Every now and then the techy geek inside notices something interesting in the details for Blu-ray Disc releases

This week I have noticed an interesting trend from Universal with respect to their chosen video codec.

In the past, Universal has pretty universally used the VC-1 codec.

Back on HD DVD, there was only one case where a Universal title used the AVC MPEG4 codec, and I heard that this happened when a subcontractor couldn’t be bothered with the hassle that VC-1 presented for the given title and used AVC - and by the time it was noticed it was too late to change.

So I was quite surprised to see with the new upcoming comedy releases, that as each review came out on High Disc Def News, the titles each have AVC used for the video codec. The titles in question are Knocked Up, The 40 Year Old Virgin and Forgetting Sarah Marshall - all of which are released at the end of the month.

So is this a change in policy? If so, does it really matter?

It is interesting to see the current trend in the codec selection. For the most part, the big Blu-ray studios - Disney, Fox and Sony - have used the AVC codec as their primary choice after moving from MPEG2. Disney and some of the Sony music releases have also used VC-1.

Warner, originally a backer of both HD DVD and Blu-ray, has exclusively used VC-1 as far as I can tell for both formats.

Paramount is a bit of a mixed bag, having moved to AVC for their HD DVD releases, back to VC-1 for their resurgence onto Blu-ray and more recently back to AVC again - some giving the authoring tools as the reason for the use of AVC for titles like Transformers that have picture in picture streams.

To be honest, I have seen excellent results from both codecs, but you have to wonder if the use of AVC has some marketing advantage over VC-1.

Perhaps VC-1 is perceived as the best choice for HD DVD, where AVC is the Blu-ray codec of choice.

I for one will be watching as things progress. If Warner start using AVC as well, there is almost certainly a change brewing. I would rather that they get better at using lossless audio codecs on every disc before worrying about the video codec though!

In any case, as long as the discs look great, I am not going to complain. If you are interested to see Universal’s foray into AVC, pick up a copy of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up or Forgetting Sarah Marshall - or just get the Ultimate Unrated Comedy Collection of all three - I think that is what I will be getting myself…!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 at 4:13 pm and is filed under Studios, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.