WM 9 may become mandatory for HD DVD

[SM-Bot]

The DVD Forum, the industry group promoting the video format and developing future improvements, said its steering committee has provisionally approved Microsoft's Windows Media 9 as one of the mandatory elements of a high-definition DVD spec.

The choice of a more efficient video codec for the emerging HD DVD format has been one of the most contentious issues currently confronting the consumer electronics industry.

The full report

[Thrax]

If HD-DVD is designed to alleviate the issues of 1080i displays on a 720x480 DVD picture looking like crap due to bitrate + dimensions + compression, Thrax fails to see how compressing it MORE with the inferior MPEG4 lameness of WM9 will resolve the issue.

[kanezfan]

it's not about what you want as a consumer, it's about the movie industry feeling "safer" because of MS's DRM crap, which will be broken 24-48 hrs. prior to release anyhow.

[Thrax]

Naturally. ;D