Review: Video codec shootout
ExtremeTech | at | by Mike
One of the most misleading phrases in marketing is "digital quality" -- as in "Buy this $40 DVD player and enjoy your movies in digital quality!" We all know that just being digital doesn't make something better -- in fact, it can sometimes make it much worse. What's more, digital formats are not often comparable, and the quality of two seemingly similar formats can be drastically different.
This is especially true in the world of digital video, where such great strides have been made in recent years that it's nearly impossible to consider modern codecs in the same breath as those from even five years ago. There are literally dozens of video compression options out there, some of them with multiple different implementations, making for a dizzying array of digital video options.