The film vs digital debate is one of our favorites. It is easily as interesting as plasma vs LCD or 1080i vs 720p, but has much more history. In today's LCD age where some don't want things to look real, but instead would prefer unrealistically bright colors, it can be hard for some people to understand what there is to appreciate about grain. In fact these same people would probably always say that the word grain, is a bad word. True movie fans know better though and almost laugh when someone proclaims Planet Earth is the best looking Blu-ray Disc ever. So while we've never been really good at explaining what is so great about film, we really got a kick out of Mr Pixel and Mrs Grain, which is three short video clips that explain the benefits of both mediums in a fun way. So if you've always wondered what others see if film, or just looking for some laughs, click on through.

Thomson's Tiger AVC encoder that it has been using in house for the last couple of years, is now available for sale to interested Blu-ray (and HD DVD) compression and authoring facilities. Including Thomson's film grain adjustment technology among other parts of a "secret sauce" Thomson says results in better looking MPEG-4 / h.264 encoded movies. Packaged as the Nexcode HD AVC Encoder, its a full hardware and software solution built to scale to business requirements. No word on who exactly will use this technology, but as long as our HDM is artifact-free, we're not too concerned how it got that way.

Thomson announced last night that their Film Grain Technology for MPEG-4 has (finally) been approved for mandatory inclusion in HD DVD products. We say finally because they've been showing this off since 2004, and it was originally not approved by the DVD Forum for mandatory inclusion back in February 2005. No word on what has changed between then and now, or exactly when the Steering Committee met and approved it, but it's in there now (See below). Currently this technology is only included for use with the h.264 codec, although they indicate it could be added to support other compression solutions, like VC-1 for example.They remove all trace of film grain before the movie is compressed, then the player recreates the effect during playback. Beyond just adding a different visual feel, they claim this will also enhance compression and lower necessary bitrates for high definition content further. This AVS Forum thread provides much useful information on the effect of film grain and Thomson's technology.