Chalk another one up for MPEG-LA, as the licensing group's members have dropped lawsuits against Vizio stemming from the one-time value HDTV company's refusal to license MPEG-2 technology, claiming it's suppliers had already paid the necessary fees. Despite Amtran's pleas, just like Target's TruTech brand televisions and DVD players, that argument appears to have quickly folded, . It remains to be seen what direct effect this will have on price, but between this and Vizio's notable Black Friday absence they must be serious about changing to a more upscale image, we wonder if Sony will invite them to a special reception. (Warning: PDF read link)

Target has apparently come around to MPEG-LA's way of thinking, agreeing to pay royalties to the licensing consortium for its store-brand TruTech HDTVs and DVD players that contain MPEG-2 technology, in return for dropping their pending patent enforcement action. How this affects Vizio's claim that it doesn't have to pay royalties because its suppliers already do remains to be seen, but the delta between the cheaper and cheapest displays could be narrower than ever soon. Check out the admittedly scant details beyond the read link (warning: PDF).

Ever since DirecTV 10 went operational and started broadcasting MPEG-4 HD to fans everywhere, many have wondered, "what about the older HD channels?" DirecTV was one of the first to broadcast some of our favorite HD channels, like HD.net and ESPN HD, but HD Lite has taken most of the fun out of 'em. So while DirecTV would love to just move everything to MPEG-4, all the existing MPEG-2 customers wouldn't be that happy -- specifically all those DirecTiVo HD holdouts. Starting today DirecTV started broadcasting a simulcast of the most popular MPEG-2 HD channels in MPEG-4 using DirecTV 11. So far the response has been great, and many are wondering how they ever got by watching all that HD lite for this long. So while this is a step in the right direction, we'll be a bit more excited when DirecTV starts making good on their recent promises and launches the rest of the HD channels needed to get to the promised 130.

Just an update on that Vizio vs. the world tiff, one of the major shareholders of the company and major manufacturer for the brand, Taiwan-based Amtran, chimes in that it already paid royalties for the disputed MPEG-2 patents between the end of 2007 and beginning of 2008. It's important to note that the company apparently had not seen the details of the lawsuit yet and couldn't give details, but we'll see how this affects things between the cheap HDTV manufacturer and MPEG LA.

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]

It's no secret the rest of the display industry hasn't been happy with Vizio shaking up the low end with its cheap HDTVs, and now Mitsubishi and others have joined in a lawsuit accusing the manufacturer of refusing to license necessary patents. The 15 patents allegedly violated are for MPEG-2 compression that Mitsu, Sony, Samsung, Philips, Thomson, JVC and Columbia University of New York claim Vizio refuses to license. Vizio says it don't need no stinking licenses, since its suppliers already have them and it believes these licenses extend to its products. MPEG-LA also filed a similar suit against Target's TruTech house brand of televisions; while we'll have to wait for a ruling on the case to see who is right, it seems if they can't compete with these lower prices, other manufacturers will make sure cheap HDTVs cost more to make. For its part, Vizio says it does not believe this suit will have a materially adverse impact on its business, so for now, let the low-price flat screens roll.

Read - Mitsubishi, Samsung Sue Vizio Over Video Patents
Read - VIZIO Comments on MPEG-2 Lawsuit By Electronics Competitors

SES Americom (not letting one bad satellite get them down) has apparently found an even dozen takers for it's IP-PRIME HD-4 services, designed to add inexpensively MPEG-4 compressed HDTV to MPEG-2 IPTV providers. Not all of them were named, but Chibardun Telephone Cooperative in Wisconsin, Home Town Cable in Florida and Manti Telephone in Utah are among those soon to bask in the beauty of 32 HD including ESPN, Disney, Discovery, CNN, Fox News, MTV and others. So, if you get your TV from your phone company and haven't been getting HD yet, give them a call and see if a new set-top box in your future.

DirecTV and DISH have already figured out that the best way to make the most out of bandwidth is to make the switch to MPEG-4 and have even convinced some providers to supply them content in the soon-to-be standard in video compression. Now, as expected, cable is looking to make the switch to help solve their bandwidth woes and one of Moto's VPs Geoff Roman predicts that MPEG-4 will see widespread deployment in 2009 and "By the latter part of 2009, MPEG-2 stand-alone devices will have completely disappeared." We assume that by stand-alone, he means MPEG-2 only, and not hybrids that are sure to fill the gap for years to come -- till everything is all switched over. This is great news, cause it means they'll have more room for all that new HD content that we all want, now for now, there's just the long wait.

SES Americom has released its IP-PRIME HD-4 solution to IPTV telcos who want to jump on the HDTV bandwagon. Providers that have invested in MPEG-2 infrastructure are looking for a way to upgrade to the more HD-friendly MPEG-4. Reworking the whole network is crazy-expensive, and that's where the HD-4 comes in. Dropping in some of these units on the headend will add a MPEG-4 "layer" on top of the MPEG-2, allowing the flow of HD goodness to end customers. There's no interruption to the MPEG-2 stream, and all the user needs is a new set-top box for the MPEG-4 stream. Here's to hoping this solution opens up more HD options to customers whose only options are smaller telco providers.

SureWest Communications HDTV service is out of beta and adding even more content, with at least 38 channels expected by the end of the year. Currently numbering 26, SureWest most recently added A&E, Fox Business Channel and the History Channel to its HD Life package, with other like TBS, USA Network and CNN coming soon. With "virtually unlimited" capacity on their FTTH network, the company claims it can keep adding channels in MPEG-2 without sacrificing picture quality. We're sure the Sacramento-area residents with access appreciate the effort.

In a world where almost all HD channels are distributed with MPEG-2, HBO has just announced that all 26 of their new HD channels will be MPEG-4. The stream will be 8 Mbps, and HBO has mandated that the provider not reduce the bit-rate. What they didn't say is, what the minimum will be for all those MPEG-2 networks that will no doubt transcode the signal rather than upgrade their entire network (including all the STBs). This is an obvious advantage to satellite providers who are already planning on deploying their new HD channels with MPEG-4; and for HBO who won't have to spend as much cash on bandwidth to distribute their feeds.

Fox already announced it is kicking off its support of the Blu-ray format with several enhanced titles timed to hit at the time of the PlayStation 3 launch, now it's announced more extras for several titles scheduled for the following weeks. From Hell will be a dual-layer BD-50 50GB release, authored in Blu-ray Java and using MPEG-4 (AVC) compression. It also features several commentaries, a lossless soundtrack, a trivia pop up feature and 21 deleted scenes. Flight of the Phoenix, as well as the rest of the releases, is authored using standard HDMV, includes a DTS HD Master Audio lossless soundtrack as well as commentaries and HD trailers. Rising Sun comes to Blu-ray using MPEG-4 compression, the only extras mentioned are lossless soundtrack and HD trailers.The Devil Wears Prada and Transporter 2 both use MPEG-2 compression and will include DTS HD Master Audio lossless soundtracks as well as HD trailers. The Devil Wears Prada is still set for a day-and-date release with the DVD December 12th, behind From Hell, Flight of the Phoenix and Rising Sun December 5th. Transporter 2 brings up the rear with a Boxing Day release of December 26th. All of the announced movies share a $39.98 MSRP. We've been complaining about the lack of extras on many HD releases, while Fox may be a little late to the party, it appears the company is ready to give customers the advanced features -- not to mention (hopefully) enhanced PQ with better compression/bigger discs -- once titles do hit the streets.

The Lake House was just hit the streets on Tuesday of this week but High-Def Digest already has the skinny on both releases. Thankfully, both of these titles utilize VC-1 encoding so the picture quality should be top notch but there are issues with both discs and because the releases came from the same master, both discs have the same problem. They are reporting that while the discs don't look bad, they also don't look great ether. Both the HD DVD and Blu-ray releases appear a bit soft and while there isn't any noise or defects, it just doesn't 'wow' you. So apparently, MPEG-2 had a lot to do with the original HD DVD/Blu-ray title bout that declared HD DVD the winner in terms of picture quality. Now that some Blu-ray release are opting for VC-1, the picture quality should be up to snuff.

Read: Blu-ray review
Read: HD DVD review

ATI is trying to make catching OTA HDTV broadcasts on your PC a bit more mainstream with the TV Wonder 650. This add-in card not only picks up high definition broadcasts, but includes Avivo technology for image enhancement on analog broadcasts, motion-adaptive 3D comb filter, noise-reduction and hardware-assisted MPEG-2 encoding. The included high-def PVR software will record content in DivX, H.264, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and WMV9 formats. This card seems Vista-ready, as they also mention combining it with ATI videocards to enable 3D menus, in addition to the MulTView picture-in-picture technology (requires two tuner cards) and the ability to have a translucent video window over other applications. While it isn't the OCUR CableCard device you may be waiting for, if broadcast HDTV is all you need this could be a great pickup for $129, shipping today.

Joe Kane is one of the world's foremost expert on TV calibration (Think Digital Video Essentials) and was recently interviewed about calibration and the high-def format war. The first half of the the video interview is all about calibration and if you can sit through the somewhat European content, (and bad camera zooms) it does become worth your while. He is stating that Blu-ray is all about greed. Why? Because they are using MPEG-2. He is basing this opinion on personal experiences of demoing VC-1 and MPEG-2 where not a single person failed to see the differences. We don't know if Joe is making any money on HD DVD or VC-1 (like Major Nelson) but it doesn't seem likely. This is just a man that is expressing his personal experiences on the subject.

Check it out.