Death to HD-DVD

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Death to HD-DVD

wmoore

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#19545 21-Feb-2008 05:54

Here

"In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." -
-- Abraham lincoln

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#111991 21-Feb-2008 06:36

Cheers for the early morning chuckles :)

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johnr

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#112001 21-Feb-2008 08:06

No loss

old3eyes

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#112002 21-Feb-2008 08:21

johnr: No loss

Why So??

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RobDickinson

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#112313 22-Feb-2008 15:37

Big loss IMO. HD DVD was a much better deal for consumers than Bluray.

Especialy living in NZ and Bluray having region coding.

sbiddle

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#112319 22-Feb-2008 15:56

I don't see BluRay having a particularly bright future either. Why? Online distribution on content will take a big chunk out of the market. It may have won the battle for a physical HD medium but it's by no means won the HD battle.

Fraktul

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#112320 22-Feb-2008 16:01

sbiddle: I don't see BluRay having a particularly bright future either. Why? Online distribution on content will take a big chunk out of the market. It may have won the battle for a physical HD medium but it's by no means won the HD battle.

The key to online HD distribution is that it is simple and quick for the consumer - currently for the average Jo Blogs it is neither.

JonC

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#112437 23-Feb-2008 09:54

I agree - online distribution will never take off with current NZ broadband caps/speed-limits. A single HD movie that's been encoded with good quality video and sound would take up most of the average user's monthly cap - not to mention take a good day or so to download. If you want the second disk with additional extras, getting it sent in the post would be quicker. How's that for ironic - NZ Post has better bandwidth than most broadband connections - ping times aren't all that great, though.

Here's hoping Telecom's NGN will make this sort of thing viable.

Don't like the idea of region encoding, as well - that just encourages NZ retailers to price-gouge.

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lchiu7

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#112445 23-Feb-2008 11:00

Apparently currently the US providers who are renting online HD movies (Vudu and others) are recompressing their content to about 1G in size. I haven't seen the content but given a BR title can be up to 50G how much additional compression and loss of quality is there. Will the consumer care?

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

richms

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#112593 24-Feb-2008 04:31

Not many people complain about skys bitrates, or the rental releases they get at civic video/blockbuster etc that seem to be much lower rates then a proper bought one. so I would say no, they will not complain. Some people are totally unware of the pixelation that goes on with things moving on sky so I think those of us that care are in a minority. eg, I will always download a 1.4 gig rip of a movie because of the picture quality and usually 5.1 included, whereas most people I know get the 700 meg ones because they dont care about the difference.

Richard rich.ms

stuzzo

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#112692 24-Feb-2008 15:23

richms: eg, I will always download a 1.4 gig rip of a movie because of the picture quality and usually 5.1 included, whereas most people I know get the 700 meg ones because they dont care about the difference.

Is it easy to get hold of current/popular movie titles this way and how much does each movie cost, aside from bandwidth?

richms

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#112705 24-Feb-2008 15:42

I usually use closed trackers, and the less interest they get the better so I will leave finding a source of movies as an exercise to you ;)

Richard rich.ms

lchiu7

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#112707 24-Feb-2008 15:46

I could be wrong but I am not sure there is a legal download service for movies in NZ. And the US legal ones seem to do IP checking and also require US credit cards. You can purchase movies from iTunes but once again without a US credit card (I don't think iTunes cares about IP address or if it does, it says you can purchase so long as you have a US credit card) you will have problems.

This service intrigued me

http://www.vudu.com/

But you have to buy a box and once again I think it would check IP addresses.

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

lchiu7

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#112710 24-Feb-2008 16:00

richms: I usually use closed trackers, and the less interest they get the better so I will leave finding a source of movies as an exercise to you ;)

Of course. A friend showed me a copy he had obtained of Transformers, backed up from the HD-DVD and turned into a 4G AVC/AC-3 file. Played on a PS3 the PQ was clearly better than the DVD. I am guessing it came from such a source but I didn't ask for details :)

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

stuzzo

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#112715 24-Feb-2008 16:20

richms: I usually use closed trackers, and the less interest they get the better so I will leave finding a source of movies as an exercise to you ;)

I guess that was the answer I expected and it's nothing personal as I know it's widespread.

Blu-ray will probably remain a niche to some extent for those that want the best available playback and who have probably made considerable investment in achieving that. However, I think it will be a viable niche unlike DVD-A, SACD.

Commentators in the States have been criticizing recent download services offering HD material at around 4-8 m/bits as not being true HD quality and also for streaming issues so even they have some way to go. Downloads are obviously the way of the future but the question is when will the infrastructure support it.

RustyGonad

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#112725 24-Feb-2008 16:45

stuzzo:
richms: I usually use closed trackers, and the less interest they get the better so I will leave finding a source of movies as an exercise to you ;)

I guess that was the answer I expected and it's nothing personal as I know it's widespread.

Blu-ray will probably remain a niche to some extent for those that want the best available playback and who have probably made considerable investment in achieving that. However, I think it will be a viable niche unlike DVD-A, SACD.

Commentators in the States have been criticizing recent download services offering HD material at around 4-8 m/bits as not being true HD quality and also for streaming issues so even they have some way to go. Downloads are obviously the way of the future but the question is when will the infrastructure support it.

Plenty of reviews around which absolutely rubbish the quality of some of the downloaded content including screenshots which show HD content that doesn't look as good as an upscaled DVD.

Fact of life - info/quality doesn't come from nowhere, there is a reason Bluray disks are 20 GB - re-encoding costs quality, there's a point at which it defeats the purpose. This is especially relevent as your TV gets better ie on a 29" CRT - no difference, on a 46" 1080p LCD you do see the difference, so its all relative.

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