Recent Comments:
Engadget HD giveaways: win another Philips 42PF9631D 42-inch plasma! {Engadget HD}
Oct 12th 2006 1:08AM Can't use cablecard with Sat, thank god
Engadget HD giveaways: win a Samsung HL-S5679W DLP with LED backlight {Engadget HD}
Oct 4th 2006 10:56PM DirecTV
Engadget HD giveaways: win a Philips 42PF9631D 42-inch plasma! {Engadget HD}
Sep 25th 2006 3:03AM ESPN HD presentation of football, college or the new MNF.
Downloading Movies.. the 1 thing {Blog Maverick}
Aug 26th 2006 11:06PM One of the things that this discussion misses is that millions of people have PCs connected to their TVs, we just call them DVRs. Fundamentally they are purpose built PCs and as weve seen with Tivo, they have a high capability to add functions. While I agree that true VOD, live streaming, is probably not possible without something like FIOS, which is far from implementation in most places, there are other options. The Moviebeam model is pretty compelling, if we didnt have the limitations of over the air broadcast only providing limited availablity, and the catalog is fairly poor at this time. If you could add the ability to preload via the wire, or satellite, a selection of features that are timely, then many more folks would use this functionality. The technology is already in place, how you implement has many options, p2p on your cable box possibly. You could do day and date with theater release, charge $14.99 or $19.99 for some timeframe of access, and youd have a second distribution channel for initial release and still have the ability to sell DVDs later. If you go to the theater youre going to spend at least that much, and going to the theater is a hassle for some folks, hence DVD rentals have had a huge impact on theater seat sales. If the cable companies use something like bittorrent to load your DVR and share the load inside their cable infrastructure, and your DVR could decode WMV-HD ,H.264, Mpeg4, DIVX-HD, you could do HD, without a huge physical server farm to dedicate, its just software at that point. It may take days to preload, DIRECTV and Dish would actually have an advantage in this case, but most content providers know when their release is coming so you can schedule it, or have the users select what they want a la Netflix or CinemaNow et al. Ive seen your post about the networks and the iTunes model and this would be similar, just a different distribution method. Customers should be willing to shell out a few more dollars to get day and date with the theatrical release vs. the delay and DVD release. But once you get the DVR in house, you can order both the premium (i.e. new release) movie as well as the budget (i.e. DVD release timeframe) movies at the same time, you can even have premium extras like a DVD has with the DIVX format. And both the studios and the cable companies can make money. The only problems I see with this is that most major studios arent necessarily mastering HD content at the same time as film, or even DVD, at this point. So you get back to the problem of distributing an SD and HD version of your content, if you get HD you can distribute it and convert to SD, just not vice versa. Maybe once more filmakers start leveraging the HD cameras or distributing to DLP theaters then content stops being the issue and distribution is your only hurdle. The other problem is that Hollywood is in a conundrum today with the whole HD DVD vs BluRay format war, Im not sure they want something else confusing the customer, but they should get proactive on this instead of reactive. Once someone cracks the DRM, and Im sure theres going to be a crack, there hasnt been a encryption system that is both consumer friendly and uncrackable to this point, their content is going to get pushed out via the internet anyway, and theyll not be able to hire enough lawyers to stop it. Better to get in front of it and take the revenue from all the folks that dont want to go to the theater, and also dont want to mess about with setting up a PC for pirated content. There has been a similar discussion every time a new media distribution model comes out. When VHS rental came out there was still some benefit to going to the theater; video quality and sound, but still the studios didnt embrace it for years. Then DVDs came out, the rental model was entrenched by then, but since the quality of the media was much better, studios have had a tough time, many movies dont show profitability until rentals are calculated. Now with 1080p HD content and sound, your quality of the media is fabulous, and you dont have to worry about the guy on the cell phone or getting up to get more popcorn and missing 15 minutes. Yes, your wife is going to complain about that monstrous TV, but she still likes it better than fighting the army of 13 year olds to get into the theater on Friday night. And thats the point really, going out to a movie used to be an event, now its a chore. The fact that we work more, and are tethered to work via 72 different devices, its just more relaxing to stay in. The media companies have been scared to death of the internet for 10 years, but look at music, eventually they started to embrace things like iTunes or Rhapsody, because their customers were already using it and the companies werent seeing any revenue, in fact declining revenue. See Napster. Fundamentally there really isnt a difference between music or video, just cost of developing content and the contents size. This is what I want personally, I moved my whole house to HD 5 years ago, when the available content was just not there, plus just built a dedicated home theater room specifically for all this stuff. Id rather wait 3 months and watch the movie on one of the DVD formats than go to the theater, and I live within 3 miles of 34 screens, all of them new. Its Vegas, everythings new. Id gladly pay $20 for a day and date release without leaving the house, but maybe its just me. I just dont think that there is a technical issue; psychological, maybe; inertia, probably; but with all the smart people around the technical side is probably solvable. Of course, if it were my money, Im not sure that I wouldnt want to be second to market instead of the first.
Two more Blu-ray vs HD DVD comparisons {Engadget HD}
Aug 3rd 2006 7:41PM I have both the BluRay and the Toshiba HD players running thru a DVDO VP30 to a Sony "Ruby", as well as a Panny s97 from before. I was somewhat disappointed with the Samsung player compared with upconverted DVD, but now that I've compared the same movies thru all three, the difference is pretty stiking. DVD still looks pretty good, in fact, the better mastered DVDs look as good as some of the HD that comes off of DirecTV's low bit rate channels. BluRay, looks better than DVD, hands down, as good as most of the content off DirecTV and OTA. HD DVD looks fantastic, in A/B comparisons you can definately tell the difference between HD DVD and BluRay.
I also have a 5 year old CRT HDTV and with that as the display it's pretty difficult to tell the difference. It can't resolve the full 1920X1080 image, more like 1400X900, plus its a 5 year old CRT so the image has softened a bit anyway. You can still tell a significant difference between either and DVD though.
I'm returning the BluRay player, not because of the format, I think one of the subsequent players will probably make it a wash with HD DVD. Toshiba just created a better Gen1 player, and it seems content is somewhat more available on HD DVD today. Having said all that, I'll probably get one of the new BluRay players once they come out, as long as the PQ gets fixed. I don't think there is a whit of difference in either formats potential, I'd guess a well designed player will fundementally output the same PQ on the same movie regardless, assuming both are using one of the modern compression schemes.
I just can't justify $500 more for BluRay, if PQ was the same then I could justify it, but its not. Give it a few months and maybe that changes.
Sibling Rivalry in the Autoblog Garage {Autoblog}
Jun 19th 2006 6:30PM Does anyone know if the GTI doors are longer than the A3? My wife has an A3 and I have a MINI Cooper S, with the longer doors in the MINI it's actually easier for me to get into, I'm 6'4". If the door's are longer in the GTI I could get another A5 platform.
