Don't run out and replace that HD-DVD with Blu-Ray player before reading up on XStreamHD!

If you're interested in those kind of devices, you should be aware of the Vudu, which is already shipping and has been in user's hands for around five months now.

VUDU - Home

Vudu - Page 6 - AVS Forum

 

That's what I was going to say.

Check out Vudu and Apple TV. I'm sure Tivo w/Amazon Unbox will go HD eventually, too.

 

You can already download a ton of movies and TV shows in both HD and Standard Def on the Xbox 360 with xbox live.
Xbox.com | Movies & TV Shows - Movies and TV on your Xbox

 

Not just yet.... Downloading HD movies poses a bandwidth vs quality issue. Currently there isn't a download service that gives you the quality that you get with either BluRay or HDDVD physical media. If it ever gets to the point where the quality is the same you're talking about ~50GB per movie. Comcast currently limits a user when downloading bit-torrents because of the bandwidth it takes. And before you say anything about bit-torrents, legal downloads can be made using bit-torrents, it doesn't automatically mean you're doing something illegal. We are years away from downloading the same quality that we would get from physical HD movies today.

Steve

 

Reports on AVSForum are that Vudu's 1080p HD content (a tiny fraction of their 5000 titles) is noticeably better than Apple's 720p. So far no one has reported on Vudu 1080p vs. Blu-ray or HD-DVD 1080p.

50GB is the entire Blu-ray disk. No movie I'm aware of takes up all 50GB. Casino Royale is something like 35GB of movie and 12GB of extras.

 

If you're going to buy something soon, I'm personally recommend the Apple TV. You can get HD (720p) rentals that you can start watching in about a minute or two, you can watch videos from YouTube (cooler than you'd think), stream your photos from Flickr, listen to your music from your iTunes library and take advantage of Apple's large selection of TV shows, movies and music videos in their iTunes store:

Apple - Apple TV - Guided Tour

Oh, and it's a WiFi device (no cable to run) and I believe Apple is the ONLY vendor who has deals with every major movie studio.

Plus, a lot of the content you play on your Apple TV, you can take with you in an iPod!

Here's a good comparison of Apple TV/Vudu, though.

vodyo » Blog Archive » Side by Side: Apple TV and Vudu Compared

 

I'm actually cancelling my Netflix subscription, myself!

To get a new release I can either login every few weeks to Netflix, add a movie to my queue, then get it a week to a month later, or sit my butt on a couch, press a button and start watching.

That and Netflix doesn't help get YouTube and purchased movies/TV shows onto your TV.

 

Yeah I understand your point, but thats still 35GB! The real issue from my point of view is when this is adopted by a lot of people (the masses) the ISP's are going to either start charging through the roof, or limiting the bandwidth.

NCTA, Comcast Weigh In on FCC"s Broadband-Network-Management Inquiry



Steve

 

Lack of 1080p support means Apple TV cannot be the only streaming media player in my house. I've got 10+TB of 1080p content on my server, so even if I were to buy an AppleTV, I still need to supplement it with something else that can play H.264 encoded content inside MPEG-2 TS or Matroska containers. Right now I'm using a PS3 but should be receiving a Popcorn Hour A-100 any day now.

 

Apple TV is capable of outputting 1080p, it's just impractical for rental downloads. I don't know of a way to rip discs to that high of quality format, though.

Please let me know how the Popcorn Hour works for you. I'm really intrigued by its capability, but I don't trust the brand yet.

 

Video can be re-encoded to a smaller file size with minimal quality loss. Something as simple as a slightly lower bit-rate can pull the size down considerably. Also, the extras can be removed, as well as unnecessary audio tracks. There is already huge network of HD torrent sites where movies are re-encoded to DVD5 or DVD9 size. On a modest connection, a DVD5 sized HD title can be downloaded in less than 4 hours.

 

Do I understand it correctly that depending on the quality of my broadband connection (aDSL), it can take from two to eight hours to completely download a movie in HD format?

Apple TV - Technical Specifications

 

This post is right on the money. There is no doubt that eventually HD movie downloads or streaming HD will be common, but the bandwidth isn't there yet for mass use. There are a lot of tricks that help, such as compression, but it is still a lot of data and the amount of data will continue to rise. Ultra HD is around the corner, and then what comes next. Fiber networks will give us a lot more bandwidth, but they are expensive and take time to install. It all comes down to the free-lunch theory of economics: there isn't any such thing. Downloaders will end up paying for the bandwidth in some fashion, either by the byte or with increased monthly fees. I'm sure it will be worth it, but at the moment high-bandwidth downloaders are being subsidized by the rest of us, and there isn't enough bandwidth for general use.

Tom

 

So far I've spent maybe $200 and have a HD-A2 and 10 movies, 9 of which I don't already have on DVD at all and then Ultimate Blade Runner that is an upgrade. I don't consider that an error at all. When all is said and done after the fire sales end I might be in for maybe $400 and still have movies that will play for years, plus at least one spare player for later...

 

When I rent an HD movie off of Apple TV, I can begin playing it within a minute or two. It downloads the entire movie over the course of viewing, but it's really pretty snappy. It's not like you're waiting 4 hours before you can watch the movie.

I actually wanted to buy one to use it as a cheap upconverting DVD player that had the capability to buy HD movies (which you can probably also buy at a discount now).

 

The graphics hardware is capable of upscaling 720p content to 1080p, but the box doesn't have the horsepower to decode high bit-rate H.264, whether 720p or 1080p. Apple TV poops out somewhere around 5Mbits/sec, or about 1/10th the peak bitrate of Blu-ray.

This is probably not a huge limitation given that:

1) Most people are not critical viewers and will be satisficed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing) with 720p, and

2) Most people have 6Mbit/sec or slower broadband connections at home.

On the other hand, early adopters of such a device tend to be more tech savvy and those two statements are less true of them compared to the early majority.