Is Apple TV waiting on H.265 HEVC ratification?

“Much talk at CES in Las Vegas earlier this month — both yea and nay — was over the content delivery problems with Ultra HD, aka Ultra High-Definition video. It’s the chicken and egg conundrum. You can buy a beautiful set costing about the price of a car (not an economy model), but there’s little content,” David Morgenstern reports for ZDNet.

“One of the issues is the industry-wide adoption of a newer and better codec to get all that Ultra HD video around the Internets without clogging the drains,” Morgenstern reports. “Enter H.265, High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC).”

“The standard is a real ISO/IEC MPEG standard and is due for ratification shortly, even in the first quarter of 2013. Codec software for testing is announced. The standard will support a resolution of 8,192 by 4,320 pixels and can deliver double the data compression ratio of the current H.264,” Morgenstern reports. “At the Dreamtek blog, run by a team of U.K. video production consultants, a recent post on HEVC talks about the technology and its benefits for mobile video. ‘And then there is the leading support from Apple. Apple has already moved to support HEVC on its iPads — those sold in 2012 are HEVC compliant.'”

Read more in the full article here.

14 Comments

  1. I believe what’s holding everything up is a suitable contract/agreement with the studios and other content providers. Until they can get something to actually put on the new TV I think it would be DOA.

    1. Cart before the horse or horse before the cart…

      Content providers want a bigger piece of the pie unless they see something extremely compelling and Apple doesn’t want to release something really compelling (and show its hand) until content providers are on board.

      1. Someone missed the whole point of the articles.

        H.265 is to compress more than the current H.264, so it won’t swallow an entire hard disk – or more importantly, as the article points out, clog the data networks.

  2. Is that 16×8-something?? I wanna see the sky. I wanna the the ground. I don’t want to look up somebody’s nose! 16×9 is the stupidest format I’ve ever seen. 16×10 is tolerable. Won’t be buying any of those movies.

  3. Ultra HD: Overkill in pursuit of another high end sales market. 1080p seriously covers everyone’s needs for Internet streaming, and everything else for that matter.

    I CAN see Ultra HD being useful for BIG SCREEN MOVIES, if it can provide a pleasing picture to audiences. Push the tech envelope! Always! But this is a vacant market for Internet users. Not gonna happen.

    However, this waste-of-time-and-money push for Internet Ultra HD (4K, 8K) might be GREAT for opening up Internet bandwidth. Right now, the nasty companies in charge of bandwidth in the USA are either being MISERS or GOUGERS if you want something more than meagre bandwidth. Much or the rest of the world kicks the USA’s ass in bandwidth. Sad to say, Verizon leads the pack of nasties with their abusively expensive and minimal bandwidth FIOS, despite that technology’s excellent capabilities. FSCK -U Verizon!

    1. you speak only for yourself, Derek.

      By your logic, everyone would also drive Yugos.

      As for restriction in bandwidth — that’s physical reality. Many, if not most, rural areas of the world don’t have the bandwidth to stream 1080p in real time during low-usage times, let alone during peak demand. that’s why ISPs in the USA know they can continue to gouge customers with bundled products — by pricing out the low end of the market, they can slow the implementation of new infrastructure and keep wringing out profits from antiquated copper cable.

      1. Oh No he doesn’t. Can’t believe we share first names.

        The bandwidth issue has simply GOT to be addressed. Really. Just imagine how much more malware, spam, etc. the innocent could unwillingly receive. Ah, yes. The “internet”. Brilliance turned to dog shit by greed. It’s becoming the new “cancer”. Can’t cure it. Too much money involved.

        What is the current number? 70% of all intershit traffic is shitware? Here’s a nutty idea. Stop the shat and 70% of the bandwidth returns. Or am I really that tipsy? Friday’s – Love ’em.

      2. I live exactly 1/4 mile from THE major hub for upstate New York. Shilling FIOS at 1 Mbps at gouging prices is plain old ridiculous greed. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, you can get FIOS at 300 Mbps, LA also being a major Internet hub.

        As for the Yugo comment, what? Are you talking about me pointing out that no one, but maybe a movie theater, needs 4K or 8K? That 1080p is all anyone would want to use? That has WHAT to do with a crappy Yugo car? You need to work on your metaphors, or whatever you were attempting.

  4. Headlines with question marks are stupid.

    Clearly Apple is not waiting — what is slowing deployment of the standard, as usual, are other slow industry players who have a vested interest in continuing to sell outdated products.

  5. I’m always perplexed at the notion put forth that 1080p is as good as anyone could ever need. The 1920×1080 standard results in only a. 2.1 megapixel image. If that were a photo, it would be considered o my really acceptable for enlargement to a Hugh quality 3×5 print.

    We have phones with tiny screens that about equal the pixel count of today’s HDTV standard. I don’t see how anyone sees it as logical that blowing that same image, which looks amazing on a 4 or 5 inch screen up to a 55″ TVis just as good.

    Larger HDTV’s look soft and/or pixelated. The bigger they get, the worse they look.

    I for one see a definite desire to improve HDTV resolution. 4k video would be nice to have, but still no where near a true “retina display” level TV.

    Keep pushing forward. Good enough, usually isn’t.

  6. H265 can be about more pixels for the same amount of bandwidth, but similarly to the same amount of pixels for less bandwidth. So not about 4K, 8K whatever. Just less data. And that’s good.

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