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Originally Posted by Stuart C
It's also worth noting that MPEG2, given a high enough bitrate, beats H264 on quality given a similar bitrate. H264 gives a better image quality at low bitrates though.
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I'm not sure about that. When the DVD Forum were comparing codecs for high bit-rate (30mbits) 1080p HD DVD encoding they compared MPEG 2, H.264, and VC-1. They decided that VC-1 gave the best results, closely followed by H.264/AVC/MPEG 4, then way behind was MPEG 2.
Blu-rays now use H.264 almost exclusively (aside from Warner Bros, who still use VC-1), having moved away from MPEG 2 due to the huge amount of user complaints. Certainly in my own experience with HD DVD and BD, the MPEG 2 stuff is always far inferior to VC-1 and H.264. They're just far more modern codecs and give better results in any situation.
Looking at the quality of BBC HD and Virgin's HD VOD content the quality is pretty mediocre to my eyes. It's a far cry from blu-ray or HD DVD level, but is of course still far superior to the SD content on Virgin.
It's really a shame that the UK, and Virgin of course in particular are so slow in adopting high-def. It's difficult now to buy an SD TV, so they really should be transitioning to HD as quickly as possible. It's amazing and disappointing that we still don't have the core channels from BBC, C4, ITV, and C5 in high-def.