As we get closer to launch, we’ll discuss the product, its development, and the consumer experience here.

One of our secret weapons is that many of the people working on HD DVD were passionate home theater enthusiasts long before HD DVD was born. So we spend our days focused on providing the spectacular home theater experience that we also want for ourselves in the evening.

We hope this blog will help us pull the veil back a little, and give you some insight into the people and stories behind the making of a world class format and exciting content.

-Ben Waggoner