hdtv formats (was Re: [vorbis] Vorbis Direct Show)

[rillian]

On Monday, July 2, 2001, at 12:29 , Jack Moffitt wrote:

>> Just a question.
>> If MPEG3 is "dead", what is used for HDTV nowdays? (like in the US or 
>> in
>> Australia?).
>
> MPEG-4 I assume.

For those too lazy to follow the atsc link, it's mostly mpeg2 video + 
AC3 audio, and looks specific to the US. Some of the things I looked at 
indicated that outside the US, Taiwan, Canada and South Korea, everyone 
was using DVB, which is also mpeg-2 based. The 'main profile, high 
level' mpeg-2 supports video up to 1920x1080x30.

AFAIK the divx;-) people are the only ones to have actually deployed 
mpeg-4.

So mpeg-2 seems to be pretty universally adopted as the distribution 
format. This comes from satellite, cable, or broadcast and is decoded by 
a set-top box. Here in North America all the 'HD' televisions seem to 
support only component (i.e. analog) inputs from such a decoder or video 
card.

On the production side, I've seen a couple of things. There's a 1.485 
Gbps serial link that the cameras speak, described in SMPTE 292. It's 
basically uncompressed aside from some gamma compression. I guess you 
can use this for monitors and live broadcast. Sony's HDCAM tape format 
uses something akin to the dv codec (4.4:1 lossy intraframe compression) 
to get the data rate down to something that can be written on 1/2" tape. 
It's apparently the same physical format as betacam, but a higher 
quality recording material.

Forwarded to tarkin-dev, where this is a little less off-topic.

  -r

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