*Rumors Spin-off* 360 & Blu Ray

[tha_con]

And every time that happens, I think of all the stupid discussions that use completely different standards to move the bar either intentionally or by accident.

I don't understand why anybody is talking about DVD vs BR.

Is there some HD issue all you PS3 users have with streaming data?

I'm talking about DD of 720p media. Not 420i, or 420p, or 420p upscaled.

I'm talking about people not noticing or caring about the difference between 720p and 1080p. And despite what you enthusiasts think about HDTVs becoming more reasonable in price, most people are still not buying large enough HDTVs nor are they putting them in rooms large enough that they will see any noticeable difference between 720p and 1080p. Which makes DD of HD content appealing, but means there's little need for the improved quality that adding another piece of hardware in order to get the physical media requires - except for enthusiasts.

DVD quality VS BR quality? Sure, nobody is debating that so light a match on your strawman.

As far as 'collectors editions' and whatnot, I'm sure the studios don't want to give up that revenue stream but why would they need to include a physical media in the package? Sell your little figurine with a set of codes that allows people to go watch the movies whenever they want via DD.

Resolution is not necessarily all that makes Blu-Ray impressive. Bit-rate is probably just as important, and where all competing forms of media fall flat (DVD, DD, etc). Resolution is pretty much meaningless without a high enough bit-rate to give a good quality picture.

Sure, it's good enough for most people, but even they can tell the difference.

 

[egoless]

Delete

 

[Crossbar]

Hmm, 1080p over a 8 Mbit connection. Excuse me being sceptic, but somewhere someone is doing some trickery.

 

[Zassk]

8 Mbit isn't so bad. Wasn't the Batman Begins HD-DVD only around 10 MBit, yet was hailed as one of the highest quality HD releases on either format? I'd guess that the Blu-Ray version of Batman Begins is the same bit rate. Downloads also often sacrifice sound (e.g. 5.1 instead of 7.1) which saves on bit rate. If a direct download can approach the quality of the Batman Begins Blu-Ray, then quality is probably not much of an issue, I'd guess (not having seen it myself).

 

[corduroygt]

I am curious about color space, even netflix HD streams have a limited number of colours compared to bluray or even DVD. This is the aspect that bothers me the most with crushed blacks, etc.

 

[-tkf-]

Curious. Isn't it already an option? I'm in the 360 early preview program and just watched a movie @ 1080p from the Zune marketplace over my 802.11a connection. Believe me, I was skeptical of Microsoft's claims of instant on 1080p, but I ticked on the information bar and watched it stay on 1080p (EXCEPT for about 10 seconds at the start of the film). I don't even have the best broadband connection in my area (lowly cable modem @ 8Mbps). But I witnessed it first hand, 1080p, 5.1... it was all there.

I do have a 60GB PS3 that I purchased on launch day also if you're wondering. It's my BR player for my 1 BR @ a time netflix subscription and I use it to play my old PS2 games. I have exactly 3 PS3 exclusive games and I own 1 BR movie. I spend far more time and money with 360's games/services with no complaints.

And there you have it, 1080p is already an option

 

[patsu]

8 Mbit isn't so bad. Wasn't the Batman Begins HD-DVD only around 10 MBit, yet was hailed as one of the highest quality HD releases on either format? I'd guess that the Blu-Ray version of Batman Begins is the same bit rate.

I don't think so.

The video and audio are not bad at all, but Batman Begins is not up to reference quality by any accurate assessment. The most frustrating part of this observation is not just waiting more than a year for no significant bitrate improvement over the HD DVD, but in comparing Batman Begins to a six-minute prologue of The Dark Knight, which is included on the BD. Every frame of the prologue is truly reference quality, generating a stark contrast to the comparably veiled and constricted dynamics of the main feature.

Watch the scene on the frozen lake, where Bruce spars with Ducard. The color and detail is a touch muted, although the resolution is actually quite good. The tonal balance, from light to dark, appears lifelike, but definition is subdued as if a thin layer of plastic is placed over the screen. It is this "veiling" from the low bitrate transfer that hinders the picture and separates it from reference quality BDs like No Country for Old Men.

Source: http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Batman-Begins-Blu-ray/5/

Downloads also often sacrifice sound (e.g. 5.1 instead of 7.1) which saves on bit rate. If a direct download can approach the quality of the Batman Begins Blu-Ray, then quality is probably not much of an issue, I'd guess (not having seen it myself).

8Mb should be pretty good, but it is not Blu-ray "reference quality".

 

[joker454]

Hmm, 1080p over a 8 Mbit connection. Excuse me being sceptic, but somewhere someone is doing some trickery.

Maybe they use the hdd for caching. So once you start the movie it will download at full throttle all the time (8mbit in his case) and build a look ahead buffer on hdd. Since most movies start slow (ie, less than 8mbps), that lets it build a huge buffer that should be able to handle spikes that exceed his 8mbps limit since by the time a spike of say 20mbps hits, it will already have that data ready on the hdd.

The way some isps work in the USA favors this, as some will sell you an 8 or 10mbps service, however your actual speed will peak much higher than that for a brief while at the start of the download. For example, I have a 10mbps internet connection, but when I first download a file my download speed will jump to about 20mbps or so, and then gradually drop down to 10mbps after 15 or so seconds.

 

[-tkf-]

Maybe they use the hdd for caching. So once you start the movie it will download at full throttle all the time (8mbit in his case) and build a look ahead buffer on hdd. Since most movies start slow (ie, less than 8mbps), that lets it build a huge buffer that should be able to handle spikes that exceed his 8mbps limit since by the time a spike of say 20mbps hits, it will already have that data ready on the hdd.

The way some isps work in the USA favors this, as some will sell you an 8 or 10mbps service, however your actual speed will peak much higher than that for a brief while at the start of the download. For example, I have a 10mbps internet connection, but when I first download a file my download speed will jump to about 20mbps or so, and then gradually drop down to 10mbps after 15 or so seconds.

If they use the old fashion way then the average bitrate is most likely lower than 8mbit.

If they use some of the tech behind silverlight video they can dynamical reduce the bits and quality depending on the connection quality.

 

[tha_con]

Curious. Isn't it already an option? I'm in the 360 early preview program and just watched a movie @ 1080p from the Zune marketplace over my 802.11a connection. Believe me, I was skeptical of Microsoft's claims of instant on 1080p, but I ticked on the information bar and watched it stay on 1080p (EXCEPT for about 10 seconds at the start of the film). I don't even have the best broadband connection in my area (lowly cable modem @ 8Mbps). But I witnessed it first hand, 1080p, 5.1... it was all there.

I do have a 60GB PS3 that I purchased on launch day also if you're wondering. It's my BR player for my 1 BR @ a time netflix subscription and I use it to play my old PS2 games. I have exactly 3 PS3 exclusive games and I own 1 BR movie. I spend far more time and money with 360's games/services with no complaints.

This part of your post is relevant to the discussion how? Very confused. The discussion isn't about why you spend more time and money on your 360.

That said, all 1080p is not created equal. How people don't realize this, I don't know. Blu-Ray has a significantly higher bit-rate, and the video quality is significantly higher as a result.

Simply checking off bullet points of "1080p" and "5.1 audio" means pretty much nothing to me as a Home Theater snob. The video and audio quality to me is pretty low. The biggest hit is the audio though, which is noticably flat when compared to even the most basic DVD release.

 

[eastmen]

Hey so do I (well if the net was a lot better in NZ that is) shit Ill be there at the forefront Im certainly not attached to having something physical.

The problem is only 2/3rds of xbox users have xbox live accounts (the free + paid versions)
bang!! thats 1/3 of the market that dont even take up a free service that offers them something.
The way it is consumers as a whole like there physical medium

books vs e - readers
newspaper vs online
etc

sure the traditional mediums are shrinking but theyre still being dominated by the 'hard' medium's in actual dollar terms

No its not that. Its that people are creatures of habit. People have bought books all their lives , e-readers are new. People wont flock to them , esp not right now. You can buy a book and it will be readable untill something happens to it. You may buy an e-reader but what happens in 3 years if you want to say go from the kindle to barnes and nobles 2012 e reader ? Can you take it with you ?

Same goes for other things like newspapers . Can you read an online site on the bus or train ? If so are you limited to your phone screen? hardly ideal.

Things take time to change. Right now most consumers are used to going to bestbuy or walmart and getting a physical disc. As time goes on more and more will experiance DD's in some way. At some point it will be the rare person who went to the store to buy a disc to watch a movie. Just like there is a whole generation being born and raised right now who will never go to a store to buy music on a physical medium. Mabye hte next generation will never buy movies on a disc either.


Of course in the mean time DD will take more and more of the market from optical formats.

 

[dobwal]

No its not that. Its that people are creatures of habit. People have bought books all their lives , e-readers are new. People wont flock to them , esp not right now. You can buy a book and it will be readable untill something happens to it. You may buy an e-reader but what happens in 3 years if you want to say go from the kindle to barnes and nobles 2012 e reader ? Can you take it with you ?

Same goes for other things like newspapers . Can you read an online site on the bus or train ? If so are you limited to your phone screen? hardly ideal.

Things take time to change. Right now most consumers are used to going to bestbuy or walmart and getting a physical disc. As time goes on more and more will experiance DD's in some way. At some point it will be the rare person who went to the store to buy a disc to watch a movie. Just like there is a whole generation being born and raised right now who will never go to a store to buy music on a physical medium. Mabye hte next generation will never buy movies on a disc either.


Of course in the mean time DD will take more and more of the market from optical formats.

Thats transition is already being facilitated. DD is already invading living rooms at a much faster pace than BRD players.

On Demand through satellite and cable providers have a DD rental system and they are becoming more robust with bigger libraries, HD versions of new releases and longer rental times. Current gen consoles have pushed 60 million DD capable units into homes. We talking about a lot of household even before considering the availability of DD through Internet services.

DD is being used as an auxillary service with a cost not really felt by consumers in terms of access. It will have a level of penetration that will be hard for Bluray or any player dependent on optical media to achieve and at a rate that is impossible for a physical hardware to replicate.

The advantage of DD is as of right now it is almost readily accessible to everyone at little cost. The disadvantage is the bigwigs are so scared of piracy that if often comes so locked down that inherent positives like portability, which could be used to enamor the consumer base, are often restricted to the point that it becomes fairly unattractive and slows adoption in terms of use.

 

[ShadowRunner]

Another big part of DD vs Physical is being able to trade/borrow content. Most of the BluRays i have seen have been borrowed off friends, and i know by looking at the second hand bins that trading in movies is something a lot of people do. This is something that cannot be done with DD in the same way.

I also think a lot of this talk is only relevant to people of a certain type. There are tons of people that just dont trust buying stuff off the internet or simply dont want to. DD will become more and more popular but it will be a long long time before Physical media is irrelevant. People still buy CDs...

 

[bkilian]

This part of your post is relevant to the discussion how? Very confused. The discussion isn't about why you spend more time and money on your 360.

That said, all 1080p is not created equal. How people don't realize this, I don't know. Blu-Ray has a significantly higher bit-rate, and the video quality is significantly higher as a result.

Simply checking off bullet points of "1080p" and "5.1 audio" means pretty much nothing to me as a Home Theater snob. The video and audio quality to me is pretty low. The biggest hit is the audio though, which is noticably flat when compared to even the most basic DVD release.

Quality is in the eye of the beholder. I have friends who swear to me they can't tell the difference between my HD DVDs and DVDs on my 50" TV. _I_ can, but as we've found out, most of america just doesn't give a damn. DVD was such a huge step up from broadcast that the incremental improvement in HD just isn't all that impressive.

And if that's the case, then the even smaller incremental improvement between 8Mbit HD and ~20Mbit HD is going to matter even less to a lot of people. Sure it'll make us folks who spent 3 years studying every pixel nuts (especially my video encoder friends ), but for the vast majority of consumers, it's just a ticky-box to justify their purchase of a $2K television. "You have HD? Yeah! I got that Zune streaming stuff, best picture evar!"

 

[Crossbar]

Thats transition is already being facilitated. DD is already invading living rooms at a much faster pace than BRD players.

Didn´t know that, do you have any numbers?

Are you talking US or worldwide?

 

[egoless]

Delete

 

[upnorthsox]

Thats transition is already being facilitated. DD is already invading living rooms at a much faster pace than BRD players.

On Demand through satellite and cable providers have a DD rental system and they are becoming more robust with bigger libraries, HD versions of new releases and longer rental times. Current gen consoles have pushed 60 million DD capable units into homes. We talking about a lot of household even before considering the availability of DD through Internet services.

DD is being used as an auxillary service with a cost not really felt by consumers in terms of access. It will have a level of penetration that will be hard for Bluray or any player dependent on optical media to achieve and at a rate that is impossible for a physical hardware to replicate.

The advantage of DD is as of right now it is almost readily accessible to everyone at little cost. The disadvantage is the bigwigs are so scared of piracy that if often comes so locked down that inherent positives like portability, which could be used to enamor the consumer base, are often restricted to the point that it becomes fairly unattractive and slows adoption in terms of use.

If you're including cable/satellite on-demand then IMO DD has been a failure. Other than the free stuff, usage rates continue to be low and this for a tech that had an instant +85% market pentetration.

If gaming is any indicator, the bigwigs have every right to be scared of piracy and until usage rates get to a respectable level the costs of infrastructure for DD makes it loser.

 

[patsu]

Because I read the first paragraph before I hit post and I didn't want to hear the fancrap drivel. And in regards to the rest of your post, I wanted it to be clear that I've seen my share of high definition content for a while now, especially BR. And before the goal posts move again, this is my TV http://www.samsung.com/us/consumer/.../UN55B7100WFXZA/index.idx?pagetype=prd_detail

I knew that folks would move off the TrueHD bulletpoint and go into "but it's only HDMI1.2 so deep color is out" or "it's only 5.1, not uncompressed 7.1" and so on. But I wanted it to be clear that I have quite a bit of exposure on both systems' offerings and I was impressed with what I saw and heard even from my minimum spec setup. It turns out 1080p streaming recommends an 8 to 10Mbps connection. So I am on the low end, yet I was treated to uninterrupted HD video/sound quality that I don't even get from Netflix.

I am impressed enough to ditch BR from netflix and sell my PS3. But it all depends on if the Zune service still works this well when everybody gets this 360 dashboard update, and the selection offers the movies I want to see when I want to see them. So I serve as a bulletpoint for those arguing "BR complimenting DD" and "BR vs DD".

This behaviour is expected though. However this time round, you don't have to sell your Blu-ray player to get Netflix streaming. They come together. See how the new announcement benefits Blu-ray ?

The Netflix deal is expected to boost their streaming plan. Some will fall back to Netflix's $8.99 unlimited streaming DVD plan instead of the $10.99 unlimited streaming Blu-ray plan. Eventually when they realize that the HD streaming library is limited and different from the Blu-ray one. A portion will consider an upgrade to $10.99 or continue to buy day-n-date Blu-ray movies they like.

The marketplace is a lively one. e.g., I hear Blockbuster is also prepping a BD-Live streaming service for all Blu-ray players, cheapest Blu-ray player is now $99 and may be $49 for Black Friday, more Blu-ray movie discounts coming, Windows adding Blu-ray support, iTunes Blu-ray may be due soon, etc.

All in all, consumers have more choices. I sent the announced Netflix deal to a PS3 friend. He replied with an offer to lend me "his" Transformer Blu-ray disc. I need to return it by tomorrow to Blockbuster though.

He doesn't want subscription. And I don't see why I must limit my movie "deals" to DD channels only. Afterall, I got Blu-ray with the game console. Some will get it with their TV, so on and so forth.

 

[tha_con]

Because I read the first paragraph before I hit post and I didn't want to hear the fancrap drivel. And in regards to the rest of your post, I wanted it to be clear that I've seen my share of high definition content for a while now, especially BR. And before the goal posts move again, this is my TV http://www.samsung.com/us/consumer/.../UN55B7100WFXZA/index.idx?pagetype=prd_detail

I knew that folks would move off the TrueHD bulletpoint and go into "but it's only HDMI1.2 so deep color is out" or "it's only 5.1, not uncompressed 7.1" and so on. But I wanted it to be clear that I have quite a bit of exposure on both systems' offerings and I was impressed with what I saw and heard even from my minimum spec setup. It turns out 1080p streaming recommends an 8 to 10Mbps connection. So I am on the low end, yet I was treated to uninterrupted HD video/sound quality that I don't even get from Netflix.

I am impressed enough to ditch BR from netflix and sell my PS3. But it all depends on if the Zune service still works this well when everybody gets this 360 dashboard update, and the selection offers the movies I want to see when I want to see them. So I serve as a bulletpoint for those arguing "BR complimenting DD" and "BR vs DD".

Update: I googled for other folks using the service since you all can't see the preview forums on xbox.com. Here's one with a video: http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_...quality-is-incredible-handson-with-video.html And here's one with just pics (yeah, jpeg, but oh well) http://www.giantbomb.com/news/eyes-on-the-xbox-360s-instant-1080p-streaming/1739/ And lastly here's a test you can run on your PC http://www.iis.net/media/experiencesmoothstreaming1080p

Your TV has nothing to do with it. The bitrate (which has nothing to do with HDMI) is lower for streaming media. 1080p simply refers to the lines of resolution that are present, however, the quality is not the same. Same goes for audio. It's not that it's not uncompressed, it's that it's further compressed even more than standard dvd. I find that pretty unacceptable for a 'for pay' service.

You don't seem to understand those points. It may not matter to you, but it most certainly matters to me.

As for that portion of your prior post, it is still unrelated. You essentially explained to us how worthless your PS3 is to you, and why your 360 is a better system. Which olds zero relevance to the topic at hand. In fact, I'd argue that portion of your post would spark more "fancrap" as that was largely what it was, instead of prevent it.

 

[dobwal]

Didn´t know that, do you have any numbers?

Are you talking US or worldwide?

More based on US, since I've explored annual reports of companies like Comcast and seen their number digital subscribers, which is usually 50% of their video consumers. Furthermore, ~60% or more of US homes have broadband access. The majority of these consumers are capable of taking advantage of DD services. I do know that it took itunes 15 months to sell 7 million movies while BRD required 18 months to reach that number (Itunes number refer to just US while I am not sure BRD number refers to US or worldwide).

Apple reported a 21% growth (or 700 million dollars) in revenue for their "other music-related products and services" for 2009, which they mainly attribute to third party DD. Thats not all movies but includes music and apps, but it shows that DD as a general content provider is gaining an ever wider acceptance and that will benefit DD as video distributor in terms of consumer acceptance.

I am assuming most other westernized countries are either following suit either lagging slightly behind or moving at a faster pace than the US.