[H]ardNews 9th Edition

MS On Every DVD?

Microsoft gets a nod from the SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) on its VC-9 video decoding technology. A pretty big win for MS who has been working towards this since last year.

An industry standards group has made a preliminary decision to include Microsoft's video compression technology in a next-generation DVD format, giving the company a key boost in the digital media arena. The steering committee for the DVD Forum on Friday announced provisional approval for Microsoft's VC-9 and two other video technologies--H.264 and MPEG-2--as mandatory for the HD-DVD specification for playback devices.