What ever happened to MPEG-4? This would seem like a better format for the next generation of DVD than Microsofts own propriety format as MPEG is an open standard. From what I read before in articles, Windows Media Corona format will still be backwards compatible with Windows Media Video, although its sound will be 6 channel 128kbps WMA audio. If this is true, then I would prefer MPEG-4 over WMV.

I've seen MPEG-4 video clips and WMV clips. Although each clip encoded in both codecs were of similar size, MPEG-4 handled action better than the WMV clip, i.e. the MPEG clips were less 'blocky'. I have so far never came across a WMV clip without any 'metallic' artifacts in the audio.

Actually I'm disgusted with both ideas -- WMV _AND_ MPEG-4. I would much prefer seeing blue-laser DVD technology to be implemented using MPEG-2 format, just like the current DVDs use, just with helluva lot higher bitrate.

Damnit, we need to buy new hardware anyway, whether its going to be MPEG-4 based on current red-laser technology (9GB per side) or MPEG-2 based on blue-laser technology (27GB per side), so why to stick with something that restricts the bitrate and try to tweak with new compression methods, when virtually all video/TV/movie industry already uses MPEG-2 in their productions.

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