Audio Video News

Score another breakthrough for HD DVD. On June 23, Apple Computer announced the ratification by the DVD Forum of the "H.264 Advanced Video Codec" (AVC) and its inclusion in the company's upcoming software releases. The standard will be included in specifications for the High Definition DVD format, the next great leap forward for the 5" optical disc.

Jointly developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the H.264/AVC codec has been ratified into the MPEG-4 specification for the next-generation video codec, according to PRNewsWires. H.264/AVC is based on open standards and will ship in Apple's "QuickTime" software next year.

H.264/AVC is "an extremely scalable video codec," according to the announcement, one said to deliver "excellent quality across the entire bandwidth spectrum-from high definition television to video conferencing and 3G mobile multimedia." As shown in a preview at the National Association of Broadcasters NAB) convention in April, video encoded at full high definition resolution (1920x1080 24p) was played back between 6.8 and 8 Mbps on a dual-processor Power Mac(R) G5 delivering full HD quality at up to half the data rate of MPEG-2.

"Apple is firmly behind H.264 because it delivers superb quality digital video and is based on open standards that no single company controls," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "QuickTime 6 has already topped 250 million downloads, making it one of the most successful media standards ever, and we will be adding support for H.264 to QuickTime next year."