DVD question

[Frank Boosman]

Although EE Times ran a fairly good article on DVD and the new alliance
supporting it, the one thing they weren't clear about was whether disc
producers can increase the quality of a DVD by increasing the bit rate. For
example, if 135 minutes fits on one side of a DVD at bitrate n, could the
disc producer lower the MPEG-2 compression level to achieve bitrate 2n,
expand the resulting video to consume both sides of the disc, and ship a
higher-quality product to the consumer? What about 4n? 8n? It seems to me
that videophiles (like myself) would be willing to switch discs to get a
higher level of quality. Also, such an ability would give DVD producers the
ability to release multiple versions of the same content at varying quality
levels (and price points), thereby maximizing their revenue (e.g., I would
pay more to get a higher-quality product than the typical consumer would be
willing to pay for a video, as evidenced by the fact that I currently
purchase laser discs).

Also, what is the audio encoding scheme for DVD? Is it AC-3, about which
I'm hearing bad things? Whatever the scheme, can the compression level (and
resulting bit rate) be varied, with the same intent as described above?

-- Frank Boosman
frank....@virtus.com

[Mr. Fun]

I think the bit rate we've all seen (4.5 Mbps or so) is the maximum. Unless
they can spin the platter faster, I don't think the data will come off any
quicker.
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