CES 2006 News & Announcements

[inefficient]

Some good in-person impressions of the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD demos:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=6866449&&#post6866449

Toshiba's HD-DVD player sounds awfully like an MediaCenter PC - Intel Pentium CPU running a Windows OS. And crashing a lot does not sound good. I'm guessing it has heat/power issues.

Anyway, Intel & MS's reasons for backing HD-DVD are becoming clearer. The HD-DVD camp somewhat lacks HW/SW backing. And Intel and MS nicely fit in here allowing the platform to launch without speciallized hardware but with off the shelf components.

 

[one]

Toshiba's HD-DVD player sounds awfully like an MediaCenter PC - Intel Pentium CPU running a Windows OS. And crashing a lot does not sound good. I'm guessing it has heat/power issues.

Yes it's powered by Celeron.
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20050413/103701/?ST=english

Toshiba to Use Intel 854 Chipset in HD DVD Player

Apr 13, 2005 15:10

Toshiba Corp. is planning to introduce an HD DVD player using Intel Corp.'s 854 chipset in the fourth quarter of 2005. Intel officially announced the Intel 854 chipset for digital home appliances at the Intel Developer Forum in Taiwan on April 11, 2005. The Intel 854 chip set is designed for applications such as set-top boxes and digital video recorders with Internet connectivity, and can be connected to the 600MHz Celeron M processor. It can feature synchronous DRAM with DDR mode of up to 2GB. The chipset also supports external interfaces including Ethernet, USB 2.0 and Ultra ATA/100.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Celeron?......eeewwww

 

[Edge]

From that AVSForum link:

Toshiba's HD-A1 was a completely mockup. See following picture. Doesn't it supposed to be shipped on coming March?"

Where's PC Engine? He loved to always talk about Blu-ray tech being "experimental", I like to hear what he has to say about these HD-DVD players.

Crashing? Mockup? Launching this March?

 

[Sis]

Some good in-person impressions of the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD demos:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=6866449&&#post6866449

Some selected interesting bits from that link:

I visited BD/HD DVD related booths. This is purely my opinion, but Panasonic seems the king of picture quality of next gen disc demonstration at CES.

All BDA companies except Panasonic seem to demonstrate MPEG2, Panasonic demoed H.264 video playback for trailers (VBR 16Mbps) and BD-J interactive demo (also VBR 16Mbps). I simply couldn't find any compression artifact even on the 65" Full HD plasma, from the distance of 30cm to the panel. On the other hand, other companies demo clip shows artifacts and blocky, especially Sharp's one is terribly bad. Sony's MPEG2 (VBR 20Mbps) looks better than others, but is still behind to Panasonic.

Impression of the reporter attended in the HD DVD press conference was - even though studio execs from WHV, Paramount were there, there was no studio pushing HD DVD strongly at there

All of the feature films in the US being encoded for HD-DVD are 1080p23.976. The studios releasing on both formats have decided to re-use their HD-DVD encode for their BD titles.

.Sis

 

[Deepak]

Oh and I saw a spec. list of the Samsung player. It supports all mandatory Blu-Ray codecs.

EDIT: Here you go - http://www.samsung.com/PressCenter/...0106_0000223502

Main problem with this player is it's only 1080i output.

The Register...

Correct link...

http://www.samsung.com/PressCenter/PressRelease/PressRelease.asp?seq=20060106_0000223502

 

[MasaC]

Shifty Geezer:

The pdf-document I linked to earlier describes what video formats shall be used on the discs themselves. They have to be described so all BD players can play the movie discs. It is not a white paper on what kind video output the players themselves will have. That's all up to each manufacturer.

For exampale a player can upconvert 1920x1080x59.94-i stored on a movie Blu-ray disc to output 1920x1080x59.94-p if the manufacturerer chooses to (and the player is powerful enough, of course).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

For exampale a player can upconvert 1920x1080x59.94-i stored on a movie Blu-ray disc to output 1920x1080x59.94-p if the manufacturerer chooses to (and the player is powerful enough, of course).

Yes I appreciate that. But you can't turn 1080i into 1080p with any degree of trickery. You may generate a 1080p signal, but the actually quality isn't going to match true 1080p60. The standard means progressive content is going to be limited to 24 fps. The player can take those 24 fps and transmit them as a 1080p60 signal, but it'll still look the same. Unless they can do some magic tweening or something. 1080p seems to be a term to cover both the type of content and the transmission signal, which is a bit confusing. PS3 may have a 60fps 1080p output, but the movies are going to be 1080p24.

 

[MasaC]

Shifty Geezer:

A player can deinterlace the 1920x1080x59.94-i video stream on a disc to 1920x1080px29.97-p and then the player can transmit it as a 1920x1080x59.94-p by upconversion if the hardware in the player is powerful enough. Of course it won't magically produce double framerate as the source material still is only 29.97 fps (1920x1080x59.94-i = 29.97 fps) but it will produce a more stable picture quality.

I imagine 1920x1080x59.94-i will be used for TV shows originally broadcasted at HD 1080i and 1920x1080x24-p will be used for movies (which are shot in 24 fps).

However this white paper doesn't limit what video output the BD players will have That is determined by the manufacturers and what kind of hardware they put in them.

What this white paper does do is describe what video formats shall be used when making Blu-ray discs with video content.

 

[Dural]

Why isn't Toshiba using cell in their hd-dvd players instead of a celeron-m, it seems like it would be cheaper and run better.

 

[Hardknock]

Why isn't Toshiba using cell in their hd-dvd players instead of a celeron-m, it seems like it would be cheaper and run better.

Why would Cell be cheaper?

Also even though Toshiba helped develop and helps manufacture Cell, they would still be paying sony for each HD-DVD player sold. So I doubt they want to go that route.

 

[Rur0ni]

http://gearmedia.ign.com/gear/image...06-more-blu-ray-box-art-20060106103515803.jpg

Stealth Blu-Ray Box, "1080P / THE HIGHER DEFINITION EXPERIENCE / HD AUDIO"

 

[seismologist]

I have returneth from teh CES!

I'm working on getting my pictures from the camera. Overall CES was pretty boring to me. The one thing that stood out was that HD DVD is far from dead. I actally thought the demos in the Toshiba booth were more impressive than the Blu Ray demos.

I saw the thing with the director commentary overlay. The guy said that PIP overlays like that would have to be streamed from the internet. I guess that's a disadvantage since Blu Ray supports out of mux reading from the disc?

I got absolutely nothing out of the Sony booth because it was just swamped with people gawking at the PS3 demo real from last year's E3. Maybe thats why I liked Toshiba's booth better...I didn't visit Panasonic though.

 

[Sis]

http://gearmedia.ign.com/gear/image...06-more-blu-ray-box-art-20060106103515803.jpg

Stealth Blu-Ray Box, "1080P / THE HIGHER DEFINITION EXPERIENCE / HD AUDIO"

HD Audio?

.Sis

EDIT: Also, by all accounts I'm reading, both HD-DVD and Blu-ray will be encoded in 1080p. But there aren't any known 1080p HD-DVD players (yet?).

 

[AlNom]

HD Audio?

By intel's definition I presume... i.e. 5.1/7.1 I think with Dolby Digital.

 

[Rur0ni]

Think I saw "DTS++" and "8 Channels(7.1)" listed somewhere on CES 2006 reports...

Found it.

"The BD-ROM format for movie distribution supports various advanced audio codecs, so an author can choose the most suitable for a particular application. The high capacity and data rate of Blu-ray Disc allow for extreme high quality audio in up to 8 channels to accompany High Definition video. Final audio specifications include DTS (core format), Dolby Digital AC-3 and LPCM (up to 96/24) . Optionally, the format might support DTS++ and LPCM 192/24 7.1."

http://www.bluraydisc.com/Section-13470/Section-13627/Index.html


"[font=arial,verdana,sans serif]Encompassing higher data rates, lossless operation and additional channels, DTS' extension technologies, identified by the DVD Forum (HD-DVD) and Blu-ray Disc Association collectively as DTS++, have been approved as optional features on both HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc. DTS++ is also the only lossless audio technology selected for both disc formats."

[/font]http://www.audioholics.com/news/pressreleases/dtsbluray.php
[font=arial,verdana,sans serif]

[/font]– DTS Digital Surround® (DTS' core 5.1 technology) has been selected as mandatory audio technology for both Blu-ray Disc (BD) and High Definition Digital Versatile Disc (HD-DVD).

– DTS-HD™ is the only technology that will deliver lossless surround sound for these new disc formats, ensuring the highest quality audio performance available in the new standards.

– As a mandatory technology in the next generation standards, a DTS decoder will be built into every HD-DVD or Blu-ray Disc player.

– One single DTS-HD™ datastream on a disc can carry everything from standard DTS 5.1 playable on virtually all existing 280 million plus DTS decoders, all the way to lossless for next-generation systems.

http://www.dtsonline.com/consumer/dtshd.php


Apparently DTS++ and DTS-HD™ are the same thing. But yeah, apparently we can have better audio now.

 

[Dural]

Why would Cell be cheaper?

Also even though Toshiba helped develop and helps manufacture Cell, they would still be paying sony for each HD-DVD player sold. So I doubt they want to go that route.

Why would Toshiba be giving royalties to Sony for cell? I thought it was a joint venture between IBM, Sony, and Toshiba and each could do what they like with it. As for why it would be cheaper, Toshiba would be manufacturing the chips themselves and are also using the chips in all their new televisions.

 

[mckmas8808]

I
I got absolutely nothing out of the Sony booth because it was just swamped with people gawking at the PS3 demo real from last year's E3. Maybe thats why I liked Toshiba's booth better...I didn't visit Panasonic though.

Why would so many people be looking at the PS3 demo reel? Damn it's about 1 year old footage. :/

 

[mrdarko]

Why would so many people be looking at the PS3 demo reel? Damn it's about 1 year old footage. :/

that does sound odd...where ms there with the 360?

 

[Hardknock]

Why would Toshiba be giving royalties to Sony for cell? I thought it was a joint venture between IBM, Sony, and Toshiba and each could do what they like with it. As for why it would be cheaper, Toshiba would be manufacturing the chips themselves and are also using the chips in all their new televisions.

Yeah it is a joint venture, but I'm not sure who actually holds the license to the tech? Or what agreements they have. But I do know just because Toshiba could manufacture Cell themself doesn't automatically mean that it would be cheaper than the Intel counterpart, especially this early in Cell's life. Also Cell may not be ready for mass production just yet.