Codecs question

[stoomc]

Hi all, I was wondering if someone could do me a HUGE favour and type me out a list of the different codes. I am aware that at the moment Blu ray are using MPEG 2, which I understand is not as good as what HD-DVD are using so I would hihgly appreciate it if you could tell me the different codecs that Blu ray and HD DVD use and rate them for me, so I can print them off. I am very new to Blu Ray/HD DVD side of things and havent made any purchases yet, but would like to get all jazzed up on each others differences. Dont ask why, but I wanna back Blu ray...I dont know why, but it is getting quite a lot of bad reviews, why is this? Can you see Blu Ray changing from MPEG 2. I have got SKY HD and I love it, do they use MPEG 4?
To show how clueless I am, I thought DVDs were all MPEG 2, then everything HD was MPEG 4...that would make things so much clearer for me! LOL!
Thank you so much for your help!
Stuart

 

[LFletcher]

Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray can use the same 3 codecs - mpeg2 (this is what normal DVD uses, but at much lower bitrates), mpeg4 AVC (this is what Sky HD uses) and VC-1.

Most titles on HD-DVD use VC-1 and the quality is generally very good/excellent.
Blu-Ray uses a mixture of all three. All Sony and Lionsgate titles so far have used mpeg2 (with varying degrees of success). Warner titles used to use mpeg2, but have pretty much gone exclusively to VC-1 (to match their HD-DVD releases). Paramount use mpeg2 (they use VC-1 on HD-DVD). Fox use AVC and mpeg2 as do Buena Vista.

All three codecs are capable of delivering excellent results for high definition movies. Some say that when the same title is encoded in mpeg2 and VC-1, that the mpeg2 picture looks a little softer.

My advice would not to be too caught up in the "which codec is best" debate and buy the films you like, the codec should be somewhat irrelevant.

 

[stoomc]

Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray can use the same 3 codecs - mpeg2 (this is what normal DVD uses, but at much lower bitrates), mpeg4 AVC (this is what Sky HD uses) and VC-1.

Most titles on HD-DVD use VC-1 and the quality is generally very good/excellent.
Blu-Ray uses a mixture of all three. All Sony and Lionsgate titles so far have used mpeg2 (with varying degrees of success). Warner titles used to use mpeg2, but have pretty much gone exclusively to VC-1 (to match their HD-DVD releases). Paramount use mpeg2 (they use VC-1 on HD-DVD). Fox use AVC and mpeg2 as do Buena Vista.

All three codecs are capable of delivering excellent results for high definition movies. Some say that when the same title is encoded in mpeg2 and VC-1, that the mpeg2 picture looks a little softer.

My advice would not to be too caught up in the "which codec is best" debate and buy the films you like, the codec should be somewhat irrelevant.

Thank you so much for taking the time to explain that to me. I would agree with you about not getting to caught up in it all, but was also just wanting to find out about the differences between them all, so that has been a great help!
Thanks again,