Blu-ray, HD DVD Encoder Sharpens Image

Thomson just introduced a new H.264 encoder for high definition optical disc mastering. H.264 is widely regarded as the trickiest of the next generation codecs. So a new toolset that can help create good looking 1080p movies is A-OK with me!

TIGER AVC, co-developed by Thomson Corporate Research laboratories and Technicolor, is an optical disc compression tool that supports both HD DVD and Blu-ray high-definition DVD formats. Technicolor will use the technology in-house to support post production for movie studios.

Developing the compression technology required tradeoffs. It took Technicolor and Thomson more than a year to develop the 50 algorithms required to achieve the perfect picture quality. The video encoding technology is based on MPEG4-H.264/AVC.

More details in the press release here.