samatha6 said:
I doubt that. You realize how fast a connection that would be? Even regular DVD's peak out a 9000kbps. Even a 8 megabit Comcast cable connection would studder like crazy. With Mpeg 4 streaming, a HD stream would hit well over 10 megabit.
A HD movie can be close to 20 gigs. Only the fastest Fios broadband would have a chance... and that is going to be an HD lite movie no doubt.
I can see WMV HD streaming... Those bitrates are possible with current broadbands speeds.. But WMV HD is hardly true HD. I am interested on the technical means this will be done.. Its sounds like fluff and just talk at this time. About the only way that I have heard people streaming HD is from PC Harddrives with a 3 ghz pentium running out to a network DVD player via a RJ45 connection.. Even streaming HD via WiFI network is not fast enough... And a home network is going to be much faster then an internet connection.. This stuff Yahoo and Starz is selling has got to be a watered down.. low low rez HD.
You're quite wrong on almost all counts.
1.
Even regular DVD's peak out a 9000kbps.
No, they don't. Very few players would be able to play those discs and unless we are talking about Superbit discs, no studio will risk incompatibility with mainstream/el cheapo drives.
2.
With Mpeg 4 streaming, a HD stream would hit well over 10 megabit.
A HD movie can be close to 20 gigs.
Numbers pulled from thin air, right?
The only one I came across with similar size was Gladiator, around 19GB, a two and a half hour long 1080in MPEG2+DD5.1 @18Mbit - but in Xvid it's between 8-9GB somewhere, so it was around 6-7Mbit. Considering it's a very high-end quality stuff (ATSC), it's safe to assume 4-5Mbit for a full 720p would be more than enough. After all here I'm agreeing with you, that only a WNVHD or similar MPEG4 stream will be possible. However most of the movies are doable at decent rez/bitrate on a premium cable or DSL connection, you just need a large buffer at your end to balance out network congestions - which, I'm pretty sure, will be taken care of by Toshiba or Pioneer etc.
2. WMV HD is actually not only full, real, TRUE HD but produces *better* image than MPEG2 at half bandwidth. According to others' and my own tests, at higher bitrate it's even better than Xvid a little bit. Unfortunately there's no player with WMA Pro 5.1 over S/PDIF or Toslink support and since the WME doesn't support AC3 by default, only two choices lkeft for me; using WM9 VCM interface via VirtualDubMod so I can include AC3 sound or just relax and the world's best all-inclusive encoder, the AutoGK and Xvid w/ AC3 built-in. I'm lazy and the difference is very-very negligible between similar-sized WMVHD nad Xvid files and only noticeable if the source was some very high bitrate ATSC MPEG2 or my own HDV footage, so I'm using Xvid.
3. If you're interested in technical details, perhaps you should read up on the subject, so you won't be saying such things like HD cannot be done over WiFi, for example. FYI: I DO WATCH HD over WiFi, moreover I usually first watch these as full MPEG2 transport stream dumps which - generally speaking - needs twice as much bandwidth than VC-1 or h.264 or Xvid would ever require.
4. You're quite wrong on hardware requirements as well - standalone players typically built on dedicated chip design, unlike computers built on general computing arhictecture or in other words your 3GHz Pentium requirement - which, by the way, by no mean a requirement, especially not for MPEG2, it's another false info - doesn't mean anything in a comparison against a standalone player. FYI: I own a Snazio Net DVD Cinema HD player (model SZ-1350) and it plays every format (except some very old stuff) and resolution inclduing HD (except h.264 - it came out earlier), over wired or wifi connection, from disc or from my NAS or from a 1GB front-plugged USB key.
5. Most likely what Starz and others will sell is some h.264 or WMVHD 720p or 1080i (pretty much same size/bandwidth) movie. I can tell you right now that my Xvid-compressed 720p movies are already really nice around 4-5Mbit, so no, it won't be watered down at all, especially not when it'll be compared to Dish's or DirecTY's EDTV-resolution fake HD channels.
To be honest I'm still wondering what's the reason they did not put a hard drive into these new players, solely for these services...? Storage is dirst cheap nowadays and unless they don't make it possible, it's useless for copying content from discs, so even their usual paranoid content protection-boggled minds can't explain this...
