As the camera / camcorder world continues to embrace video sharing sites, it's no surprise to see this little critter emerge from the labs of JVC-Victor. The pictured dual codec LSI chip handles both MPEG-2 and H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC formats, theoretically cutting out the painful encode process from YouTube uploads. Granted, most of the technobabble behind the thing is lost in machine translation, but we do get the idea that it'll start showing up in the outfit's Everio line shortly.

[Via AkihabaraNews]

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.

Moving 100 million of anything is no easy feat, and DivX is using this very milestone to throw itself a party. Reportedly, over 100 million DivX Certified video devices have shipped out "since the launch of the DivX Certification program in 2003," and it notes alliances with LG, Philips, Samsung, Sony, and Thomson (what, no SanDisk?) as key steps along the way. More specifically, over 2,500 individual product models have been loosed that support DivX playback, and the company estimates that around "32-percent of all DVD players sold worldwide support DivX." Way to go, now how's about unleashing that Connected box of your to the masses?

[Via PhotographyBlog]

We've given you the pros and cons of DivX-HD, but now we've got one more reason to love the highly-regarded format: 1080p (and 1080i, too). You heard right, the next time you feel the need to rip and encode, you can do so in beautiful 1,920 x 1,080 resolution. In the latest DivX newsletter, support was annouced for "full HD digital video encoding in both interlaced and progressive scan modes," and readers were forewarned that watching those ole 640 x 480 clips may prove painful after experiencing this newfangled nirvana. Version 6.4 also boasted a few other improvements, including "faster multipass encoding, better compression when using internal resize filters, and a new adaptive noise reduction feature" to improve overall quality. So, stop hangin' around and give the new tools a go, eh?

The early impressions of Sony's initial Blu-ray releases are in and as you may have heard, they aren't so good. Many have pointed the blame at Sony's insistence on using MPEG-2 instead of the newer and more easily compressed MPEG-4. One of the reasons they cited for sticking with the older format was their insistence that the MPEG-4 authoring tools available were not of sufficient quality.

Whether that is true or not, Matsushita (Panasonic) has announced their own set of MPEG-4 Blu-ray encoder and authoring tools, which support Java (BD-J) for the interactive features Blu-ray is also capable of. According to what we can interpret of the press release, this will be available July 1st in United States yet Panasonic's (US) web site has no mention of it yet. Also no mention of cost or license fees, although this probably won't be on the shelf at CompUSA anytime soon.

Regardless, considering the apparent state of Blu-ray releases, we can't say for sure how much of the problem is the codec but one has to wonder how many discs will be released using the older technology if they continue to get poor reviews. Rumors have indicated the authoring tools made available by Sony support only MPEG-2 and for that reason all the studios have been using them. It will be interesting to see if there is any release date reshuffling of content in the same way some players have slipped, or if the other studios are able to get better results using Sony's own tools.

[Via AV Watch]

[Update] HDTV UK has more information on the MPEG-4 equipment available soon at the Panasonic Hollywood Library in California.

ATI has already shown their flexibility by partnering with JVC to put their chips in TV's, are now spreading the benefits of that technology across their product line with their newly-announced "Avivo" technology.  Simply put, Avivo is a set of image enhancement, display, and connection specifications that you'll be able to find in many of ATI's future products.  MPEG-2, H.264, HDCP or otherwise, if it is high def and you want to play it or output it to a TV, you will be able to with full hardware support on Avivo compatible products. Video cards equipped with the technology will support progressive scan output and hardware-assisted video encoding so you can convert for other devices without wasting precious CPU cycles. 

I'm glad to see this, as my home PC currently has an ATI Radeon 9200SE that is great, however setting everything up to work properly and output to my monitor and/or TV when and how I want has been more difficult than necessary.  Now that they are designing such connectivity in from the ground up, it will be good for everyone.  Expect Avivo labeled products to be available in the next month or so.

Will it do your laundry, dishes and homework?  No, but it will let you play that high-definition movie you just downloaded on your big screen TV with no loss of quality and leave you with CPU power to work with at the same time.