HD Streaming Anything Close to Blu-ray? No. - Page 4

Huh. Same resolution - I would have thought it'd be fine full-screen.


Yeah, that opening shot was meant to be a codec buster, as described in the commentary.


Yeah, for that content 8 Mbps wasn't quite enough. Note that the 2K wasn't much bigger as a file; the real difference is in how much flexibility there is to raise the bitrate for the hard sections. 12 Mbps at 1080p would have been fine.


Thanks! It's kind of cool to go beyond HDMI/Blu-ray .

Ben,

Would you be comfortable going on record stating that the next format after BD could possibly actually continue using BD disks and maybe add another layer or two, and use your advanced codec to maybe get up to 8k at 120fps? I think that'd be pretty reasonable, and manufacturers wouldn't have the same startup costs they've had with BD so far. They could just upgrade to 8x BD drives and put a faster computer under the hood. Everything else, such as BD disk pressing, could be the same. They could call is BD 5.0 and it would be fully backward compatible.

As always, that's a good demo and I'd like to see this technology come to fruition sooner rather than later. When will an encoder be released?

Something tells me, their efforts in providing top quality lower bitrate footage is to improve quality of digital downloads not to fit things on Blu-ray.

I think MS would definitely support an extension of BD if they owned 100% of one of the codecs supported by the format.

I'm not involved enough with the optical disc market these days to want to make any "official" statemets. If anything, the industry's future efforts aren't really focused on optical media at all. BD has been something of a market disappointment so far. And given all improvemets in broadband, codecs, solid state storage, and hard drives, it's not clear to me that optical's going to have the unique niche it has had the last couple of decades.

Among other things, I don't think 8K or 120 fps would really offer any perceptible improvements over 4K and 60 fps. For most movie content, even 2K is going to saturate the ability of most folks to percieve detail. Still images, sure, but once you have some motion in there, I don't think most people will see a difference.


The 2K clip was made with Expression Encoder 2. $199, and there's a 30-day free trial .

Given the patent landscape, I don't imagine there's any way any company could outright own all the essential IP for a video codec anytime soon.

And from a revenue perspective, the margin's really in the content much more than any technical component. MPEG-2 turned out to be a bit of a gold mine (it's still $2.50/decoder, uncapped!) but H.264 and VC-1 are much cheaper and have per-company caps. Check out MPEGLA.org for the details.

Huh???

Downloads that match blu-ray in VIDEO AND AUDIO and have been in occuring for the last two years, and are happening TODAY, in quantities that might startle you.

They are called BD rips.

This is really cool. I know that compression gets better all the time. I am wondering if there is any work on improving packet delivery and network latency like we do at work for moving data over the network. I know that we have had success reducing the pipes (ie cost) and putting in a one time network acclerator solution (like Steelhead appliances) and actually got better performance with smaller pipes. Building some of these technologies into the Roku or Xbox360 etc. would reduce traffic and improve the quality delivered. Frankly if I could get good 720P with DD+ streaming I would be a very happy camper with the all you can eat Netflix contract agreement. One can hope.

I'm sure they are talking legal ways to get that quality. Of course we've gone from nothing to Youtube to Vudu HDX (which is getting pretty close) in what...less than 5 years?


I wish Vudu would wake up and offer a buffet plan, since they have the HDX stuff. I'm sure it's been tossed around internally, but Netflix is going to steamroll them if they insist on sticking to the PPV model (IMO).

This is what separates Netflix from the others and why I use them. If Netflix can't offer new titles buffet style, I'd like to see them offer new ones at maybe $2 a flick. Seems like a reasonable compromise and they generate additional revenue.

Well,that's exactly why I use them. If I only watched 4-6 movies a month, I'd be all over Vudu, but I'm closer to 15-20 movies a month (and sometimes as many as 25), so Vudu is just too expensive, even if is the best VOD quality you can get right now.

A $40 or $50/month plan for 15/20 movies would be ideal for me. It's not quite buffet, but it's close to your $2/view pricing that you mention.

I would also be MUCH more interested in vudu if they offered a buffet plan for a reasonable price. Personally even 40-50 would be too much for me.... My max would be ~$35/month.

But how many movies would you want for the $35? Unlimited?

Id want unlimited or something around 20 movies a month.... more than I would be using in an average month. Really I only watch maybe 10-15 movies each month but 10-15 at vudu's prices is still very expensive compared to netflix dvd/bd rentals.

I think the saving grace for companies offering "unlimited" service is that there are only so many hours a month people have to watch content, and for most it will be split between various outlets... including television, online, etc.

original question-"HD Streaming Anything Close to Blu-ray? No."

correct answer is: not yet.

Also, "In what environment"?

I bet on a 42 inch TV that you sit 8+ feet away from where you are using the TV speakers for Audio, VuDu HDX is very close to Blu-ray. I am willing to bet that my wife could not tell the difference. Most people do not have perfect vision.

Again as Wendell pointed out with his article, downloading and not streaming. According to Wendell and his posted article...

That sounds pretty darn good to me!

Check out the clips that Ben posted. The technology is getting better and can certainly deliver Blu-ray (or better) quality.

Vudu HDX is very important in the long term to demonstrate there is a market for high quality downloads. I love the convenience of Netflix on Demand, but would be thrilled to see them offer higher quality.

HD streaming: not yet
HD downloading: close

We still have audio to improve on streaming and download however. I seem to recall these audio improvements we not in HD optical from day one either.

Oh, audio's actually the easy part. WMA Pro goes up to 7.1 24-bit 96 KHz, and is quite a bit more efficient than the normal CE audio codecs. And for downloads, we support full 2-pass and quality limited VBR, so we don't have to use a high bitrate overall in order to make sure the hardest parts of the audio sound good.

The 2K sample I linked to had 5.1 in 256 Kbps, and I think sounded just fine for that content.

I am not sure what you define as videophiles - however I would suggest that anyone with a projector based movie theater or large format TV cares. 42 inch probably not a big deal.

I agree - Netflix has enabled me to stop watching most of the junk that is on TV - except for a really good HBO, Showtime, or FX series and watch predominantly movies. Vudu has been purely a back up -- i.e. if I can not get it on BluRay - I download hdx

I disabled Blu on my Netflix account because I buy them instead of rent them.

I would laugh if anyone paid for Netflix streaming specifically because the selection is terrible for new releases.

If Vudu still offers superior quality to Netflix over the coming year this would be inexcusable. We need next-gen codecs and cell processors inside out web-enabled tvs now, not tomorrow, NOW!

Blu ray is the only option from now until that date since any non-standardized download format is doomed to failure. The least they can do is build the functionality into the tvs for us and bypass the issue entirely.

I know there are currently 1,400 titles available in HD on Vudu... which I believe is a larger HD library than any competing format or download option.

Has anyone been tracking how much the library has grown in the past year?

They've been growing by leaps and bounds. I know their average week of adding movies was sometimes hitting 150 HD movies a week.

As far as content in HD they are unbeatable.

As soon as I can get a download to equal the video and hi def audio of BR, I'm in, the netflix mailbox thingy is getting tiresome and trips to and from BB even more so. Since I only have time to watch one movie a week on weekends, I don't care if I have to start downloading it on monday.

Depending on your AV gear setup, you may find that the Vudu HDX titles would meet your standards. Some users even find the HD titles on Vudu to be as good as their BR experience, it just depends on what you are using.

I have a projection set up, 120x51 screen for scope aspect movies, so even relatively small artifacts become painfully apparent unless they are near pristine on BR. Also, when do new releases become available on Vudu HDX?