Mcmannis - Re: ""Funny that we haven't seen any 3DNOW applications for MPEG-xyz encoding !" That is "funny". AMD really missed to boat on this one. A big oversight by AMD... "
Well, here's a REAL TIME MPEG-2 ENCODING application for DVD's that could certainly make use of Intel Technology - especially when it makes it into PCs !
"The system will be based on the company's 4.7-gigabyte DVD+RW format. The drive will use real-time MPEG-2 variable-bit-rate recording to accommodate disks that provide two or four hours of video. The recordable disks will not have to be housed in a cartridge, as some schemes require.
Philips said its new recordable drive marks a technology breakthrough because it lets the video recorder use the same video format defined for prerecorded DVDs. "Until now, it was generally assumed that a real-time DVD-creation process was impossible," said Chris Buma, program manager of A/V disk recording at Philips.
Separately, a working group within the DVD Forum is discussing a new real-time read/write video-recording format,
presumably for DVD-RAM."
Maybe this will become a "Killer App" - leaving AMD's 3DNOW as "RoadKill" !
Paul
{================================}
Group Hopes To Unify Recordable DVD Factions
By Junko Yoshida, Terry Costlow, and George Leopold, EE Times
Jan 11, 1999 (2:04 PM)
URL: techweb.com
A band of 29 manufacturers will announce a plan Monday to forge a common format for digital video disks they hope will cut a swath through the labyrinth of competing approaches to rewritable DVD. Word of the effort came last week as consumer-electronics companies tipped plans at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas for additional recordable disk-based options that could further splinter a market struggling to coalesce.
The Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA) has marshaled a group of companies that will meet in South San Francisco this week to define a single disk format, readable by any DVD player or recorder, by the end of the year. But even participants in the effort expressed mixed feelings about whether consumers will embrace the many products
already out or in the works.
In a move that surprised even DVD+RW development partner Sony, Philips Consumer Electronics, in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, announced at CES that it will launch a stand-alone rewritable-videodisk recorder next year. The drive will
use a new Philips algorithm to read the video format of today's prerecorded DVD disks, thus allowing playback of the
rewritable disks on any regular DVD player.
"We heard over and over from our customers that they wished they had a little red 'record' button on their DVD player,"
said Frans A. van Houten, chief operating officer of the digital video business group at Philips Consumer Electronics.
The goal is to design a rewritable DVD disk that can be played back "not in a separate box, but in a compatible
machine."
The system will be based on the company's 4.7-gigabyte DVD+RW format. The drive will use real-time MPEG-2
variable-bit-rate recording to accommodate disks that provide two or four hours of video. The recordable disks will not
have to be housed in a cartridge, as some schemes require.
Philips said its new recordable drive marks a technology breakthrough because it lets the video recorder use the same
video format defined for prerecorded DVDs. "Until now, it was generally assumed that a real-time DVD-creation
process was impossible," said Chris Buma, program manager of A/V disk recording at Philips.
Separately, a working group within the DVD Forum is discussing a new real-time read/write video-recording format,
presumably for DVD-RAM.
The OSTA group has set a more ambitious goal: to create a world of compatible disks for any DVD player by
developing what could be called Son of MultiRead. When various incompatible rewritable technologies for CDs
emerged a few years ago, OSTA members created the widely used MultiRead specification to let any CD disk be read
on any type of drive.
"This group's charter is to create a specification for DVD that is similar to MultiRead," said OSTA facilitator Ray
Freeman. "There's no guarantee on this, but with MultiRead, there was also a lot of disagreement about whether it was
feasible or whether it would blow costs out of the water. If we get the right people for the DVD effort, I think they will be
clever enough to find a solution."
The initial meeting will include representatives from drive makers Hitachi, Matsushita, Philips, Panasonic Technologies,
Mitsumi, and Sony, as well as such other majors as Adaptec, Eastman Kodak, and even the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Freeman said Toshiba, which is not an OSTA member, won't be attending, though he said the company had been
invited to the meeting.
Two rewritable technologies are nose-to-nose in the bid to dominate the nascent market: DVD-RAM, backed by Hitachi
and Matsushita, and DVD+RW, developed by Sony and Philips. Pioneer, with its DVD-R technology, has made some
headway in professional recording markets.
Getting the various camps to converge on a common technique will be no mean feat. |
