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[colt45joe]

QUOTE(21cwSpanky @ Jan 20 2008, 09:44 AM)

I think the real point of this article is to debunk the whole "Digital downloads are the future" bandwagon.

it probably is the future, seeing as how a lot of people out there dont care about video quality and are just fine with watching cam quality movies on youtube type websites.

This post has been edited by colt45joe: Jan 20 2008, 10:54 AM

[erexx]

If I could agree 110% with this informative article I would.

If it proves anything its that the two ditribution channels are not in competition with each other.

More than likely they will exists side by side and compliment the other.

Like DVD "maybe" Blu-Ray will be the next static storage media standard for the next 15 years or so.
Don't need the internet to watch a HD movie when its on disk.
But it, own it, sell it, take it anywhere.

Down loadable HD content will take time... literally.
Use it when you don't want to own the disc.
Requires the internet wherever you are.
Needs blazingly fast network access: Internet2 or something similarly fast maybe like FiOS.
or Hope that Comcast really does have speed to spare.

[21cwSpanky]

QUOTE(colt45joe @ Jan 20 2008, 10:53 AM)

it probably is the future, seeing as how a lot of people out there dont care about video quality and are just fine with watching cam quality movies on youtube type websites.

People "deal" with youtube quality videos because they're free. Digital downloads are overpriced rentals for movies that look worse than physical HD formats.

[Skitals]

QUOTE(Norco @ Jan 20 2008, 09:00 AM)

You think you feel old? Ha, i've got you beat!

And a lower post count too! I'm honored that you post on average only once every 1.5 months, and you chose my post to reply to  

[steveju]

QUOTE(erexx @ Jan 20 2008, 10:03 AM)

Down loadable HD content will take time... literally.

People seem to forget that it takes time to get the actual physical media too, it's not instantly on your lap when you want it. You probably won't even buy it from your local video store either, since it seems to be a fact of life that you can get it cheaper from somewhere else (internet). So it's going to be about three days and $50 later, that you get the movie in your player and see it.

[Jayman951]

QUOTE(Skitals @ Jan 20 2008, 12:49 AM)

It is because of people with these kind of mentalities that cable companies and services like iTunes and XBL can get away with this! Why should you care? Because you are paying MORE money for an "HD" version. If you don't care about quality, stick to SD... and your DivX.

Damnit I'm feeling old. Member here since 2002, member # 1184

I'm feeling old too, heh

I agree though, paying more for a shoddy HD version isnt my cup of tea.  Ill go rent a copy for about the same price on a Bluray/HD-DVD.

[ewok666]

QUOTE(ThaCrip @ Jan 20 2008, 09:57 AM)

thats what x264 (.mkv) is for like i said above (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) .. probably close to blu-ray/hd-dvd quality at a fraction the size (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) (although i never seen these on a TV so i cant say for sure but from what i hear it's gotta be pretty close to original blu-ray/hddvd source.

get your HD quality at a much smaller file size... only side effect is you need a pretty powerful CPU to play them especially 1080p... but generally speaking 720p is good enough for most people (including me) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

That's quite right. x264 mkv's look excellent on a 720p display. 1080p is complete nonsense unless you use a projector with a large screen and extremely good source material. Essentially you MUST sit less than two times the screen diagonal away to be able to physically see the difference

I had a look at a number of different material and to spot the difference between 720p and 1080p you need to stop the movie and spend time to actually find the difference on a still frame!

Also agree to the Divx/DVD and x264/HDDVD analogy BUT want to add that you need to look at the displays as well. It's easy to tell Divx from DVD on a large screen but not on a SD TV. It's a lot harder to tell a good MKV rip from HDDVD or Bluray even on a HD display.

I also compared 4.5GB HD rips to DVD copies and the difference is HUGE. The guy who wrote the original article has no idea what he is talking about.

Cheers

[erexx]

QUOTE(steveju @ Jan 20 2008, 10:26 AM)

People seem to forget that it takes time to get the actual physical media too, it's not instantly on your lap when you want it. You probably won't even buy it from your local video store either, since it seems to be a fact of life that you can get it cheaper from somewhere else (internet). So it's going to be about three days and $50 later, that you get the movie in your player and see it.

Time is relative.
I would rather buy or pre-order online at a good price and get it delivered to my door the next day.
Sometimes I pick up movies at the check out line with my chips and beer. (which I am quite fond of)
I couldn’t sell you my "on-line content" even if you wanted to buy it.
Couldn’t pick it up and play it anywhere I want.

QUOTE(ewok666 @ Jan 20 2008, 10:27 AM)

1080p is complete nonsense unless you use a projector with a large screen and extremely good source material.
I also compared 4.5GB HD rips to DVD copies and the difference is HUGE. The guy who wrote the original article has no idea what he is talking about.

You must be old, naive and certainly quite blind.

[Andrew_Roy]

QUOTE(21cwSpanky @ Jan 20 2008, 07:14 AM)

People "deal" with youtube quality videos because they're free. Digital downloads are overpriced rentals for movies that look worse than physical HD formats.

So the pricing needs restructured?

[ProfDrMorph]

The guy who wrote this article definitly doesn't know anything about digital video. The quality of a digital video depends on a lot more things than on the size of the file! Sounds like a typical blu-ray fanboy to me. "Omg, it can store up to 50GB so my movies will look some much better played from such a thing!". That's the only argument he uses: size is everything. He totally ignored other important things like codec used, codec implementation used for compressing and later decompressing the file, codec settings used, quality of the source material, filters used for compressing, filters used after decompression, display size, display quality, distance between viewer and display....

I already watched a couple movies in HD (720p) which could've easily fitted on a DVD9 (each file was less than 8GB in size, most were around 3GB per hour which is less than 7 mbit/sec) and each one of them looked great. Ok, The Fugitive (downloaded from Xbox Live) had it's flaws but you really need to know what to look for which most people simply don't do. But the movie still looked good and it seemed like most flaws were a result of bad source material. I've yet to try a more recent movie like 300 to see if my theory about The Fugitive (bad source) is correct.

A few years ago (from when DivX 3.11 became popular until the first people started playing around with the first H.264 codecs) I spent a lot of time trying different codecs with different settings and filters and I tried to understand how digital video compression really works. And one thing I learned real quick at that time was that SIZE alone means NOTHING. (<insert random juvenile joke here >) As a result of that toying around with compression I know what to look for if I want to spot compression errors today. And by discussing my findings about image quality with other people I learned that without the proper background knowledge people won't notice minor quality losses (even though those loses are easily visible to the trained eye!).

On that HD-DVD (seems like we soon have to say R.I.P. *sniff*) / Blu-Ray vs. download discussion: I think they'll co-exist in the near future. Todays internet infrastructure just isn't good enough to offer 1080p downloads for huge masses. So people who want don't want "just" great image quality but the best technology offers will still buy/rent their movies on an optical disc. Others might prefer being able to rent movies without even having to get up from their couch (-> downloads).

[ewok666]

QUOTE(erexx @ Jan 20 2008, 01:09 PM)

You must be old, naive and certainly quite blind.

Thanks for insulting me. The only naive person here seems to be you. I can direct you to a number of detailed articles on viewing distance relating to 1080p. Just google for it or look here: http://www.engadgethd.com/2006/12/09/1080p...to-screen-size/

On a 60" display you should be no further than 7.5ft away and on a 42" about 5ft. Who sits 1.5m away from their lounge TV? A projector screen is a different story 3m diagonaly is not unusual.

What's your screen and how far do you sit away from it....honestly?

This post has been edited by ewok666: Jan 20 2008, 01:27 PM

[Chancer]

http://myhometheater...ml#anchor_13194
 There is a calculator here for finding Optimal viewing distances.

There is a visible difference even on 37" between 720p and 1080p. Quite marked in fact.
For al those who say Bit rate doesn't matter. Yes it does. Yes there are other factors but if you transmit at a lower bit rate the quality suffers.
About a year ago it all kicked of with Sky lowering the Bit rate at off peak viewing times, to save money. the quality drop was shocking.

[Muzzakus]

Movies are not 60fps.  They have 24 unique frames in a second.  To acheive 25fps for pal movies, they play slighly faster.  To acheive 30fps for NTSC - frames are repeated.  Repeated frames compess 100%

No matter what you always have 24 discreet images in a second of viewing.  All bitrate calculations on 60fps are grosely innacurate.

This post has been edited by Muzzakus: Jan 20 2008, 02:44 PM

[RolfLobker]

QUOTE(Chancer @ Jan 20 2008, 02:11 PM)

http://myhometheater...ml#anchor_13194
 There is a calculator here for finding Optimal viewing distances.

There is a visible difference even on 37" between 720p and 1080p. Quite marked in fact.
For al those who say Bit rate doesn't matter. Yes it does. Yes there are other factors but if you transmit at a lower bit rate the quality suffers.
About a year ago it all kicked of with Sky lowering the Bit rate at off peak viewing times, to save money. the quality drop was shocking.

That's a decrease in bitrate with the exact same compression technology.
x264 uses better compression than MPEG-2. Thus you can lower the bitrate.
A 5000 MBit bitrate movie compressed with x264 will look better than that exact same source compressed with MPEG-2 at a 6000 MBit bitrate.

A quote from wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc#Codecs):

"The choice of codecs affects the producer's licensing/royalty costs, as well as the title's maximum runtime, due to differences in compression efficiency. Discs encoded in MPEG-2 video typically limit content producers to around two hours of high-definition content on a single-layer (25 GB) BD-ROM. The more advanced video codecs (VC-1 and H.264) typically achieve a video runtime twice that of MPEG-2, with comparable quality."

Bitrate alone means shit!

[Artanis]

QUOTE(ewok666 @ Jan 20 2008, 01:23 PM)

On a 60" display you should be no further than 7.5ft away and on a 42" about 5ft. Who sits 1.5m away from their lounge TV? A projector screen is a different story 3m diagonaly is not unusual.

You must have a 30" sd tv.  The difference between 720p and 1080p on a 42" at 8ft is EASY to see.  Do you not have 20:20 vision?  720 stretched to 1080 provides blurred edges and text, the same image in 1080 source is diamond sharp.  Your engadget chart is for idiots trying to justify their terrible decision to buy a 60" 720p tv.

edit: looking at that chart seems to indicate that yes, 1080p at 8ft on a 42" screen is still noticable.

This post has been edited by Artanis: Jan 20 2008, 03:05 PM