OT: why no MP2 in NTSC MPEG2?

riredale wrote on 6/18/2002, 5:33 PM
A little bit OT (okay, actually quite a bit OT), but given the fact that so many MPEG2 codecs produce MP2 audio, I wonder if it's just a matter of time before the committee that controls the MPEG2 "standard" relents and allows MP2 (and for that matter, MP3) to be part of the official MPEG2 format. As it now stands, only PCM, AC3, and DTS are allowed in NTSC countries. I suspect the Dolby gang did a fair bit of lobbying back in the early 1990s when the current MPEG2 standard was first kicked around.

Anybody know of an official reason for the current situation?

Comments

jgourd wrote on 6/19/2002, 5:15 AM
Uhm, in the MPEG/DVD world, all the MPx audio formats are considered PCM. PCM is the de-compressed bitstream.
vonhosen wrote on 6/19/2002, 5:43 AM
In PAL land we are lucky. Our players support .mp2 & .mpa audio. This is MPEG-1 layer II audio & will give you pseudo Dolby compression without having the expensive Dolby licencing fee. I typically use 384Kbs for my audio in DVD projects which is a substantial gain over the 1600Kbs for PCM.

We are also lucky in that many of our players & TVs support NTSC.

We can play NTSC on PAL (or PAL on NTSC) & the players/TV will convert on the fly!

As suggested I suspect it has a lot to do with lobbying on the part of Dolby. We slipped through the net because we are so far behind & so far away that they didn't care.

(I'm not rying to rub salt into wounds)
owlsroost wrote on 6/19/2002, 7:53 AM
Actually, the MPEG-2 standards allow the use of MPEG Layer-I/II/III audio (and don't allow straight PCM - AFAIK) - it's the DVD-Video standard (controlled by the DVD Forum) that has the problem.....

As far as I remember from the time it was a US v Europe battle - Dolby lobbied hard for Dolby Digital to be the world standard, Philips lobbied hard for 5.1 channel MPEG audio. The compromise arrived at was that 50Hz area players have to support at least 2 channel MPEG audio decoding in addition to DD and PCM, whereas 60Hz players only have to decode DD and PCM.

Tony
SonyDennis wrote on 6/19/2002, 8:02 AM
riredale:

You probably will not see it become official in the US DVD spec, since there is so much legacy hardware out there. However, many players (typically the ones that also play MP3 discs <g>) already support layer 3 audio for movies.

///d@
SonyDennis wrote on 6/19/2002, 8:04 AM
jgourd:

No, PCM is PCM, and only used to refer to uncompressed audio. For example, PCM and Dolby Digtal (at least stereo) are the required formats that a US DVD player is required to support.

Just because everything gets converted to PCM before it gets played back doesn't mean it's called PCM <g>.

///d@
riredale wrote on 6/20/2002, 11:59 AM
Hmmm...

I hope the Dolby guy on the DVD committee back in the mid 1990s got a really BIG bonus from his employer--he deserved it.

Since DVD player manufacturers seem to be bending over backwards trying to accommodate everyone, we might find that the issue becomes irrelevant at some point, since the players will play pretty much anything, standard or no standard. Perhaps AC-3 will eventually be relegated to just another 5.1 reproduction option in NTSC countries.
owlsroost wrote on 6/20/2002, 12:40 PM
Since the DVD chip suppliers normally design for the world market (and any player that can play VCD has to be able to decode 2 channel MPEG layer-II audio anyway), I think you are right.

I suspect any US player that can't handle MPEG audio on DVD has been deliberately limited in that respect, rather than it being an intrinsic limitation of the hardware - and it seems a bit pointless really....

Tony
vonhosen wrote on 6/20/2002, 2:10 PM
There are probably NTSC players out there that do support it and if you've got one it's gonna be fine for you to author your DVDs with MPEG audio.

Your big problem is distribution, if you don't want to exclude part of your NTSC customer base you are gonna have to stick with PCM or AC-3. I really can't see that changing as SonicDennis has indicated simply because of all the old hardware out there.