Wednesday, September 1, 2004

Blu-ray Assocation Adds Microsoft, MPEG-4 Support

The Blu-ray Disc Association announced today that it has added a new video codec MPEG-4 AVC High Profile and Microsoft VC-1 support to its specification for next generation optical discs. The new MPEG-4 AVC specification for compressing/decompressing video content provides support for high-definition media; while Microsoft's VC-1 is the format used by Microsoft's Windows Media. The Blu-ray association is focused on developing a standard for the next generation of video storage, and was founded by Dell, Hewlett Packard, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Mitsubishi, Sony, and other hardware manufacturers. The group is competing against the DVD Forum standards group to establish the format for the next generation of blue-laser based digital video. The DVD Forum's HD DVD format already includes support for Microsoft's video format.