Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater New line goes blu-ray only

We may be on the verge on the next of steps in media over internet (downloads, etc.) but I do not believe physical media is going away anytime too soon.

Music has been able to be downloaded for quite a number of years, but we still have CDs.

In addition the only people probably more paranoid about piracy than the recording labels are the studios.

No kidding! I'm with you there!

Hmm just thinking about HD over the Internet. 20 to 50 GB per movie, or something like that.

At a High Speed Internet service of a relatively speedy 10 Mbps it would take nearly 8 hours to download a 30 GB movie.

If you had a lesser service at 2Mbps, it would take over 38 hours to download.

Of course, they can always use some sort of compression but then it will very likely compromises quality.

Of course home internet services are getting faster so maybe someday but not many are ready for such a service yet.

Most HD movies (just the movie) are running closer to the 20GB side of that spectrum than the 50GB side. That is why most Blu-Ray movies are only single layer right now.

Downloading HD movies would be painful for a while. I guess that you could always set up a queue system (like NetFlix uses for actual discs) and then with a set-top unit with a hard drive have it download content to the box for the currently available movies from your queue, plus the next 1 or 2 movies but have them "locked" until the first movies in the queue are deleted.

Oh wait, that IS what NetFlix is planning for later this year with LG. Of course, that was when LG announced that they would would add this feature to their next Super-Blue player so it would do Blu-Ray, HD-DVD AND NetFlix downloads. NetFlix said that they would increase the number of movies available for download and work "towards" HD movie downloads.

Xbox live has an HD rental service that allows you to download HD movies to rent. They are like 6 bucks though.

These movies are around 4-6 gigs. I Think they compress the heck out of the audio and maybe only offer 2 channel sound to compress the movies to 6gigs. Also the movies are all in 720p.

I downloaded a couple of them before I had my axioms so I can not comment on the sound. The video looked great though.

I think that in the meantime a 'water downed' online HD service like xbox live has is a solution for some people; but to allow lossless 5.1 sound plus all of the extra content via download is not practicle due to file size.

What ever HD media wins the 'war' (looks like it won't be HD DVD) will probably be around for at least a little while

my point is that nice guys finish last and these companies don't give a rats ass about you. You're delusional if you think the notion of how this would affect their customer base even entered into their feeble minds for one iota of a second. It's the bottom line, it's capitalism.

We tried the current Netflix streaming service. Nice idea, but over my 768 DSL connection, the video quality was not acceptable. The streaming part was fine, but he resolution wasn't.

Likewise, DirecTV is offering "On Demand" content now but the download speeds are ridiculously slow.

I'm kind of with Murph and Nick; I think that - right now - there STILL isn't enough bandwidth to deliver the optimum audio and video resolution on a timely basis. Amazing. So, short of a breakthrough in compression or proliferation of higher bandwidth connections, we are where we are.

To some extent, I think that web video content delivery mirrors the iPod / MP3 craze. There are lots of consumers that will be seduced by ease of use, and there will still be a segment of the population that values fidelity above availability. For now, only physical media can deliver the kind of fidelity that satisfies most of us on this forum.

Sneakernet lives.

Side note: Paramount offical says today that it has "no intentions to stop supporting HD-DVD".... So the remaining "big players" for HD-DVD are Toshiba, Paramount (and its sub-studios), Microsoft, and Intel... From a technology point of view, there are some STRONG members there, but without movies?????

don't know about you all in the U.S (although i've heard rumours with regards to teared internet) well we got that in Canada (rogers) they aren't enforcing going over caps yet (i'm at 100gigs cap) but if they do start that it will cripple the whole concept of HD download...3 movies downloaded plus a couple of emails checked and you're over your limit!

What's all this crazy talk I hear about downloading movies over the internet ?

On my dial-up line a 20GB movie would take about 13 weeks.