H.264 works in current DVD players?

neutrino23

I was reading Apple's promo for the new iDVD. They say that it can employ H.264 encoding to make DVDs.



This implies that the current crop of DVDs can decode and play this sort of DVD. It wouldn't make much sense to make a DVD if people have to buy new DVD players to view it.



This tells me that H.264 is a different way of encoding to a standard file format that the current set of firmware in current DVD players could play back.



Yet I'm sure I read somewhere that H.264 files require much more processing power to decode than other files encoded by other encoding methods.



Can someone shed a little light on this? Is the firmware/hardware in DVD players that general?



Thanks.

dutch pear

Current DVD players do not play back files encoded with h264. It is a new/improved way of compressing video data that current-generation dvd-players just cannot handle (including DiVX-capable players). Future players for upcoming high definition DVD-successors (HD-DVD or Blue ray or some hybrid) will be capable of decoding h264.

neutrino23

Is this really true? It seems hard to believe that Apple (or anyone else) would come out with a new video standard that would obsolete the millions of existing DVD players.

kickaha

CD obsoleted vinyl.



DVD obsoleted VHS.



HD-DVD will obsolete DVD.



It's a natural progression, and better to be at the leading edge than playing catch-up.

telomar

Whatever happened to cassettes

ineedag5pbnow

Quote:

Originally posted by Telomar

Whatever happened to cassettes

lol or laser disks?

r3dx0r

Quote:

Originally posted by ineedag5pbnow

lol or laser disks?

heh, i actually bought a laser disc player when i was young. and until now i bought one (1) laser disc too.