HD Content Platforms

HDTV has helped shape and change the landscape of how content is displayed. High definition resolution is considered superior and the accompanying audio performance is on a par with CD quality. Digital broadcasting has an important part in how high definition television, or HDTV, has evolved. Today, there are several video compression codecs, or computer coding, that are used to display and store HD quality content. There are several major video codecs that are used today, among them the VP6 codec.

Although considered a largely unheard of video compression codec, the VP6 format has been adopted by the Chinese government to use alongside their EVD, or enhanced versatile disc, format. Since other formats have royalty charges, the VP6 format benefits from the fact that it doesn’t attract royalty fees for recorded media. VP6 did receive royalties for player devices at a cost that was on the level of other codecs. Soon after the announcement that VP6 would be used on EVD, the consortium pushing for EVD to become a standard, reached a breach of contract. The EVD format never really took off and today Blu-ray is the worldwide next generation disc technology.

Blu-ray supports the same three video codecs that HD DVD supported in its disc design.  Specifically, these are known as the MPEG-2 Part 2, VC-1 and H.264/AVC. Although Blu-ray beat the HD DVD format, it does have to overcome challenges such as high royalty costs. But there are other options for encoding digital HD content, including the DiVX digital video format, the WM9 or VC-1, as well as the widely adopted H.264 video. H.264 is used by most broadcasters as an open standard, as well as for many movie trailers. H.264 is also used to encode podcasts, which rely on QuickTime coding from Apple Computers. 

The H.264 format was chosen for several reasons. It was certified as meeting the open standard a year before WM9/VC-1 was seriously considered as a potential contender.  There’s also a lot of uncertainty on the levies Microsoft may want to impose once the algorithm is adopted. H.264 is used by Digital Video Broadcasters, or DVB, including European and U.S satellite providers.