IFA Berlin 29.8 - 3.9 2003

HD-video on DVD?

Just before the opening of the show a colleague and I got 45 minutes with Joe Kane. He was in the Samsung area showing off the SP-H700A projector he has been working on to correct many of the shortcomings of signal prosessing on DLP. It is supposed to be the first projector with natural colors. To demonstrate it he was from a PC playing HD-video encoded with Windows Media 9. It was extraits from the upcoming Digital Video Essentials. The PAL version was expected in September and the HD version in january. In fact he is quite involved in the new HD format that is expected to be launched at CES 2004 in Las Vegas.

The new format is going to use a regular DVD, but with Windows Media 9 that compresses more efficiently than MPEG2. They already has A&E onboard with an expected 50 titles at the january launch. After turning it down first Warner had renewed their interrest in the format due to a demo he performed. His hope was to have some Warner titles, but with both Blu-ray and HD-DVD beeing prepared Warner is probably just as confused as the average consumer.

Image quality? The best I have ever seen with a live digital image, but the there was not a lot of movement in the scenes. An upcoming chip from Sigma Design would have support for WM9 so it should be easy to include the support in new players.

HDMI

There were supposed to be DVD players with HDMI output on the show, but I could not find any. Pioneer should have has 2 players, but they were delayed. Pioneer did anyhow have plasma screens with HDMI input and Sony also had it for 2 projectors. I did anyway se several DVD players with DVI output, but unless using optical connectors for DVI the signal can't go far enough with DVI.

SACD - DVD-Audio

The press releases and press conferences from both camps seems to have been the same for several years and to be honest very little is going on in the markedplace. The main scoop this time was that the new release from Sting would only be released as SACD-hybrid in Europe. (Update: the claim was incorrect, CD-only version was available from day 1.) SACD is outperforming DVD-Audio as far as disc sales goes, but it's still quite marginal compared to CD or MP3.