Quote:
Originally Posted by
eldithomaso 
Slimoli:
I think you said it well. If a mainstream product like the 370-570 can produce - with the right internet connection which I don't have yet and most don't have yet given the pricing scheme - video rentals are certainly dead.
As to audio quality, and video quality for that matter, most people are still happy with upscaled or worse plain ol DVD video. They don't care about BD or HDDVD and would be quite pleased if they could get SD Quality with old 2.0 dolby digital on their instant queues. I have plenty of wealty friends who do just that with their TIVO and Netflix queues even though they have systems in their homes costing 40-50k or more.
Convenience is king. Quality - I hate to say - for most isn't even in the Royal court.
I am still curious though - how good is this unit with a fast connection vs a slow connection and can anyone post some comparisions with Netflix, Amazon DVD, upscaled DVD and BD for similar movies.
I have yet to see a demo showing this but it seems the 370-570 make this very close to a reality if they support dual channel N streaming?
The 570 does support dual channel N data links via WiFi right?
This is how I would rate the S570, vis a vis each type of video:
-Bluray: Wonderful picture and sound. I think any bluray player can produce the same quality, though. I rate it a perfect 10.
-DVD: Tough call. I had DVD players better than the S570, like the Toshiba XA2. The S570 is OK, not the best but not bad. I rate it 7.
-Amazon VOD HD: I watched few titles and they were all pretty good, both video and audio. I rate it 8.
Amazon VOD SD: It depends a lot on the title, some are good and some look like an old VHS tape. I rate it from 4 to 6.
-Netflix HD : Not as good as Amazon and audio is very poor. I rate it 6.
-Netflix SD: On a large screen, forget about it. It needs a lot of improvement. Few titles are "watchable" but not better than this. I rate it 3 to 4, depending on the title.
My setup is a Sony BDP-S570, a Pioneer VSX94 receiver and a Panasonic PV65V10 plasma. My Internet is U-Verse 18 Mbps and everything is hard-wired, therefore no network issues.
I measured the bitrate on Netflix HD and it's not higher than 5.5 Mbps (variable). I used "LOST" in HD as a test. I would say a connection of 6 Mbps is the minimum for a decent picture.
I am MUCH more picky for quality than an average person.
