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Major Nelson's podcast on HD DVD vs. Blu-ray
For the second time this year, Xbox Live's Larry Hryb a.k.a. Major Nelson has a high definition expert, actually two, appear on his podcast to extol the virtues of HD DVD. However this time, unlike during the interview with Tyler the HDTV expert on 1080p back in February, Blu-ray and HD DVD are both available and on store shelves at the moment. The two experts appearing this week include Amir M., who many of you are already familiar with due to his frequent posts on AVSForum, and Kevin Collins, both work on Microsoft's efforts promoting iHD, VC-1 and HD DVD.If you're familiar with Microsoft's stated reasoning for supporting HD DVD instead of remaining neutral or supporting Blu-ray there won't be a lot of new info here, but probably enough to make a listen worthwhile. Be warned that if you're a Blu-ray fanboy this isn't exactly the equal-time special, if you're expecting the Blu-ray side of things to be presented you'll need to look elsewhere. However being biased towards the HD DVD side (not mentioning reported issues with HD DVD players and promoting recent firmware upgrades as a benefit and not a side effect of rushing to launch for example) doesn't mean they aren't telling the truth. Their main points are clear, 30GB dual-layer HD DVD over 25GB single-layer Blu-ray, VC-1 HD DVD releases over MPEG-2 Blu-ray releases and already available iHD-enhanced titles over potentially limited BD-J support in current players.
Sony's So-net VOD HDTV box with FeliCa
Sony seems intent to prove you can -- and one day will -- buy just about everything with FeliCa, their contactless payment system we've been talking up for years now. Latest on the block is So-net distributed high definition video on demand service, which plays back MPEG-2, VC-1, and h.264 video on a Sentivision set top box with a 600MHz CPU and a 40GB internal drive; you pay for the privilege instantly with your FeliCa card, phone, implant, etc. We know, we know, it hurts; but one of these days when a large swath of this ginormous nation gets fiber to the home, we'll probably ourselves likely see similar VOD / IPTV systems.[Via Impress]
NVIDA's PureVideo with H.264 hardware acceleration
NVIDIA's PureVideo H.264 hardware acceleration was officially announced today and there was much rejoicing. Why bog down your CPU with mundane video decoding tasks when your GPU can do it for you, right? PureVideo hardware decoding supports all of the standard MPEG-4 flavors such as H.264, VC-1, WMV and also supports the "soon-to-be-legacy" MPEG-2 compression as well. NVIDIA's PureVideo technology will show up in both desktop and notebook products: the GeForce 6- and 7-series will sport the new technology, as well as the nForce 6150 series of GPUs. Note that this should cover you in a PC solution for either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD since all of the usual suspects codecs are supported.
