"Blu-ray Disc" vs. "HD DVD": Neither Is Winning

[Tjalfe]

The apple Itunes store offers movies at Near DVD quality and for $12.99.. does not seem like much of a bargain, especially if you have to pay your ISP for downloading it in the first place..
Guba charges $19.99 to buy a movie, and it is only available in the USA, and only with Internet Explorer
At those prices, I would want the disk itself.

[Hulk]

Have you actually had a look at those services?

Terrible selection.

No HD.

No specified bit rate (because it's horrible).

Slow sites (at least on my end).

Sorry but not even close.

I guess I'm out of touch but I'm not interested in downloading videos like "Pimp My Blog."

[Jerry Jones]

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Evildead666]

WTF...a hell of a thread. and a read.

HD-DVD players in the states at 98 bucks for Black Friday?
They are starting to flood the market with HD-DVD players.
They are cheaper than blu-ray. blu-ray may die, but both won't.

Download stuff will only become viable when enough people can get it.
The people who can get it NOW, already enjoy a fast bandwidth, and download like there's no tomorrow.
They just download DVD rips.
Why should they pay for something thats, paid for, and slightly better quality than now, dvd for free ?

They already mostly have IPTV, more channels than they can watch, some may have external timeshifting devices.

The disks are here for a while, but i would more likely see a new format come before the full download service:

the flash cartridge.

How many ninteno NES carts still work now ?
Many cartridges were virtually indestructible, and with the state on encryption, etc today, a full HD-DVD would be available on a cartridge.

Download will come in a few years when the average household has a 10Mbit line.
But the MPAA and RIAA will have killed the quality from it long before then.

[Hulk]

Download will come in a few years when the average household has a 10Mbit line.
But the MPAA and RIAA will have killed the quality from it long before then.

Unfortunately I fear this will be the truth.

And 10Mbit will "almost" be enough to stream a good quality HD movie. I'd say 20Mbit and we're in business for 1080i/p content.

[Evildead666]

They tell us here we need 8Mbit for SDTV, 20Mbit for HDTV.

I don't have anywhere enough for either.
I can do on demand, to an internal hard drive, but i would have to pay on demand also.

I still prefer going to the dvd rental store...
Wonder when they'll start getting HD movies ?
And which one they'll stock ?

Maybe they'll come out with dual side dual format, blu-ray one side and HDDVD on the other...?

[Jerry Jones]

Unfortunately I fear this will be the truth.

And 10Mbit will "almost" be enough to stream a good quality HD movie. I'd say 20Mbit and we're in business for 1080i/p content.

Not according to Akamai's PDF white paper here:

http://www.akamai.com/dl/whitepapers/HD_Web_Whitepaper.pdf

While no definitive industry metrics are in place that specify encoding rates for HD-quality online video, 700 kilobits per second is a de facto standard for ‘recreational’ video quality, 2 megabits per second is the accepted standard for ‘TV quality’ video, and 4-6 megabits per second is the standard bit rate for ‘DVD quality’. Using these figures as a guideline, a standard encoding rate for ‘HD quality’ video is approximately 6-10 megabits per second, depending on content.

If you consider that over-the-air local TV broadcasters routinely confine their HD content to a 12 Mbps or less stream using HD MPEG-2, then it seems reasonable to me that 6 to 10 Mbps would be about right for online H.264 MPEG-4 HD content.

http://www.thehdweb.com/about.html

In my view, the online stuff should look better than much of the marginal HD that is broadcast currently by cable and local TV and their antiquated MPEG-2 codecs.



Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Hulk]

I don't buy it. 1080p has 6 times the pixels as broadcast. So if 4-6 is DVD quality, as he says, then HD needs 24 to 36Mbps. Okay, I'll kind of buy that. Not really though because most DVD's have an average encoding bitrate more like 6Mbps so the 36 number is more realistic.

Forget about most broadcast. I personally don't like the macroblocking, blooming, and other artifacts you can see on any good HD monitor.

Now if we say they are using a really good H.264 encoder I can see HD bitrates being sufficient at 18Mbps. No way 12Mbps or less.

I know from personal experience that 4Mbps produces excellent results for SD video using H.264. 3Mbps shows artifacting. 6x3=18Mpbs so that will most likely show artifacts as well with a good monitor.

Now I'm talking about 1080p which is where HD is heading.

If you want to defend HD that is good enough. Or looks pretty good. Then whatever. I'm not investing in an expensive monitor if the high quality content isn't there. And we had this discussion before Jerry and you agreed with me on that point.

And 12Mbps which I'm telling you isn't enough for really good HD STILL isn't possible on my connection which can maybe sustain 1/3 to possibly 1/2 that on a good day with low inernet traffic and great servers.

[paulw]

Do you really need to download TV and movies in HD in real time?? What's wrong with a buffer of say 15~30 minutes or even overnite for next day viewing..?? I'm sure that's how most of the world will end up with IPTV etc..

[Evildead666]

Content providers will have a fit when they find out that the file that was streamed to your HDD which was encrypted, has been cracked, and distributed online for free...thats why you won't be getting any quality soon...

They don't want to leave any local content at all. Thats why they are so happy with streaming...only a few hundred Mb need to be kept as temp cache for fluidity.

I've been waiting for 2Mbps for 5 years.
The day i'll get 10Mbit+ here, maybe another 5 years...

[Hulk]

Evildead666,

Just noticed your sig. Do you have a P4 o/c to 4.8GHz?

Which processor? Phase change cooling?

[Evildead666]

Pentium 945D 3.4Ghz (found out what the difference is with the 950 - no VT, d'oh!)
on Watercooling. Corsair 500 doing the northbridge and CPU.
CPu doesn't hit 60C, NB stays at 32-33C all the time at 1.65V.
CPU is at 1.5V, 1.45 after the Vdrop.

Managed to get one of the last Pentium D's available, since I have only a lowly i955X motherboard, not Core compatible.

atm, the processor is at 4.6Ghz, due to some memory problems. All of the G-Skill is stuck at DDR600, and fails above that.
I have put back 2x1Gb of Corsair, and will be back up to 4.8 or more this week (later on today).
Its getting colder here now, and my PC is in the unheated garage gets better and better as winter rolls on...
I need to add a fan on the CPU area, since the voltage heatsink is burning, and the little 4cm fan is holding by one screw. should be able to hit 5Ghz I think. i was gonna stop there.

I do have a spare Pentium D 805, but thats pretty crap, even when OC to 4.1 from 2.66
In case of frying the 945 lol

edit : The corsair 500 is helped by sitting on 2x120mm fans blowing upwards. I have been meaning to open it up and set up a push-pull fan system, 100% all the time. and change the pump. maybe.

[Jerry Jones]

1. APPLE iTunes TV shows and movies:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/movies.html

2. Vongo.com:

http://www.vongo.com/

3. Xbox 360 LIVE Marketplace:

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/marketplace/moviestv/

4. GUBA:

http://www.guba.com

5. VUDU:

http://www.vudu.com

6. AxiomTV:

http://www.axiom.tv/

7. Akamai:

http://www.thehdweb.com/

8. Movielink:

http://www.movielink.com

9. Amazon unbox:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/video/help/faq.html/104-0508629-0067901?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=0KF7QXH1GPVWAK9GXS00&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=298517001&pf_rd_i=16261631

10. FANFARE:

http://www.sandisk.com/fanfare/intro/

11. FiOS TV:

http://www22.verizon.com/content/fiostv

12. AT&T U-verse TV:

https://uverse1.att.com/un/loadSelectOfferAction.do?From_UMA_Iframe=True&UMA_Launch_Url=/uma/RetrieveCatalogContent?ITEMTYPE=COMPONENT&ITEMID=104297&DOCTYPE=LEARNMORE&FORMAT=IFRAME&APPID=AMSS

13. TiVo HD:

http://www.tivo.com/whatistivo/tivohd/index.html

14. Joost:

http://www.joost.com/

15. hulu:

http://www.hulu.com/

16. Babelgum:

http://www.babelgum.com/

17. Veoh Networks:

http://www.veoh.com/

DOWNLOADS!



Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Brian Ellis]

DOWNLOADS!



Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

CRAP!

[Hulk]

CRAP!

Ha Ha Ha! That exactly what I was thinking!