[Toptube]

I love Blu-ray. a really lot. It delivers to me the most pristine near reference quality video that I have ever seen. a good 1080p Blu-ray (or HD-DVD for that matter) transfer is like 90% of the quality that the people who made the movie have available to them.

for years really, we've been hearing that digital delivery (lets call it "DD") and on demand (OD) content is what "we" want. and now that Blu-ray is here, many industry people and analysts are saying that its just a stop gap soon to be overshadowed by DD.

what?

I think half of that must come from the fact that nobody wants Sony in control of a major standard. because seriously, they otherwise are crazy and too absorbed in not letting us REALLY buy stuff anymore.

Blu-ray delivers up to 50GIGs of sweet 1080p content straight to my eyeballs in a matter of seconds. also important to many is that you can hold it in your hand, put it on your shelf. no place has the infrastructure to support DD and OD content of that size and quality. even with the best compression techniques, it cannot be done in any realistic way. and even then, its compressed. I just got LOST season 3 on Blu-ray. I already have rips of the broadcast 720p in H.264. a codec that was supposed to be the savior of compressing HD content. its pretty good. but the Blu-ray is atleast 3 times better. seriously, in H.264, it is really not even apparent why Sawyer gives Kate the nickname "Freckles". But on Blu-ray, you can see details that are completely lost otherwise. they aren't even resolved on screen. if I were to buy an HD version of LOST in a DD form, what would the end quality be like?

lets say I bought the whole season in the same quality as my H.264 tv rips. at 1 gig per episode, that is 23 gigs. That would take a long time to download. even on some of the best 4 megabyte per second internet. which most people don't have. I'd say most people (being optimistic) that have broadband, are probably seeing average download speeds of about 400kbs. and that's all for content that is 3 times inferior to what I can go buy and take home with me and load up in a few seconds. what If I wanted to download LOST season 3 in quality exactly equivalent to the Blu-ray release? I'm not sure what size Blu-ray discs LOST comes on, but lets swing low and say its the smaller 25-30 gig discs. Season 3 includes 5 discs of episodes with some special features like commentary and a 6th disc of all the other extra features and content. that's about 180 GIGS OF DATA.

I just don't see how DD and OD content can be talked up so much. It's all great in theory. Oh boy wouldn't it be great to click a button and less than a minute later you have 30 gigs of content? But I just don't see it as a reality even in the next 10 years. lately they even been saying that the internet is outgrowing the world wide infrastructures. after buy and take home HD discs are allowed to exist and prosper in the market over the next couple of years, along with the HDTV push, people are not going to accept compressed 1/3 quality stuff. if they could even feasably download it. I already avoid watching DVDs if I can. most people would even have trouble downlaoding a DVD9's worth of content. or stream it oh gawd. and that's not even talking about how we are going to store it all, if we will even be allowed to.

There is still a lot more to all of this, but there's a start.

*all of my paragraph's were indented, but they didn't post as such*

[bruin]

This might be petty, but I love having a shelf with videogames on it. Really I just like looking at it.
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[CubaLibre]

I agree with you, but I think you might be overestimating how much people value video quality. If they really gave a shit we wouldn't have the federal government shoving digital broadcast down people's throats seven years after they said they would. People would just have done it themselves.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Corinth]

Eh. You're not getting your Lost from the right places. Broadcast stuff is already compressed with MPEG-2 before it gets to the capper, and different sources use different bitrates. Then, a gigabyte for a 45-minute long show is nowhere near a high enough bitrate to be semi-transparent at 1080p.

Here's a screenshot from Lost S03E01 from an internal encode on a private HD tracker:
Source (AVC from BD) | Encode (x.264, 13811kbps)

H.264 is just like any other codec in that it can only do its best with the bitrate you give it. If you give it a low bitrate, it will look bad - but it's still a more space-efficient codec than XviD. The typical size for a well-encoded 720p movie from a clean source (HD-DVD or BD) in excellent quality ranges from four to seven gigabytes, although some circumstances require more space. If I were to download something like that from a good BitTorrent tracker, it would take me probably around an hour and a half, max. If I were to get it from Usenet, it would probably take around forty-five minutes.

I haven't looked at Xbox Live Marketplace rentals or the new iTunes HD stuff, but I expect that due to hardware/software limitations (and common sense), they are unlikely to reach the efficiency of compression that individuals and specialized groups can.

In one shady, illegal sort of way, HD digital distribution is already a viable option for people with some technical know-how and no scruples about peer-to-peer stuff.

[BenoitRen]

To me, on-demand is a luxury for people who can afford it. You're essentially renting movies, as well, having to pay for each of them. Why can't I just rent it from the movie store? Give me the physical copy, please. But on a DVD, I don't care for anything HD.
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Get Xenoblade Chronicles!

[Toptube]

so lets say you were downloading 7 gigs @ a constant 400kbs (an average speed from the cable internet that I had in Washington state)

that's about 5 hours before your video is finished downloading.

maybe that's cool for someone who would otherwise be waiting 3 days for the physical disc to come in the mail, but what about those that are renting and want to watch it now? and then how many times do you get to watch that downloaded rental until it expires? you still have to store it somewhere, so now we are just buy hardrive players instead of optical disc players.

and then what if i'm buying or renting a whole season of something? a season of LOST @ 4 gigs per episode is 90+ gigs.

my point is, for digital content delivery to be viable, we really need a push for waaaaaaaay better bandwidth per person, across the board. internet hasn't really improved across the board for a few years. and I don't feel is going to change anytime soon. and even when that does happen, we are still gonna have to buy the new kind of players with hardrives to store everything. and pay out the ass per month for new faster internet and digital subscriptions. when by that time a lot of us will have already had Blu-ray players for awhile, that play content that looks as good or better, on a physical medium that has a lot less questions about useage and storage rights.

[Mikey]

All I know is that I think I've only stepped foot inside a Blockbuster Video or one of its competitors maybe half a dozen times if the last 6 or 7 years. Mostly this has stemmed from the fact that people are god damned savages and can't handle a disc without maiming it. After the second near-unplayable disc my family rented we pretty much just resigned ourselves to watching HBO or buying DVDs outright. Hell, what made me really think about it (before even reading this thread) was noticing that the local Hollywood Video is shutting down.

These days I almost always just use On Demand services from my cable company and that goes for a lot of people I know, as well. I think you're also underestimating people's willingness to trade quality for convenience. Half the people I know can't even really tell the difference between SD and HD unless they compare them side-to-side; just as many don't have HDTVs and are still buying regular DVDs, and may continue to do so for as long as they're manufactured. I think it's going to take so long for HD to really saturate the market that by the time it's the standard Blu Ray and HDDVD are going to be ready for replacement, and that replacement will likely be digital distribution. So really, high-def optical media are a temporary solution for the home-theater crowd that are really into top-of-the-line video and stuff. But for Joe Standard, it doesn't make a ton of sense to upgrade to the newer disc formats.

[Capt. Caveman]

Instant content on demand = great for movie rentals

A hard copy of whatever = better for purchases

Right now I'm poor so I get 95% of all my music from Emusic and the Amazon mp3 store. But if I had the money to buy CDs and vinyl I wouldn't bother with digital downloads at all. I hate listening to music on the computer and I invariably prefer a genuine CD or vinyl package with un-compromised sound and nice artwork to a burned CDR with no artwork, sort of crappy sound, and unreliable playback.

I enjoy being able to get movies instantly if I just want to rent them, watch them once, and forget about them. I only bother to buy movies I already know I love.

[Martial Loh]

dunno where this fits into the debate, but more often than not, it seems cheaper to buy the dvd, than try to rent it. I've not rented for a few years, but it was roughly £3-4 for an evening. Now, you go into HMV or Virgin/Zavvi and they're selling loads of films for £5 or £6!

I reckon I'd be happy with the download system, though I'd rather pay a subscription fee & have access to a given number of episodes or movies, rather than pay per flick. Kinda like what emusic does with albums/tracks. Storage space is pretty cheap & I'm not too fussed on having a shelf full of discs....Even keeping my GBA boxes somewhat bugs me.

[Maztorre]

I just don't have the physical space for all the junk anymore. Digital please. I'm at the point where I will wait out a PC release by a couple of months for the Steam version. I'm pretty sure that within a few years most PC publishers really are going to say "fuck you" to the brick and mortar PC market since all they do is hold the digital services to ransom in terms of pricing. The PC section of most retailers is really pathetic these days anyway.

I agree that the bandwidth just isn't there yet for movies to be distributed digitally in HD, but really that's only a matter of time. Blu-Ray will get enough shelf-life not to be dubbed a stopgap, but I think it will be the last of the disc-based movie formats.

[Broco]

Yeah, I'd download everything if I could. Movies, games, books. I'm moving soon to another country and I don't know what to do with my shelves and shelves of needless physical incarnations of data. And I am careful enough to rent/borrow when I can that I don't even have that much of it compared to many people.

[CubaLibre]

If I had to read books on a backlit monitor on an electronic device that requires access to power I'd probably kill myself.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Toptube]

digitally delivered movies, shows, and concerts are also most certainly not going to inlcude several audio format options, including bitperfect and lossless.

[Toups]

This would be a simpler issue of the blu-ray packaging didn't look cheap and ugly.
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[psiga]

Gonna sound like a dick when I say this: I'm amused by people who gauge prospects of the future by the measurements of the present.

400KB/s downloads today are the 4KB/s downloads of ten years ago, you know? Most of us are not even seeing fiber broadband yet. I have two friends in other nations who have 100mbit fiber in their homes.

As far as being dissatisfied with MP3 quality, there are whole companies and communities who are dedicated to lossless codecs. There are USB DACs and amps which compete with audiophile gear an order of magnitude more expensive.

We still haven't seen real e-books yet; I don't care how much they try to say that Kindle is the real deal.

HD content can be adequately compressed to 2 to 4mbit with modern high-def codecs. A movie at 8mbit in h.264 is, as far as I've seen, cinephile quality.

If I recall correctly, first gen Blu-Ray releases used archaic MPEG2, because of clueless managerial decisions.

Over the Air broadcasts in America are MPEG2 as well, and very poorly handled. In the Hollywood area, WB was running 1080i at roughly 19mbit. You'd think that was alright, but they were giving 8mbit to one 1080i stream, 8mbit to a 480i stream, and 3mbit to a doppler weather stream.

The professionals barely know what they're doing.
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[Maztorre]

[psiga]

How many movies, shows, and concerts are currently distributed in "bitperfect" anyway? All video content sold the the masses is encoded and compressed in some way, no matter the medium.

We can't order lossless scans of film reels, or even 40mbit industrial encodings of them.

It's all a matter of getting as close to the first generation source as possible, then using the best codec that's feasible for the medium.
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[CubaLibre]

[Broco]

[psiga]

I have a nasty habit of listing abbreviations of megabit and kilobit in lowercase, and megabyte and kilobyte in uppercase. Spoken this way, 40mbps is 5MBps.

I hate them for having bit and byte both starting with 'b', but what the fuck ever.
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[elvis.shrugged]

[Mikey]

I'll agree with that much - as eager as I am to leave CDs and DVDs behind I still like a good-old-fashioned book.

With regard to digital video distribution, I might put my money where my mouth is, I've been looking at this: http://www.vudu.com/

A bit of a gamble, who knows if it'll tank/will suck and I'll have wasted my money, but I'm interested enough to give it a shot before I commit to buying a Blu Ray player or anything. If I do, I'll report back.

[Predator Goose]

[CubaLibre]

[Toptube]

[Toptube]

[Corinth]

[psiga]

Tangentially related: I get a glimmer of that "tangible album" feeling when playing with Musana. http://www.musana.com/

It's not perfect -- just a glimmer -- but it feels like a couple steps in the right direction. It's raised a little watermark in my graphic design and user interfacing well.
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[Mikey]

[DJ]

A lot of this really depends on what the people buying the thing will want, but I don't think Deluxe Packaging is ever gonna go out of style. Look at the ultra-sexy Blade Runner 5 disc Blue Ray set. Hell, look at the Lord of the Rings Badass editions. Or even the Fight Club brown paper box package. Stuff like that is classy and will always sell.

I think someone said it already, but DD is good for renting.

I think music is generally gonna go the same way. You'll probably have an iTunes release or some other kind of digital thing, but there will always be a hard copy available for those who want it. Radiohead's In Rainbows box set is selling quite well despite them having given the album away a while back.

Same deal with videogames, too. I love Steam, I have a ton of games on it and adore it to pieces, but some games I want the badass deluxe set (Oblivion springs to mind). For something that you're buying all at once (the id Pack, the Rockstar pack) DD makes sense. I really don't need 19 discs full of id stuff floating around, or even 3 if they went the DVD route. I just want the games, and being able to access them whenever I want and never lose them is a plus.

But for some crazy RPG game or mech sim or whatever, if they want to pull out all the stops and give me a nice cloth map, a display case, a ton of behind the scenes content, etc., sure, I'll get the physical copy.
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[Hot Stott Bot]

[Toups]

[psiga]

[!=]

Depends what you mean by consumer, but most of us use codecs such as huffyuv.

On the meaningfulness of real, material objects, I think the fact we can relate to them is a very strong point for their existence. Simon Carless posted a piece (by Kim Pallister) on this feeling of attachment/personal relationship in consumer products:

http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2008/01/opinion_can_a_stuffed_bear.php

[psiga]

By "consumer" I mean something that we can buy now at a reasonable price.

Cursory googling says that Huffyuv at 1080p takes about 150mbit per second for video alone.

Extended version of Fellowship of the Ring is 208 minutes long, so a lossless high def version would take up 234GB of data just for the video.
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[Broco]

More fundamentally, even if you did have 250Gb to blow on a single movie, I think you might get better quality by using lossy compression and using that gain to increase the resolution to like 4000p, at least if you have a huge monitor.

[DJ]

[psiga]

[Corinth]

[Hot Stott Bot]

[psiga]