Forget Blu-ray... Hi Def streaming is where it's at

It's getting pretty funny to what pathetic the burnt HD DVD owners will go to now..

The infrastructure to download anything by heavilly compressed 720p movies on broadband, is so far away, it's not even on the horizon. You are talking fibre to the door of every home to enable something that comes close to the instant play and definition of Blu-ray movies...

Digital download will eventually take over, there is no doubt about that but currently there are still too many issues involved. Here are just a few of the included issues:

1. Infrastructure requirements - If ISP's bitch about P2P traffic slowing down their networks how do you think they're gonna react to massively larger numbers of people downloading even larger amounts of content on a more regular basis.

2. Bandwidth requirements - Most of the world doesn't have the net speeds required for streaming 480p with stereo audio without hickups so 720p with 5.1/6.1 HD audio is out of the question.

3. DRM issues - I think we all know what a massive headache this will be.

4. Server issues - If the server is down for whatever reason you can't watch your movies or if it's setup like some of the defunct music services and the service shuts down you just lost hundreds to thousands worth of movies.

So like I said eventually digital downloads will be the standard but before then we have to solve a lot of technical and legal issues. While there will be successful services in the mean time people still like having that physical copy on hand and always will so personally I don't see it taking over until we have atleast petabyte capable home storage systems which can keep a few hundred full HD movies with extras on hand.

It's also worth bringing up that the Playstation Network movie service is being introduced to compete with XBox Live so if it's run the same way the movies will be rentals, not true purchases. Also with the release of the PlayTV it wouldn't really be worth running a TV download service, regardless of purchase or rental unless its for premium channel content which even then might not be worth it, because it makes the PS3 double as an HD DVR.

I recieve both Broadcast Engineering and Streaming Media newsletters.
The amount of HD hardware being bought by Print Publishers as well as broadcasters is huge - they all see the potential of expanding their audience base and offering their advertisers a broader base.
The Content Distribution Network's (CDN's) are talking about how much HD they're doing, everyone is doing it.

It's not going to happen. Why? Infrastructure and quality. 

1. Nobody with a 1080p TV wants to see gigantic blocks of pixels due to the super heavy compression.

2. Bandwidth. Even with a high compressed movie, you're still talking double the bitrate of DVDs, so around 15 Mbps. Good luck finding an ISP in the US who not only has bandwidth to the consumer in that quantity, but has the bandwidth for 1000 streaming consumers on their backbone. 

People _WANT_ Blu-ray's quality, they just don't want all of the other idiotic features (lighter wallet, conflicting featureset, non-futureproof players, and of course the DRM), and most people don't have a TV Set that can do 1080p anyway.

The sucess of streaming certainly won't be a certainty. The majority of people's internet can't handle HD streaming as of now. It can therefore hardly be concluded that streaming is the way of the future. 

The idea definitely has merit, but the way things are, the only people actually can be considered ready for HD streaming are countries like Japan and Korea who have insane internet speeds. North Americans and Europeans are a long way from adopting such technology in a meaningful way. It is absolutely impossible today to offer streaming technology to the masses.

Until ISPs remove their stupid download caps and increase speeds at an affordable price I will continue to purchase BLU Ray movies.

The comments that the bandwidth isnt there is a little harsh. The US broadband push is definately laggin behind Japan and Europe. However, Sony's initiative will work in Japan first. Besides with Verizon pushing fiber to the door and Comcast in a a bit of a bandwidth one upmanship with Time Warner, the time for streaming movies will come sooner than every one thinks.

The point about DRM is very important, this is Sony after all. Their motto should be, "When we win, the consumer loses....now who wants a beer?". There are so many different directions for streaming hd movies now that it's almost like the wild west. Microsoft and Netflix have a decent lead on this, but they are using the rental model. Storage of actually owned digital medium is going to be a costly enterprise. I currently have 50 movies digitized in various HD and SD forms and they are taking up over 256GB. Most consumers have many more than just 50 movies lying around their house

On a personal note, i have been converting all of my DVDs over to wmv and storing them on a home server. Since the 360 already has the built in ability to connect to a MCE box and stream movies. This can be done with with Blu-ray, HDDVD, or the bog standard DVD. TMPGEnc is a great program for doing that.

As much as I dislike the DRM features on BD, at least they're easily broken (AnyDVD HD). I'm not so sure with downloads.

Second of all, the picture and sound quality is far better on BD. You've got much lower bit rates with downloads, assuming you even have the bandwidth to do it. I have a 10Mb FTTH connection and I can pull it off, but the guy on 1.5Mbit DSL? What about those poor saps that live in the country? Forget it.

Not only is the picture quality lower, but the sound quality is much lower. You don't get the high resolution lossless codecs with downloads (not that the situation is perfect on the BD front).

All in all, not going to happen. I still don't use downloads for music as the quality is still lacking, at least in the legitimate options. Video is even further behind.

If ISPs want to get involved, they need to push docsis 3 faster and FTTH. If cable/satellite wants to get in on it with on-demand or PPV, they will to need to upgrade big time. I use comcast right now and i have a 1080p tv and right now the 1080i doesnt look so bad. of course if i had 3 1080p tv's, while downloading something, bandwidth will be a problem. even with the current docsis 1.1 can do much faster than 8mb or 16mb but why put something out there that has no competition? FiOS came along and comcast had to do something. well if they want to get more, they need to bundle the service with the purchase of a TV and get some percentage off that.

in spain, they said that people who bought HDTVs would get half their money back if spain won! and they did!!

Blu Ray is Cooling, TELL MISTER LEE, HELL NO code IS Broken.

Tel.E.vision. This is quality issue, like simpsons or 60 Minutes. I'm glad someone figured out 7 mb/s to 15 mb/s needed Bandwidth from 720P to 1080P, Its' Only Taken Me 3 years to GET Hardware in Place.Still 48 Lane Shoope.

Blu Ray is OverKill at Present, To Argue Rolls-Royce When Lincoln Continental Makes consumer Just As Happy, Exceptsing RED Carpet Crowd, Well Market is Just Limited, yet that 200 mb/s bandwidth intriques ULTIE.
TS drashek

You obviously can't have millions of people connecting to a single Sony / Columbia Pictures server, but as long as there are "local" VoD servers, this can be done today.

In other words, this is perfectly doable as long as the video is streamed from your ISP. Most ISPs can easily offer speeds of around 24 Mb/s to their clients, and in fact several ISPs are already selling IPTV and VoD over ADSL.

As to DRM, just look at Steam. Best on-line copy protection I've ever seen. Lets you download your files as many times as you want to as many systems as you want, lets you back them up to any medium, etc..

I want the disk. I can't think of a movie I'd want to actually own a copy of, but certainly with music I want the disk. I want the ability to play the disk wherever I choose - which may be on a ski hill, 20 Km into the bush on a multiday hike, while in an aircraft, while riding a bus or train. I want the disk.

Some twit will perhaps gushingly respond with that even wireless can deliver the bandwidth. I'll preemptively respond that wireless isn't free, it isn't cheap unless it is an access point attached to my ADSL, and it is never going to be available in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, or halfway between major population centres. I want the disk.

Streaming delivery is nothing more or less than the ability for the movie and music monopolies to control how & when & what I can watch or listen to and inform the gov't of same*, and how much money to charge per view.

*Consider: perhaps you like to listen to Rage Against the Machine advising insurrection (great for black diamond ski runs ;-), or keep up with the latest middle east news on Al Jazeera. The video or music is streamed. The US gov't, the Swedish gov't, no doubt the Candian gov't routinely log traffic. So, now, how comfortable will you be trusting Big Telco Inc to deliver content to you?

If we keep video encoding as MPEG-2 (as used for Blu-ray and DVD), then bandwidth is an issue (at least for now) - average 18Mbps, 30Mbps peak.

There are better encoders available now-a-days. DivX has an average rate of 4Mbps and peak of 20Mps at 1920x1080 @ 30fps - which is reasonably doable over todays networks.

I made the jump, got some points and then downloaded 3 HD movies from Xbox Live.

The picture quality of the movies was excellent, but let's face it they did take an age to download. I wasn't streaming them, even on a 20Mb connection.

There were 2 flys in the ointment for me:
1) I had to watch them within 14 days of downloading (why exactly) and then they expired within 24 hours of 1st play
2) One of the films cost 600 MS points - that's almost a fiver

A fiver for something that is virtual and very transient seemed a bit steep. You could argue that you might pay close to that for a rental, but for a physical product there are extra costs.

Perhaps full on HD streaming might be better when the networks are faster, but in the meantime I'll stick with physical media.... I'll have paid for it and I'll watch it when the hell I like (as many times as I like).

Streaming may be in vogue but when the service providers attempt to have their way with subscribers and attempt to charge people for bandwidth consumption they will modify customer behavior.
Individuals will not allow their wallet to be impacted by unknown and variable costs over a certian threshold. Consumers will return to alternative methods to receiving HD content a.k.a. blu-ray if the medium is less costly and minimally inconvenient.

Drashek strikes again! This time under the alias of "Blu_Ultie." Just seeing the incoherence once again totally makes my day.

Forseeably until ISPs stop capping bandwidth and charging for exceeded bandwidth HD won't take off. Not only are bandwidth caps a problem so is the infrastructure in certain developed countries not everyone has fiber optic and DSL still hobbles along under <768 kbps. HD streaming is a farce in large households with 5 to 8 computers or attached networked device since it will bring the network to a halt if someone is watching a video while someone is playing online or telecommuting

I have tried these so-called "HD" digital downloads that the people who can't afford blu-ray keep praising, and they look like SD. Sometimes I could tell that the quality was slightly better than DVD, but it was nothing like Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray looks awesome, although you might be fooled into thinking it looks as bad as digital downloads because, in a baffling attempt to stop people from buying their HD players and TVs, stores like Best Buy show compressed HD demo videos on 720P TVs so they look terrible. Blu-Ray discs look a lot better than digital downloads, so this article is silly.

My broadband internet is like rural ethiopian dialup

Sony memory sticks = screw the customer on price, reliability and speed.

Sony DRM = a pain in the ass for honest John and his home movies and DVDs he owns or wants to copy to his hard drive for when dvd players are not around in 10 years time.

Make is easier for us or else we are just going to say screw you and go with the chinese guy in the car park who has them very cheap at ok quality.

My local Chinese DVD seller guy also gives a refund/exchange if the movies don't play, so I have been told.

Let's assume that the datarate of a movie is 1GB/h (that's 1.8GB for Terminator). That makes (~equations~) ~285KB/s which is doable with 4Mbps connection. If datarate is bigger you obviously need more bandwidth.

this is never going to happen in Oz. We're still stuck in the age of data limited plans - poors saps on Telstra pay $40 a month for 400MB data allowance - that's UPLOADS and downloads!

Can't even support M$ patch tuesdays on that one. All ISPs in AUS have data quotas; most are moving to counting uploads too.

"Throw another shrimp on the barbie mate" "Grab me another beer Luv" "Wot's this intarnet thing anyway?"

HD has been delayed for years by the 1080i vs 720p battle (1080i requires more precessing and bandwidth, and not enough in the politically narrow 18mb/s American TV channels). Even though HD 720p for DVD was possible years before (some companies even produced players with Mpeg4 HD) we had to wait for the 1080i version. From what I can remember, Sony is also a major TV station equipment supplier, Mpeg2 IP holder, and proponent of 1080i.

The ironic part is, that we could have had streaming quality 720p DVD disks years before BD.

Now, what is behind this, some more speculation/opinion.

A major new supplier of h264 video codec technology is ambarella. The chips are powerful, low powered and cheap, and the compression quality good. Toshiba has been one of the few Japaneses companies licensing this technology for use in video cameras. But the technology is suitable for disk players and recorders. The chips are also used in $100 HD camcorders. You can get adequate HD off a DVD for probably half the cost (preferably at 18mb/s, but 9mb/s is pretty good). This would also be very good for streaming content (which would only need a stripped down, cheaper version of the codec chip). If Toshiba was to do this (rather than the cell technology based chip) a company like Sony could leverage the same technology to produce a cheap streaming player for non PS3 customers.

But from the aspect of consumer rights and anti monopolistic trust issues. I do not want to loose my rights to buy cheap legitimate media disks, new or secondhand. To watch as I like and not to be forced to pay each time, have it tied to a player that will eventually fail, or risk it disappear from the service. It is not about what laws, rules, standards and system you have, it is how fair they are.