Blu-ray vs. 1080p VOD? No contest, says analyst

by Richard Lawler posted Aug 27th 2008 at 10:14AM

Not that long ago, 1080p Hollywood movies were the domain of Blu-ray, but with Numericable jumping on the full HD VOD bandwagon, followed in short order by DISH Network and DirecTV, it's neighborhood is looking a little crowded. Luckily Strategy Analytics has an $899 report on why Blu-ray is safe -- at least for now -- from competing with service providers, although they also report the BDA is "exploring" DirecTV and DISH's claims of Blu-ray quality movies on demand and will take "appropriate action". We know how cheap you are, so the read link points to the totally free blog entry which you'll is about as skeptical as we were about their supposed picture quality. Of course, since too many HDTV owners aren't even watching high definition, it could be a hard sell convincing them of the difference between Blu-ray and other lower-bitrate 1080p sources.

Filed under: Blu-ray, Fiber, Satellite

Tags: 1080p, blu-ray, directv, dish, dish network, DishNetwork, numericable

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

squiggleslash @ Aug 27th 2008 10:52AM

Well, ok, but:

“A number of companies have recently launched advertising campaigns claiming their products deliver high definition picture and sound “equal” to that delivered by Blu-ray Disc. These comparisons are irresponsible and are misleading to consumers. Up conversion and satellite broadcast cannot provide a true Blu-ray high definition experience, as neither is technically capable of producing the quality delivered by Blu-ray players and Blu-ray discs. To that end, the Blu-ray Disc Association is exploring these claims further and will take appropriate action, as necessary, to prevent consumers seeking the ultimate in high-definition home entertainment from being misled.”

This is just as misleading as Dish's claims potentially are. There's no suggestion Dish is upconverting anything, and it certainly is technically possible for a satellite broadcast to produce Blu-ray-quality high definition even if Dish isn't doing that. You just need to stream H.264 and TrueHD at an average rate of around 15-25Mbps, peaking at around 35-40Mbps. To suggest this is impossible with current satellite technology is absurd.

I think it's quite possible Dish are not doing anything near that, streaming H.264 at around 10Mbps. But it's certainly not impossible for them to do that. The BDA is being dishonest here. It'll be interesting to see proof that Dish is being dishonest too, I assume we'll get a rough idea of whether they are or not once people start using the VOD service in earnest. There's no reason why they can't do it, the question is are they likely to have done so?

Neutral

dagamer34 @ Aug 27th 2008 10:56AM

Streaming less than 40Mbit/s isn't Blu-ray quality. Period. And we have to remember that Blu-ray is compressed already. Any further compression after that means you are loosing some quality.

Neutral

squiggleslash @ Aug 27th 2008 11:34AM

The only Blu-ray discs that have a maximum bit rate exceeding 30Mbps (total, including seven different soundtrack and a PIP feed) are those encoded using MPEG2. The only reason Blu-ray supports rates higher than 30Mbps is that the original spec mandated MPEG2.

And your comment about Blu-ray "being compressed already" is completely irrelevant. Or do you think that Dish's set-up involves buying a Blu-ray disc, ripping the contents, recompressing it, and streaming it at whatever rate they stream at? And you spelt "losing" wrong.

Dish could, in theory (they don't, but they technically can - which is what the BDA is saying they can't) take the raw unencrypted feed from a Blu-ray disk and transmit it directly, without recompression, to their customers. There's nothing technically stopping them from doing that. They could do that even if the source BD was MPEG2 and had a CBR of 50Mbps (I'd like to see that disk!). Their bandwidth isn't measured in tens of megabits, it's measured in gigabits.

If they did that, there'd be no difference in quality whatsoever between Blu-ray and HD VOD.

What the BDA is saying is that this is technically impossible. They're lying. It's technically possible, it's just it's unlikely Dish are doing this.

Neutral

Talkstr8t @ Sep 3rd 2008 7:23PM

Squiggleslash, the BDA statement isn't referring exclusively to Dish, but also to recent upconverting DVD players claiming the same (hello, Toshiba). They are not suggesting that Dish is upconverting. The point is, however, that Dish's claims are absolutely misleading. Putting aside whether they are capable of delivering a maximum bitrate to provide equivalent visual fidelity, they absolutely cannot deliver equivalent audio fidelity, as none of their supported receivers are enabled for lossless audio. "Blu-ray quality" isn't just about the picture, but also the audio, and there's no way that DD 5.1 at a few hundred Kb/sec compares with lossless PCM, Dolby TrueHD, or DTS-HD MA at 6Mbits/sec or more, let alone offer 7.1 sound.

In addition, the first 1080p selection on Dish, "I Am Legend", was broadcast at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, while the Blu-ray release was at the theatrical aspect ratio of 2.40:1. Enthusiasts certainly won't appreciate having the outer regions of the picture snipped off.

You're also incorrect regarding maximum bitrate exceeding 30Mb/sec - there are many titles encoded in AVC which have maximum bitrates in the 40Mb/sec range. You can start by looking at many of Disney's titles, including Pirates of the Caribbean (all of them) or Ratatouille.

Neutral

dagamer34 @ Aug 27th 2008 11:10AM

It's unlikely that DISH or DirecTV can push to YOU uniquely 40Mbit/s to your satellite, so I'm calling BS on that. In fact, this "HD" stuff that all video manufacturers are pushing is really shady. 4-6Mbit/s is barely DVD quality!

Neutral

squiggleslash @ Aug 27th 2008 11:39AM

That's not how Dish On Demand works. Dish's On Demand service integrates with your DVR, using a portion of the hard disk dedicated to that service and only that service. When you select a movie to watch "on demand", you're actually playing back something that was recorded on the hard disk the night before.

If it was a case of streaming something individually to you, then it wouldn't scale at all, even if it was SD. To be honest, I doubt it would scale if it was VCD quality!

If there's at least 50Gb of space available on those hard disks, then there's no reason in theory - beyond the fact that Dish presumably wants to save bandwidth - why a complete BD image couldn't be saved in that space.

Neutral

DrXym @ Aug 27th 2008 12:26PM

squiggleslash, there could be 20-30 HD movies available "on demand", plus popular TV series, sports games and anything else a provider thinks they can get away charging people for watching "on demand". All of which must be downloaded overnight. There are very clear constraints on bandwidth and local storage which mean it is extremely unlikely that a VOD movie would ever approach Blu-ray sizes.

Neutral

WebDev511 @ Aug 27th 2008 11:02AM

1080p on demand via download? How long is that going to take?

Resolution is one thing, but unless it's 1080p with lossless audio, the 1080p part isn't that big of a deal. Of course since this is being compared to blu-ray, lossless audio is all that the satellite / on demand companies need to add to make it on par to Blu (because when the format war was still on Blu fanboys insisted that special features didn't matter and I know they wouldn't change that stance if they have to compete with downloads with comparable video and audio quality)

1080p with lossless audio has a chance via sattlite, provided the set top boxes can decode or bitstream TrueHD or DTS-MA. If they can't, I think most subscribers would be content with 720p and DD+ or DTS-HD.

Neutral

UnnDunn @ Aug 27th 2008 5:32PM

It's not on-demand via internet, it's scheduled programming via satellite. Dish On Demand is their brand name for broadcast PPV (as opposed to downloaded programs.)

Highest Ranked

J.Goodwin @ Aug 27th 2008 11:06AM

That screenshot kind of looks like it was capped via composite as well actually.

Highly Ranked

JimC @ Aug 27th 2008 11:11AM

Streaming HD is a long way off from Blu-ray quality. I can't count how many times watching the Olympics on my OTA channel that I noticed a considerable amount of compression artifacts. Any HD movie I've watched over DirecTV suffers in the same way. It may not be theoretically impossible to do HQ HD over satellite but it is impractical right now and not happening.

Neutral

Jim Rainey @ Aug 27th 2008 1:17PM

1080i isn't even that good with the compression currently employed by all the providers.

It will be interesting to see how this shakes out.

Neutral

DrXym @ Aug 27th 2008 11:45AM

Of course they're not "Blu-ray quality". The bandwidth will be lower, dynamic and highly dependent on what else is being broadcast at the time from the multiplex and how many channels are crammed together. Content may also be DNRd to remove noise and make it more compressible. It may even upscaled from 720p and not true 1080p at all even if the decoder outputs at 1080p.

I'm sure AVS Forum members will post comparison pictures before long.

Still, what do you expect from VOD? It'll be good enough for rentals and many movies don't deserve anything more. It certainly would not be good enough for movies you want to keep or intend to watch more than once. Once Blu Ray settles down into the DVD pricing model I expect you will have the choice of buying the BD immediately or renting on DVD/BD/VOD or waiting some more for the discount BD & regular movie channel showing.

Neutral

squiggleslash @ Aug 27th 2008 12:20PM

Not for Dish's On Demand. Dish's On Demand service involves storing the movie on your DVR's hard drive. They can use "off-peak" non-real time bandwidth to send the movie to a reserved part of your disk that doesn't show up as part of the available capacity.

Of course, there are still constraints, notably that the larger the movie files, the fewer they can store on your disk at any time (and thus the smaller the selection available at any one time.) Bandwidth, though, really, genuinely, isn't an issue.

Neutral

DrXym @ Aug 27th 2008 12:46PM

They may well download it overnight but the chances are that data is dumped out to HDD at the same bitrate and in the same manner as if you were actually watching it. It will just be encrypted so its dumped to disk. What's the bitrate of a single multiplex? I suggest if you know that and reasonably assume 4-5 hours to download the 20-30 movies then you can work out what the average bitrate will be. My expectation is you'd be lucky if its more than 15mbps and its probably much lower than that.

Highly Ranked

Larry @ Aug 27th 2008 11:55AM

The question is not is it equal to BluRay, but is it good enough. Good enough usually wins every time when real people are buying things.

Low Ranked

Unknown @ Aug 27th 2008 2:08PM

"neither is technically capable of producing the quality delivered by Blu-ray players"

Wow, that's truly laughable... Blu-Ray players are anything but quality and the spec, well don't even get me started.

11 times out of 10 I'd rather have just my Dish DVR than the Blu-Ray player or game console

Low Ranked

Unknown @ Aug 27th 2008 2:09PM

Highest Ranked

Jay @ Aug 27th 2008 2:54PM

$6.99 for a 4-hour rental?? Are they serious? Why wouldn't you just get a NetFlix subscription and rent the actual Bluray version of the movie?

Neutral

Larry @ Aug 28th 2008 7:41AM

I never understand this logic. Your saying it is better to spend $350-$500 to watch one movie is better than 6.99?

Neutral

daaper @ Aug 28th 2008 9:34AM

I completely agree with you, Jay. The prices they charge for VOD are ridiculous. There is no way I would ever spend that when, for another $10, I could have 3-at-a-time unlimited netflix for a month. What happens when you order it and then have an emergency? ...bye-bye $7

Neutral

bugatti23007 @ Aug 27th 2008 7:33PM

Most HDTV owners not watching Hi-Def?What are they on crack?I boycott almost all SD shows regardless of how good the show is I want their ratings to suffer so they realize that HD will increase their ratings.I only watch 3 SD shows.

Neutral

Warner Young @ Aug 27th 2008 7:04PM

I also tend to turn on the subtitles in most films, as I (personally) have some problems making out the dialog in noisy scenes or when the speakers have accents. The subtitles help a lot. In addition, for some types of things like anime, I usually like to switch to the Japanese language track.

As far as I know, the VOD offerings from various companies don't offer subtitle or alternate audio tracks yet, so I'm still not sold on the idea. Don't get me wrong. If/when VOD has that, and if the price and quality are right, I'd be happy to rent or buy VOD shows. But until then, standard DVD or Blu-ray is the only way to go for me.

Neutral

dj496 @ Aug 27th 2008 8:29PM

I will not be happy with ANYTHING until it is full blu-ray video + audio quality. period.

Neutral

dj496 @ Aug 27th 2008 8:30PM

Oh, and it must be as seamless/instant as popping a disc in too. How long will THAT take?

Highly Ranked

Omar @ Aug 28th 2008 2:26AM

Why argue about this, you all talk about bitrates and compressions. This is the average consumer they are aiming at, as far as quality is concerned I really don't see the difference I have Cinemax HD and by far i'm impressed with the quality of the HD and the 5.1 Dolby rocks my Home theater. So as long that it looks good and sounds good to me I will stick with it, I gave up on buying disc since they have so many movies on Cinemax why even bother buying discs, yes I have both formats the best of both worlds. As far as upconverting dvd's its just not the same I ran a test while they played Forest Gump on Cinemax and did a upconvert on the PS3 it looked good that I can tell you but nothing close to what Cinemax HD was playing, for 10 bucks a month all movies in HD plus them after 10 flicks I aint no sucka. Face it it's gonna happen sooner or later disc are gonna lose ground to VOD when the majority leans towards it. Thats what happen to HD DVD the majority leaned towards Blu-ray and lost.

Setup -
TV Monitor 1080p 37in LCD Westinghouse
Kenwood 7.1 100w ch
Infocus X1 Projector
Graywolf 109in Screen
Kenwood Speakers
Athena 10in 400w Sub

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