Could downloads replace HD movies?

[HT Guru]

We can blame studios all we want but in the end remember one thing. Business is business and the studios have one goal in mind which is to make money. Just imagine what would have happened if Microsoft would have made the XBOX 360 with HD DVD capability at the same price. BD would have been dead before the first machine was ever produced. Is it really Microsoft's fault that HD DVD died? No, they made a business decission that was the best for them at the time.

Everybody knew it was going to end badly for one format. As early adopters this is the risk we take. I have over three thousand dollars in HD DVD's and hope that my player will last long enough to continue to use them. Had I known BD was going to win I would have never bought into HD DVD. Let's face it, BD guys took a risk also and if the outcome would have been the other way around life would have sucked for them.

What we need to focus on now is the future of the HDM. I believe that alot of HD DVD people like myself would convert to BD if they would get the profile problem fixed and come down in price some. The first response from someone on the forums about that statement is usually that all BD discs will work with all players and who cares about extras. What most BD fanboys don't understand is that even if HD DVD guys don't care about extras they still want to feel comfortable buying a complete player with complete technology. When we bought our HD DVD players they were compatible with all future upgrades. BD cannot say the same.

If HD DVD is dead, so be it. Let's move on as one format and push the BD companies to do the right thing. Force them to give us complete players at reasonable prices and movies that are not double that in price of SD. Just because HD DVD is gone doesn't mean the battle is over. Now it's a fight to the death with SD movies and downloads.

[michealo]

not any time soon, far too many limitations.

also, please just like having a tangible product.

[Chrisb187]

Originally Posted by HT Guru

We can blame studios all we want but in the end remember one thing. Business is business and the studios have one goal in mind which is to make money. Just imagine what would have happened if Microsoft would have made the XBOX 360 with HD DVD capability at the same price. BD would have been dead before the first machine was ever produced. Is it really Microsoft's fault that HD DVD died? No, they made a business decission that was the best for them at the time.

Everybody knew it was going to end badly for one format. As early adopters this is the risk we take. I have over three thousand dollars in HD DVD's and hope that my player will last long enough to continue to use them. Had I known BD was going to win I would have never bought into HD DVD. Let's face it, BD guys took a risk also and if the outcome would have been the other way around life would have sucked for them.

What we need to focus on now is the future of the HDM. I believe that alot of HD DVD people like myself would convert to BD if they would get the profile problem fixed and come down in price some. The first response from someone on the forums about that statement is usually that all BD discs will work with all players and who cares about extras. What most BD fanboys don't understand is that even if HD DVD guys don't care about extras they still want to feel comfortable buying a complete player with complete technology. When we bought our HD DVD players they were compatible with all future upgrades. BD cannot say the same.

If HD DVD is dead, so be it. Let's move on as one format and push the BD companies to do the right thing. Force them to give us complete players at reasonable prices and movies that are not double that in price of SD. Just because HD DVD is gone doesn't mean the battle is over. Now it's a fight to the death with SD movies and downloads.

We can't blame MS in this situation. HD DVD wasn't ready for 360s launch. HD DVD launched nearly 5 months after the 360 and this would have forced MS to miss their first Christmas.

As for downloads being the future. Yes, someday it will be. It is going to be many many years though. In 1996 cable was giving me a wooping 40k/sec download. That was super fast for them. Today this number has grown to 200k/second that is 11 years. Yeah, my cable company sucks but DSL doesn't offer anything faster in my area. QQ for me I know.

The other day I pulled in 11gigs, it took me nearly 20hrs.

Theortically I should have be done in 16 hrs.

11gigs x 1024 = 11264mgs x 1024 get to kilobytes = 11534336k
I get 200k second so 11534336/200 = 57671.68 seconds /60 get to minutes

961.194 minutes and finally to hours /60 = 16hrs.

I only bring this up to show that no service is ever going to be able to supply you full steam of your bandwidth the entire time.

So for me to download a 1080p + lossless sound. I'm going to need more than 11gigs of data transfer. Probably 30 gigs. Which would take me 2+days if that was all I was doing.

I also don't want crap downloads like HD digital cable where all I see is compression artifacts.

So long answer short, will downloads replace HD. Maybe someday, but right now I don't see the infrastructure in place in the US to handle it. Let alone the availability to a lot of consumers.

I do agree with cheaper media, but what "feature complete" can mean a lot of different things to people. Personally I don't have any ethernet pulled into my living room and don't intend for it. Wireless works great so unless the SAs have wireless, web stuff means very little.

[HT Guru]

Originally Posted by Chrisb187

I do agree with cheaper media, but what "feature complete" can mean a lot of different things to people. Personally I don't have any ethernet pulled into my living room and don't intend for it. Wireless works great so unless the SAs have wireless, web stuff means very little.

I did see some cool stuff at CES that HD DVD and Blu Ray want to do with ethernet and it would be cool if everyone had that option. I would like to see wireless built into all new SA players, but that would just make them more expensive. I run an ethernet adapter on my HD DVD player so I don't have to run an ethernet cord. It's nice for doing updates.

[Coolpplse]

We dont even have lossless drm free lossless music from iTunes yet... Until we have chances for lossless music and video + lossless audio at HD-DVD/Blu-Ray rates then we can start considering it a replacement.. but by then we might as well have Ultra High Def on a new next gen medium once again, and our internet pipes will be playing catchup again

[LastSonOfKrypton]

10 years from now maybe...Once say 30mb down/3mb up connections are "The Standard" and studios can offer a 20 - 30 gig movie (1080p & Lossless Audio) then I think it will definately become viable.

[joey0480]

Not now....like said above...maybe ten years...but definitely not anytime soon.

[Tory]

Originally Posted by LastSonOfKrypton

10 years from now maybe...Once say 30mb down/3mb up connections are "The Standard" and studios can offer a 20 - 30 gig movie (1080p & Lossless Audio) then I think it will definately become viable.

10 years minimum. They'd have to allow purchasers to actually buy it, not the current you have 24 hours to watch bullshit. That way you could actually transfer it to say, the Hard Drive in my van so the kids can watch it. For all my saying HD is going to be a niche market, I think downloads will be even more so.

[tranzparentl]

Downloads won't completely replace disc media but look at music.

They still make CDs but who buys them? Certainly not me unless it's something really obscure that can't be found anywhere else. And in that case I buy the CD, rip it to my computer and never use the CD again.

I don't understand why people think it is so hard to believe that in a few years downloads will have the lion's share of the market.

Sorry but the average consumer/movie watcher/music listener doesn't even know what the word "lossless" means.

And iTunes might not sell lossless music but it's certainly available. Has no one ever heard of FLAC?

For people that say download speeds won't be fast enough... that is bullshit.

At current speeds I can download a 720p movie in about 1 day. A 1080p movie might take 3 days, but if I order from Amazon with free shipping (as I usually do) The 3 day download time might even finish before the movie would come in the mail from Amazon anyway.

I usually have a backlog of movies to watch, so if something takes a few days to download it's not a huge deal to me. If it's something I really needed to see right away I could always rent it from Xbox Marketplace, iTunes store or wherever.

Sorry for the rant.

[MrBig]

Not for a very long time and certainly longer in the USA if we don't start working on getting our piss-poor internet infrastructure up to speed. The technology will probably be ready long before the pipes are. Visit www.speedmatters.org and you'll see how bad it is.

[johnADA]

Am I missing something???

I can watch my cable companies VOD service in HD.
So a movie takes as long as the movie takes to play that I should be able to record/save it on a device, then burn it for future use.
Dolby digital 5.1 and a very good quality PQ.
Granted it isn't minutes, it isn't lossless audio which I could care less about.
But it is easier and better than going out to rent a movie thats in SD that I can't watch again.

I know if something was available to allow a recording of my VOD service that I could use over and over again, I wouldn't have a problem using it instead of HD DVD and or BD disc's and players.

And I don't see it as something that really couldn't happen other than copy write shit. Its a good start that could grow into a faster more in depth service.

[mrspeakers]

Originally Posted by tranzparentl

They still make CDs but who buys them? Certainly not me unless it's something really obscure that can't be found anywhere else. And in that case I buy the CD, rip it to my computer and never use the CD again.

...

For people that say download speeds won't be fast enough... that is bullshit.

At current speeds I can download a 720p movie in about 1 day. A 1080p movie might take 3 days, but if I order from Amazon with free shipping (as I usually do) The 3 day download time might even finish before the movie would come in the mail from Amazon anyway.

Well, I for one buy CDs because I care as much about audio quality as people on this board do about video. I rip every CD into Apple Lossless, which as the name implies is CD quality, and the CDs give me "disaster recovery" in case of a RAID drive failure. Downloads, even 256, don't sound anywhere near as good.

Now, regarding delivery time and downloads, I'll be the first to say I *want* video downloads for rental. But I tried it, and the issue for me was not download time, though that was annoying, it was the playback licensing terms and the quality.

The rental licensing model isn't very user friendly, it's MPAA B.S. 24 hours to play once you start? OK, great for a 90 min POS like Fantastic Four (maybe the worst movie I've seen in years), but how about the extended version of Return of the King?

And having tried a few movie downloads on iTunes (not HD yet), I can say they were sub-DVD quality for video, though they did seem at least to do DVD quality audio. Looking at the HD bitrates, and knowing it's 720p not 1080, it's a pretty safe bet the video isn't going to be top-flight "wow" material, and the audio IS DVD not HD quality.

So the reality is "HD" downloads will NOT be equivalent to HD DVD or Blu Ray, they'll be between SD and HD. Plus they pose a real risk to the viability of quality media, and in the spirit of the modern world, impatience and convenience will trump quality, and we can get "McHD" with onerous licensing and copy protection.

HD was seriously delayed by the stupid format wars, and the time it has taken for BD players to *begin* to have a full feature set just makes the risk that we end up with semi-HD instead of real HD a possibility.

That's my "counter rant."

[DoubleJ]

Regardless of the success of digital music, I will never switch over to digital movies as long as the same or better is available on hard copy. I love the comfort of having it on hard copy, so if anything would happen to the digital version, I still would have it safe and in my possession.

[Snadinator]

I believe downloads will be the future, but not anytime soon.

I'm sure something would be implemented to remember if you did purchase a movie through digital distribution so it wouldn't cost you anything to download it again.

[DoubleJ]

Originally Posted by Snadinator

I believe downloads will be the future, but not anytime soon.

I'm sure something would be implemented to remember if you did purchase a movie through digital distribution so it wouldn't cost you anything to download it again.

Although, if you think of iTunes, the "remembering" thing is crap. I reformat my computer often, and every time I do so, my iTunes downloads won't work unless I register them for "another machine." They need to improve that system if downloads will take over.