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[InterMoniker]

But 720p != 720p when heavy compression and artifacting are a result of limited bandwidth. Speaking of DVR's - how many hours of HD content can you store on your Comcast box? I think mine holds about 10 hours maybe 12. Practical for record it watch it delete it but not a great solution for keeping HD content around on.

On the PC downloadable side of things, ISP bandwidth becomes another concern. Comcast has an "unspoken" cap on bandwidth for their internet service. They don't quote it, won't tell you the limit, but will threaten to terminate service for a few months when you reach a point they don't like. So even if a PC sevice is introduced with HD quality movies that equals BD you can't say that storage is the only concern.

It's cool if you and Benjamin are pleased with the quality of HD cable - nobody is trying to tell you that you shouldn't be - but rest assured there are just as many people that are not pleased with the quality and barely find it acceptable let alone decent.

Totally agree Beatbox!

Downloadable content is nowhere near the audio or picture quality of Blu-ray. And if it was your hardrive would be full in no time. Any one who thinks DLC is more main stream than a disc is shitting themselves.


HAha ^^ Did you get your tag from SSHD

 

[Raist]

HAha ^^ Did you get your tag from SSHD

Check like any PSN games leaderboards. He's always in the Top 10 or something. Depressing.

 

[Beatbox]

HAha ^^ Did you get your tag from SSHD

Yes. And Gripshift, and RFOM, and Piyotama, and a few others

 

[InterMoniker]

Check like any PSN games leaderboards. He's always in the Top 10 or something. Depressing.

I've gotten like what 5 maybe 7mil in SSHD. :lol I suck in comparison to the Beatbox.

Yes. And Gripshift, and RFOM, and Piyotama, and a few others

Alien from the planet high-score HAhaha nice man

 

[Raist]

Teehee. Go France !

 

[InterMoniker]

Teehee. Go France !

Wow here I though U.S.A. would be close to the top. I guess I'm a dumb American now

 

[Talamius]

2. They'll just put BD drives in. What's the drama?

I don't think Nintendo would have a problem working with Sony. SNES-CD almost happened, after all. Sony CERTAINLY wouldn't have a problem getting a cut of every Wii 2 hardware sale.

In fact, here's a crackpot theory for you. After winning the HD movie format war (and having sacrificed it's gaming monopoly to do so), Sony pulls out of the home console market after PS3 and allies with Nintendo, supplying Blu-Ray for Wii 2. Massive loss turns into massive profit overnight. Why develop your own console when Nintendo can do it for you? Sony then refuses to license Blu-Ray for any Microsoft console, and the Blu-Ray juggernaut crushes Microsoft consoles (360 + successor) worldwide with Sony's tech and Nintendo's positive mindshare.

1080p waggle future here we come!

 

[Vennt]

Thank you for this information. I will make sure to call Comcast and let them know they can turn off the free HD movies, we aren't ready for them.

My friends are going to be pissed, they use the service all the time, but I'll head them your way so you can explain.

We might need to tell all the US ISP's to go ahead and slow down the data rates, as renting movies on the 360 is currently at an acceptable speed, but that shouldn't be a problem.

You are able to do this because it is niche, not in spite of it's niche nature.

DD is at the very least 10 years away from any kind of mass adoption, Comcast may be able to supply the more savvy users such as yourself with the serbvice now, but there is no way the infrastructure is yet in place for millions to be doing the same, and it's the fat pipe infrastructure that's got to handle it on a mass level, not the ISP to Customer "last mile".

 

[brain_stew]

Yes but what about Wii 2?

Both MS and Nintendo are going to have to choose a media format for their next console.

It's very very unlikely that a fully download only platform will be viable in time for the next generation. Even if by some miracle breakthough the infrastructure appears to allow that kind of common broadband access to ever one's homes. There will be A LOT of consumers that just don't want to stop buying physical media. It is just too risky to not have a media delivery format for the next upcomming gen.

If BR because the one and only Movie disc format, MS is going to look silly if their next console is not using it or does not have the ability to play it. And Nintendo if they stick with DVD might have difficulty attracting 3rd parties if they are the only platform without high capacity discs.

We're talking at least 4 or 5 years in the future for Nintendo. By that point the cost of a Bluray drive should be very comparable to a DVD drive. I don't see any reason why they wouldn't go the HD disc route in such a scenario, it might be just perfect timing as well because I'd say that could be the time of peak mainstream adoption (if mainstream adoption does indeed happen) and the Wii 2 is bound to be the least expensive console.

 

[Raist]

Wow here I though U.S.A. would be close to the top. I guess I'm a dumb American now

Well, a few years ago we were lagging behind. Badly. Then the french government put a HUGE effort in making internet readily available for anyone. You can easily get a 20Mb/s + line now.
There's also a huge competition between ISP's and prices have been pulled down a lot.
Now the average offer is about €30 for a 20Mb/s (or even better) line, free IPTV (about 50 channels, you can also suscribe to other channels, individually - this is a great thing compared to sat or cable offers) with very good VOD services. Oh, and you get free national calls, and free international calls towards many countries. No wonder that the average number of people having braodband internet at home skyrocket'd.

 

[Kittonwy]

But 720p != 720p when heavy compression and artifacting are a result of limited bandwidth. Speaking of DVR's - how many hours of HD content can you store on your Comcast box? I think mine holds about 10 hours maybe 12. Practical for record it watch it delete it but not a great solution for keeping HD content around on.

On the PC downloadable side of things, ISP bandwidth becomes another concern. Comcast has an "unspoken" cap on bandwidth for their internet service. They don't quote it, won't tell you the limit, but will threaten to terminate service for a few months when you reach a point they don't like. So even if a PC sevice is introduced with HD quality movies that equals BD you can't say that storage is the only concern.

It's cool if you and Benjamin are pleased with the quality of HD cable - nobody is trying to tell you that you shouldn't be - but rest assured there are just as many people that are not pleased with the quality and barely find it acceptable let alone decent.

Ima certainly NOT satisfied with teh quality of HD cable.

 

[Tobor]

You are able to do this because it is niche, not in spite of it's niche nature.

DD is at the very least 10 years away from any kind of mass adoption, Comcast may be able to supply the more savvy users such as yourself with the serbvice now, but there is no way the infrastructure is yet in place for millions to be doing the same, and it's the fat pipe infrastructure that's got to handle it on a mass level, not the ISP to Customer "last mile".

My brother figured out how to use it without me telling him a thing, and he's hardly savvy. Anyway, this discussion is just spinning wheels, so maybe I should let it go.

Everyone enjoy the Bluray victory, I'll pick one up when it's cheap enough(sub $200).

 

[Vashu]

I don't think Nintendo would have a problem working with Sony. SNES-CD almost happened, after all. Sony CERTAINLY wouldn't have a problem getting a cut of every Wii 2 hardware sale.

In fact, here's a crackpot theory for you. After winning the HD movie format war (and having sacrificed it's gaming monopoly to do so), Sony pulls out of the home console market after PS3 and allies with Nintendo, supplying Blu-Ray for Wii 2. Massive loss turns into massive profit overnight. Why develop your own console when Nintendo can do it for you? Sony then refuses to license Blu-Ray for any Microsoft console, and the Blu-Ray juggernaut crushes Microsoft consoles (360 + successor) worldwide with Sony's tech and Nintendo's positive mindshare.

1080p waggle future here we come!

I don't think Sony is getting out of the console-business. As a matter of fact, the gameindustry racks up more money than the movie industry does right now. It's a nice theory, but it holds no ground.

Would be fun though, if they went and joined forces. Ratchet & Clank with the Wii-mote 2 in glorious HD quality. Or, Super Smash Bros Whatchamacallit with Jak and Ratchet. XD

 

[tino]

Comcast is the biggest cable company in the United States. They have millions of customers, and every one of them who also owns an HDTV has the capability to do what I'm doing.

I'm not disagreeing with you about DVD's. They rule the market, and will continue to rule.

Why do you guys focus on the delivery (which is a solvable problem in today's technology) instead of the storage problem? The fact of matter is HDD is much more expensive than optical media to store a 30GB movie. It was much more expensive than optical disc 10 years ago and its still more expensive now. There is no way you can store more than 40-50 movies without a lot of extra money that will not benefit the producers and the consumers except Western Digital.

And people are not going to buy 1TB NAS in droves just so they can have enough space to store the movies they buy.

Not to mention the massive resistance from the retailer side since you don't go through them for digital delivery.

There are other problems like what happen if your HDD fail or lending the movie to friends. But they can be solved in software so I am not going to get into it.

BTW, AppleTV is/was a failure. face it. There are many reasons, be lets just say MS is not going to over come those problems that Apple couldn't over come, at the present time.

 

[PuppetMaster]

My brother figured out how to use it without me telling him a thing, and he's hardly savvy. Anyway, this discussion is just spinning wheels, so maybe I should let it go.

Everyone enjoy the Bluray victory, I'll pick one up when it's cheap enough(sub $200).

If you buy a PS3 now for $200, you can get a BR player for just $199.

What a deal!

 

[Tobor]

If you buy a PS3 now for $200, you can get a BR player for just $199.

What a deal!

PS3's are $200 now? Not around here.

EDIT: Oh, I get it. lol. If you could cut the un-needed game portion off, and just pay the $199, I'd do it. On the plus side, it would be slimmer too!

 

[natureman3]

Well, a few years ago we were lagging behind. Badly. Then the french government put a HUGE effort in making internet readily available for anyone. You can easily get a 20Mb/s + line now.
There's also a huge competition between ISP's and prices have been pulled down a lot.
Now the average offer is about €30 for a 20Mb/s (or even better) line, free IPTV (about 50 channels, you can also suscribe to other channels, individually - this is a great thing compared to sat or cable offers) with very good VOD services. Oh, and you get free national calls, and free international calls towards many countries. No wonder that the average number of people having braodband internet at home skyrocket'd.

I work for the biggest payTV company in France and i can tell you that HD content over DSL is (still) a joke (yes even FreeHD ) with all the tests we have done with HUGE quality issues.
Now, until fiberoptic cables is spread enough in Europe, i don't see DD going mass market before at least 6-10 years. andthis is coming from someone which has 100mb symetrical internet access at home...
So Blu-ray has a very bright future IMO if disks are sold at a reasonable price ($15-€15).

 

[Banjo Tango]

We might need to tell all the US ISP's to go ahead and slow down the data rates, as renting movies on the 360 is currently at an acceptable speed, but that shouldn't be a problem.

What's an acceptable speed? I've only used the 360's HD rental service once, but it was hours before it was ready (using Cable internet).

 

[wolforce]

If you buy a PS3 now for $200, you can get a BR player for just $199.

What a deal!

 

[Tobor]

What's an acceptable speed? I've only used the 360's HD rental service once, but it was hours before it was ready (using Cable internet).

I rent the movies in advance of watching them. You have 2 weeks to watch it, so I just stagger them. No different then queing movies in Netflix, IMO.

 

[Kittonwy]

PS3's are $200 now? Not around here.

EDIT: Oh, I get it. lol. If you could cut the un-needed game portion off, and just pay the $199, I'd do it. On the plus side, it would be slimmer too!

Uh, I hope you are aware that the PS3 does have a bunch of great games, even though you have a 360.

 

[Psychotext]

What's an acceptable speed? I've only used the 360's HD rental service once, but it was hours before it was ready (using Cable internet).

I did it in the UK when 300 was on offer (HD) and it was ready to watch in 15 mins (may have been less, I went off to do something else). That was while all the live problems were going on too.

 

[InterMoniker]

PS3's are $200 now? Not around here.

EDIT: Oh, I get it. lol. If you could cut the un-needed game portion off, and just pay the $199, I'd do it. On the plus side, it would be slimmer too!

One..... Last.... TROLL!

Un-needed game portion? Really?

 

[Kittonwy]

I rent the movies in advance of watching them. You have 2 weeks to watch it, so I just stagger them. No different then queing movies in Netflix, IMO.

Not everybody rent, many people like to own their movies and build a collection, whether it's DVD or Blu-Ray.

 

[Tobor]

Uh, I hope you are aware that the PS3 does have a bunch of great games, even though you have a 360.

Yeah, I know Kittonwy, I'm just joking. I have a 360 and a Wii though, and I can't justify another console, even to play Uncharted.

If by FFX13, the system is cheap enough, I'll bite.

One..... Last.... TROLL!

Un-needed game portion? Really?

Ease it down, I was only joking.

 

[Xisiqomelir]

Do people really think the US internet infrastructure is good? In most parts of the country, you have the choice between whoever holds the local DSL monopoly and whoever has the local cable monopoly. That's if you're lucky enough to have even that much "choice", of course. Assuming one then signs up with either of these august bodies, you'll be stuck with a miserable asymmetric connection with hidden DL/UL caps, bans on running any meaningful servers and packet shaping on all your traffic that isn't condoned by your ISP. All for $30-50++ a month for a speed which isn't humiliatingly awful.

Meanwhile (and you can ask jGAF about this) the rest of the world speeds ahead with modern infrastructure deployments and plummeting prices because they have multiple competitors with access to the backbone. They have 30x the connection speeds for 0.5x the price. We are 16th in the world and falling in broadband internet connectivity, and fixing that is going to take a very long time.

 

[InterMoniker]

My brother figured out how to use it without me telling him a thing, and he's hardly savvy. Anyway, this discussion is just spinning wheels, so maybe I should let it go.

Everyone enjoy the Bluray victory, I'll pick one up when it's cheap enough(sub $200).

Yes spinning wheels of a car that is stuck and won't go anywhere without a rope with enough bandwith and a truck with a big enough HDD.

I love analogies. Now I'm gonna play Uncharted good day folks.

 

[Tobor]

Not everybody rent, many people like to own their movies and build a collection, whether it's DVD or Blu-Ray.

I know. And they have multiple options to collect, right? Everybody's a winner here.

 

[Kittonwy]

I know. And they have multiple options to collect, right? Everybody's a winner here.

Evewybody other than Toshiba that is. Toshiba=loseur.

 

[Tobor]

Evewybody other than Toshiba that is.

I'm not really interested in what companies win. Only that the end users do.

 

[Kandrick]

I cant believe this thread reached 33 pages... Actually yes i can, but it's still madness :lol

 

[Ponn]

Do people really think the US internet infrastructure is good? In most parts of the country, you have the choice between whoever holds the local DSL monopoly and whoever has the local cable monopoly. That's if you're lucky enough to have even that much "choice", of course. Assuming one then signs up with either of these august bodies, you'll be stuck with a miserable asymmetric connection with hidden DL/UL caps, bans on running any meaningful servers and packet shaping on all your traffic that isn't condoned by your ISP. All for $30-50++ a month for a speed which isn't humiliatingly awful.

Meanwhile (and you can ask jGAF about this) the rest of the world speeds ahead with modern infrastructure deployments and plummeting prices because they have multiple competitors with access to the backbone. They have 30x the connection speeds for 0.5x the price. We are 16th in the world and falling in broadband internet connectivity, and fixing that is going to take a very long time.

The AT&T rollout of fiber and IPTV is going pretty SLOWWWWW. They finally announced the funding to START the upgrade process here in Florida so we are looking at about 2 years. But even then, as stated already, just about all these DD "solutions" are rental or DVR only. The only real solution was the Apple Box. And that ain't doing too well last time I checked.

 

[Vashu]

I cant believe this thread reached 33 pages... Actually yes i can, but it's still madness :lol

Madness? This is.... Nah wait, that's been done too many times now.

And Tobor, I agree with you there. We as a consumer should be the ones to reap the benefits from all of this. I'm sure the price of the PS3 will fall sometime this year due to the costs of manufacturing a BRD drive becoming less and less.

 

[Tobor]

The AT&T rollout of fiber and IPTV is going pretty SLOWWWWW. They finally announced the funding to START the upgrade process here in Florida so we are looking at about 2 years. But even then, as stated already, just about all these DD "solutions" are rental or DVR only. The only real solution was the Apple Box. And that ain't doing too well last time I checked.

FIOS is available here in VA, but I don't have it yet.

Apple TV did indeed fail in it's initial incarnation, but I don't think Apple's done yet.

Rentals are what BB and I have been talking about the whole time. Collecting in a virtual format is still limited to SD, that will indeed take longer to implement in HD.

I stopped collecting during the last format change to DVD. Recollecting with each format change is not my idea of a wise investment.

 

[Chrange]

I know. And they have multiple options to collect, right? Everybody's a winner here.

Except consumers who wanted the cheaper format, that still offered more features, to win.

 

[skrew]

I use my PS3 to watch content through the DLNA server all the time, its more convenient then having the actual disks. But all my content in my home server is SD, when I want HD i buy disks because my HDD isn't big enough, 720p takes too long to download and its shittly compressed. HD would be easy if we were content with crappy 720p compression, we could have just stuck with DVD-9 and VC-1.

Sony took a huge gamble with the PS3 and it looks like it will pay off. They could just break even with the ps3 and still be doing better then the ps2 days because they own the next gen disk format.

 

[Ponn]

Rentals are what BB and I have been talking about the whole time. Collecting in a virtual format is still limited to SD, that will indeed take longer to implement in HD.
.

Exactly. So why argue as if DD is viable in the context of ownable, physical media then?

 

[Lobster]

I still think..in the long run.. HD-DVD will win the war because of the name it has attached to the end..

 

[Tobor]

Exactly. So why argue as if DD is viable in the context of ownable, physical media then?

Because that wasn't what we were arguing?

 

[Ponn]

Because that wasn't what we were arguing?

Riiiiiiight.

 

[Doc Evils]

I still think..in the long run.. HD-DVD will win the war because of the name it has attached to the end..

:lol

 

[Ryu1999]

I still think..in the long run.. HD-DVD will win the war because of the name it has attached to the end..

 

[cilonen]

I still think..in the long run.. HD-DVD will win the war because of the name it has attached to the end..

Hahahaha. It took over 30 pages, but it was worth it. :lol

 

[Mr. Banana Grabber]

I still think..in the long run.. HD-DVD will win the war because of the name it has attached to the end..

That's what my friend thought a year ago. I think the people that are savvy (wtf is this not a real word, firefox?) enough to want HD movies know the benefits of blu-ray over hd-dvd and the people that would buy hd formatted moves based on the name of the format aren't interested in the prices of the new tech.

Edit: Oh, is it a joke? Well um... I was joking too. Haha!

 

[BravoSuperStar]

Glad I went with PS3/Blu-ray. I was tempted to pick up a hd-dvd add-on for the 360, but the format just stank of flop sweat from day 1.....

 

[Lobster]

The first joke I've made on GAF that has gotten people to laugh.

God im sleepy

edit:you bastards stay in here while I try to get some more funnies from the off-topic thread.

 

[Ajax]

PS3's are $200 now? Not around here.

EDIT: Oh, I get it. lol. If you could cut the un-needed game portion off, and just pay the $199, I'd do it. On the plus side, it would be slimmer too!

Keep spewing vitriol, it only proves how bitter sony haters like you are by this announement.

mmmmmm I can almost taste your tears.

 

[Ploid 3.0]

I rent the movies in advance of watching them. You have 2 weeks to watch it, so I just stagger them. No different then queing movies in Netflix, IMO.

Going by the DMC4 first review thread, people want to enjoy the things they buy right then and there. They hate waiting.

 

[Raistlin]

Wow. Doesn't this convey an alarming sense of defeat?

yes ... it really does.

I thought at least this would still happen.

 

[Kittonwy]

I cant believe this thread reached 33 pages... Actually yes i can, but it's still madness :lol

Madness? THIZ IZ GAFFFFF LOLZ!!!!!