Bill Gates: Both BluRay and HDDVD doomed for failure

[DemoCoder]

How are cable companies streaming HD movies now then?

Because it's not point-to-point unicast TCP, it's broadcast. To serve 10 million people with the same movie, they need only use ~18Mb/s, because everyone is receiving the same broadcast data.

What won't work is over-the-internet selling of HD movies. Because multicast simply doesn't work over the internet today. ISPs aren't routing it correctly.

At best, cable companies could use multicast IP within their own customer intranet.

But today, what your cable company streams you is *shitty* HD. It will not compare to the quality of a 25gb or 50gb BluRay movie. HBO for example, has a bitrate for HD movies of about 8-9mb/s which is 1/2 the ATSC max bandwidth for HD. In fact, HBO HD, and indeed, most HD on cable, falls far short of full ATSC quality.

Even so, imagine you had max ATSC quality: 18mb/s. 18/8 * 2 * 3600 = 16gb for a full 2 hr movie, no bonus features, no alternate tracks. BluRay is set to deliver 1.5-3x that amount of data.


And BTW, what makes you think that cable companies have an interest in selling high quality digital copies that you can own?

 

[expletive]

Because it's not point-to-point unicast TCP, it's broadcast. To serve 10 million people with the same movie, they need only use ~18Mb/s, because everyone is receiving the same broadcast data.

What won't work is over-the-internet selling of HD movies. Because multicast simply doesn't work over the internet today. ISPs aren't routing it correctly.

At best, cable companies could use multicast IP within their own customer intranet.

I have on demand HD which means i can watch any available HD program at any time, not on some schedule when the program is being multicast. So if thats what you meant, then that is NOT whats happening today already.

But today, what your cable company streams you is *shitty* HD. It will not compare to the quality of a 25gb or 50gb BluRay movie. HBO for example, has a bitrate for HD movies of about 8-9mb/s which is 1/2 the ATSC max bandwidth for HD. In fact, HBO HD, and indeed, most HD on cable, falls far short of full ATSC quality.

Even so, imagine you had max ATSC quality: 18mb/s. 18/8 * 2 * 3600 = 16gb for a full 2 hr movie, no bonus features, no alternate tracks. BluRay is set to deliver 1.5-3x that amount of data.

Even if this is true, (which i would like to find some real data on what the new HD codecs are and what their bandwidth rates are and if they could be transmitted and at what rate) , do you think the average consumer is going to know the difference or care?

And BTW, what makes you think that cable companies have an interest in selling high quality digital copies that you can own?

I'm not sure what youre saying here, do you mean that people will save on-demand movies and record them to some permanent medium?

If thats what you mean then the answer is yes, because on-demand is an area of their business that has the most growth potential. So if, at the end of the day, all the studios are satisfied with the DRM scheme from source to consumer, cable companies would love to replace blockbuster, netflix, etc.

And for the record i think that shitty HD sucks. Ive got a 110" screen and HD projector and the last thing i want is shitty HD on it.

 

[BlueTsunami]

Even if this is true, (which i would like to find some real data on what the new HD codecs are and what their bandwidth rates are and if they could be transmitted and at what rate) , do you think the average consumer is going to know the difference or care?

I don't want to get in the other argument, leave that between you and DemoCoder but the area I bolded is not really a good attitude towards that area. Reason being, is that the regular consumer may not notice but its going to make people who can notice a difference between "Good High-Def" and "Shitty High-Def" feel angered because of the lackluster HD inplimentation.

 

[expletive]

I don't want to get in the other argument, leave that between you and DemoCoder but the area I bolded is not really a good attitude towards that area. Reason being, is that the regular consumer may not notice but its going to make people who can notice a difference between "Good High-Def" and "Shitty High-Def" feel angered because of the lackluster HD inplimentation.

Yes i agree. We actually crossed posts (see my last comment and last edit time). I dont WANT this to happen i'm just saying that i think it WILL. But the big problem for optical HD media is not digital distribution its the competing formats. They need to get their own house in order before they start worrying about digital distribution. The longer they go on with 2 formats the more cable/satellite/broadband companies will be getting marketshare in the HD movie space.

EDIT: Its not really an attitude, just my opinion on where i think we're headed, good-bad-or indifferent. The good news is that my attitude doesnt mean diddly in the big pciture.

 

[kyleb]

I have on demand HD which means i can watch any available HD program at any time, not on some schedule when the program is being multicast. So if thats what you meant, then that is NOT whats happening today already.

But the qeustion Demo answered for you was not in reguard to on-demand but rather streaming which is being mulitcast, and then there was my previous explantion for both where I pointed out that all your HD cable service is done on a closed network with the bandwidth to support it. Sure your cable company can provide you with streaming and on-demand HD content; but how long would it take you to download 16gb or even 8gb though your internet connection?

 

[BlueTsunami]

but how long would it take you to download 16gb or even 8gb though your internet connection?

I'm doing that now (Although it IS bittorrent that i'm doing it with). Its approximatley 15.42GBs and i'm on my 3rd day. I'm currently sitting at 31% done with an estimated time of 2 Days left to go. I've gotten around an average of 70KB/s for the whole 3 days.

 

[DemoCoder]

I have on demand HD which means i can watch any available HD program at any time, not on some schedule when the program is being multicast.

This likely only works as long as a large number of people aren't doing it. HD content SHOULD exceed 10mbps, and most cable doesn't deliver data rates higher than that, and from personal experience when I used to have a cable modem, data rates vary from sub-DSL speeds to up to 8mbps depending on how many other people are exercising their systems.

So, either a) your HD on demand is really 8mbps crap, or b) it's high quality >15mbps, but if everyone had HD and used it, the system would be overloaded.

Even if this is true, (which i would like to find some real data on what the new HD codecs are and what their bandwidth rates are and if they could be transmitted and at what rate) , do you think the average consumer is going to know the difference or care?

One example
http://www.widemovies.com/dfwbitrate.html

As for passing off SD quality signals as HD today, maybe consumers won't care, but this is irrelevent to the argument as to whether you will be able to buy BluRay quality movies through digital distributiuon.

 

[NavNucST3]

It's just too damn convient to go to the local Walmart and buy a $9.99 or $14.99 movie and not worry about HDD space or a computer connection. What if your area has a internet outage? Say bye bye to movie watching.

Let me follow your, logic?, here, it is MORE convenient to hop in the car and drive to Wal-Mart, than pick up your remote? Internet outage, you must somehow see this as different than if the damn electricity goes out in said area, guess what still no movie watching... Seems to me that if going to blockbuster and wal-mart were so damn convenient NetFlix wouldn't have any customers.

I also don't understand why so many people feel that somehow bandwidth increases, are trivial and non-existent. In the three years I have had Comcast here in Colorado, I have gone from 1.5Mbps to 8Mbps. Qwest supposedly has 40Mbit fibre in the affluent Lone Tree area. I'm also not seeing why the anti-distribution model crowd thinks there won't be any new codec that could compress even better than h.264 and vc-1, thereby saving even more bandwidth (yes, I realize such codecs would have to be accepted and implemented)

All things being equal what I really want to see is the movie, to me extras and all the super-pretty menus is akin to backwards compatibilty in consoles, its one of those nice things to talk about or maybe another reason to buy LotR for the fourth or fifth time, but I have watched extras on all of my dvds MAYBE twice.

 

[DemoCoder]

The problem for you, is to come up with a codec and a ISP model that can deliver the equivalent of a h.264 encoded 50Gb BluRay disc. You need either 10 times the bandwidth needed to transfer a DVD today, or you need a codec 10 times more efficient than h.264.

Both to me are somewhat iffy to consider in widespread deployment in 5-10 years. No, I think in 5 years, people will be buying BluRay discs at the local video store, and suffering on <10mbps connections (most likely, majority still on 1mbps) In fact, a huge number of people are still on DIAL UP!

The US isn't going to become South Korea for some time.

 

[AlphaWolf]

The US isn't going to become South Korea for some time.

Can I quote you on that?

 

[DemoCoder]

Only if you translate it to Korean.


BTW, it's frustrating. My housing community was built with fibre in the ground. It's THERE! But it's not hooked up. All the houses were built with smurf tubes for future direct to the home fibre, but there is no one who wants to use this fibre at the moment.

 

[NavNucST3]

The problem for you, is to come up with a codec and a ISP model that can deliver the equivalent of a h.264 encoded 50Gb BluRay disc. You need either 10 times the bandwidth needed to transfer a DVD today, or you need a codec 10 times more efficient than h.264.

Both to me are somewhat iffy to consider in widespread deployment in 5-10 years. No, I think in 5 years, people will be buying BluRay discs at the local video store, and suffering on <10mbps connections (most likely, majority still on 1mbps) In fact, a huge number of people are still on DIAL UP!

The US isn't going to become South Korea for some time.

How did we automatically jump to the 50GB BD-ROM, the codec would need to be developed for the lowest common denominator which would be SL BD-ROM?
We already have the backbone in place in internet2, how/when/if that will be released to the public that is not my decision. I also find it interesting that you can only say a huge number of people as opposed to say last year where you could say over half of the U.S, do you somehow see that number (dial-up users) going up in the next 5-10years?
You guys are making it seem like we (pro-digidisto) are saying its coming in summer of next year. Go back 10 years ago from today and see how many people used floppies, hell 10 years ago DVD wasn't even out. I'm just glad that the forward thinkers are not comprised of everyone in the room who keeps going by what we have TODAY. For some of you I would hate to have approached you with the concept of thumb drives. Why is it so hard to fathom BD-ROM being the last physical medium, that doesn't mean it will disappear in the next 2, 5, or even 20 years.

I guess its the Nuc. physicist in me that wants to think in some form of Quantum Mechanical world where probabilities are not dictated by what one can actually see but more by what one can dream and then calculate.

 

[expletive]

The problem for you, is to come up with a codec and a ISP model that can deliver the equivalent of a h.264 encoded 50Gb BluRay disc. You need either 10 times the bandwidth needed to transfer a DVD today, or you need a codec 10 times more efficient than h.264.

Both to me are somewhat iffy to consider in widespread deployment in 5-10 years. No, I think in 5 years, people will be buying BluRay discs at the local video store, and suffering on <10mbps connections (most likely, majority still on 1mbps) In fact, a huge number of people are still on DIAL UP!

The US isn't going to become South Korea for some time.

Not really, my point was that the public would accept a watered down version of HD programming via cable or satellite (or broadband). Obviously there is no infrastructure in place now that could stream 25G of data in an hour. What about something like 720p WMV HD? What rate does that run at?

 

[NavNucST3]

Only if you translate it to Korean.


BTW, it's frustrating. My housing community was built with fibre in the ground. It's THERE! But it's not hooked up. All the houses were built with smurf tubes for future direct to the home fibre, but there is no one who wants to use this fibre at the moment.

FTTH has been rolled out here, but since I don't fall into the affluence of Lone Tree...I get to only dream about it.

Let me point out that I don't disagree with any of your assertions, as it stands for the next 5 years or so.

EDIT: I found this recent article which I thought would be semi-relevant to the thread, but moreso relative to the topic of digital distribution and bandwidth concerns.

 

[kyleb]

Not really, my point was that the public would accept a watered down version of HD programming via cable or satellite (or broadband). Obviously there is no infrastructure in place now that could stream 25G of data in an hour. What about something like 720p WMV HD? What rate does that run at?

WMV-HD has a variable bitrate, but from what I have seen you can expect about 50mb a minutes for a 720p video. That would be nearly 5 times too much data to stream on a 1.5mb cable connection. So do you see why online delivery isn't going to doom BluRay and HDDVD to failure now?

 

[Sean*O]

Not really, my point was that the public would accept a watered down version of HD programming via cable or satellite (or broadband).

Yes. This has been proven so many times now I don't understand why people think that all of a sudden the World will change and everyone will demand maximum quality over maximum convenience?

Most people did not care that Beta was superior to VHS quality-wise.

MP3 is inferior to uncompressed Redbook 44.1khz CD audio, which is inferior to 96khz+ DVD audio or SACD audio, yet it is MP3 and other compressed audio formats that continue towards market dominance.

Most people find MP3 audio (even at 128kbps) to be 'good enough' to the point where they can't tell any difference between it and CD audio, because they aren't doing critical listening to the quality, they are simply listening to the music. In many situations, you really can't tell the difference between MP3 and CD (like listening in a moving car, or through and office radio for example.)

Now consider the fact that most people won't be critically evaluating the picture they get from a HD video source, they will simply want to enjoy the content. Most people don't even know or can't see the difference between 720p and 1080i HD. Most HD sets can't even resolve a full 1080 line video signal. This is true not only of HD sets sold over the past 5 years, but also brand new HD sets being sold today with HDMI inputs for HD-DVD and Blu Ray.

There is a point of diminishing returns where the majority of people will say, "It's good enough" especially when there are other factors like convenience thrown in the mix. It's not convenient to drive down to the local Best Buy, Wal-Mart or where ever, when you could just click a button and have what you want. Even Netflix would become a pain, because why deal with the hassle of transacting through the mail when you could press that button on your remote and immediately capture that movie you want straight to your DVR?

It won't have to be as good of quality as an image coming from a Blu Ray disc, because the majority of people just won't care at that point.

 

[expletive]

WMV-HD has a variable bitrate, but from what I have seen you can expect about 50mb a minutes for a 720p video. That would be nearly 5 times too much data to stream on a 1.5mb cable connection. So do you see why online delivery isn't going to doom BluRay and HDDVD to failure now?

Nope, sorry. Figure 7G (2 hours) for a full length movie, cable company requires a 12 hour lead (or 24 or wahtever) time to order the movie. Once you order it loads the movie onto your cable box's hard disk at about 600MB an HOUR. Thats 10MB a minute, plenty of time. If they require 24 hours notice, thats 5 MB a minute for HD 99% of the population would be thriled with. Cable company manages the content and you lose after 48 hours or so, maybe you can firewire down to D-VHS, irrelevant though.

 

[expletive]

Nope, sorry. Figure 7G for a full length movie, cable company requires a 12 hour lead (or 24 or wahtever) time to order the movie. Once you order it loads the movie onto your cable box's hard disk at about 600MB an HOUR. Thats 10MB a minute, plenty of time. If they require 24 hours notice, thats 5 MB a minute for HD 99% of the population would be thriled with. Cable company manages the content and you lose after 48 hours or so, maybe you can firewire down to D-VHS, irrelevant though.

Just to add a point here, 5MB a minute would also be accessible to anyone with broadband and something like a Windows MCE PC. I think a lot of people have a hard time getting over the idea of "how do you direct stream that signal that fast" and the obvious answer is, you dont.

When i bought half life 2 over STEAM instead of going into the store for it, it was trickling down 99% of the game to my HD over several days, that way it would only need to send a few final files on release.

 

[DemoCoder]

Most DVD buys are impulse purchases. You guys are way too oriented into your own tech world. You've got to think about the non-internet savy person. These people don't even own PVRs, and they don't like to program their VCRs.

They are not going to wait 24+hrs for essentially a "pay per view" equivalent, when today, they can wait <1hr to watch it scheduled on Pay Per View.

The broadcast model is far far more efficient, and for that reason, it will win out in the end. Time and time again, operators of cable, satellite, and phone networks have proven that they like to maximize # of subscribers for a given bandwidth.

Unicast downloads are simply far too wasteful.

 

[kyleb]

Nope, sorry. Figure 7G (2 hours) for a full length movie, cable company requires a 12 hour lead (or 24 or wahtever) time to order the movie. Once you order it loads the movie onto your cable box's hard disk at about 600MB an HOUR. Thats 10MB a minute, plenty of time. If they require 24 hours notice, thats 5 MB a minute for HD 99% of the population would be thriled with. Cable company manages the content and you lose after 48 hours or so, maybe you can firewire down to D-VHS, irrelevant though.

Cable companies don't have to worry about keeping to 5-10mb a minute in their own closed networks, what you are talking about is basicly just the HD on-demand you said you already have. That isn't anything that can replace being able swing by the store and pick up whatever movie you like, or being able to simply have the movie dropped off in your mailbox.