# Why Hd Movie Downloads Are A Big Lie!



## AFP1 (Feb 12, 2007)

Before I Copy/Paste this here, let me say that it came direct from ZDNET.com, and not myself. So please, as I don't even understand half that is said, let's not start argueing over this! 
I just thought you might like to read it as well!

Theres a lot of buzz lately about the delivery of HD TV and Movie content over the Internet with shows like Lost being delivered by ABC.com and other video download services with XBox360 or iTunes. I even have friends and colleagues telling me that BlueRay or HD-DVD wont make it because HD will simply be delivered over the Internet. But theres one dirty little secret that people are forgetting or that they dont understand, ITS NOT HD theyre getting over the Internet. Heck its not even NTSC 480i (720×480 60 fields interlaced) DVD quality when you really look at the amount of video data youre getting!

Oh sure they might call it HD because it happens to be 1280×720 resolution which sounds awfully high, but youre talking about an audio/video stream thats 1.3 mbps (megabits per second) at best. You can call it whatever you like and you can even claim it meets the minimum definition of HD because its 720p (1280×720) resolution but it ISNT HD for the simple reason that the bit rate isnt enough. A regular 480i DVD is either 2, 5, or 8 mbps and most modern dual-layer 8 GB DVD releases are at least 5 mbps but more likely 8 mbps. A typical DVD movie is approximately 6 GBs of data while a typical HD movie you download is only about 1.5 GBs of data. Do you honestly believe youre getting more image information in that 1.5 GB so-called HD movie you downloaded versus that 6 GB DVD movie?

[Update 3:35PM - I was a bit shocked to hear some people argue that a 1.3 mbps H.264 MPEG-4 based 720p 30-fps video stream can be better than an 8 mbps MPEG-2 480i 60-field DVD stream. Im going to explain something; its impossible. MPEG-4 can compress data in a more efficient manner such that it can have a 1.4x advantage over MPEG-2 in compression ratios while maintaining the same perceived quality. However, theres absolutely no way that newer compression formats can overcome a 4 or 6 fold disadvantage in bitrate. Compression - especially in the lossy world of video - is more of a subjective thing. MPEG-2 video is already compressed fairly efficiently and youre really not going to squeeze out any more than a 2 fold improvement at best no matter how fancy the encoder is. There can be marginal improvements in the field of compression but there are never free lunches.]

The fact that a DVD is only encoded in 480i video is unfortunate but it still has more video information and raw potential than a so-called HD movie download for the simple fact that it has 4 times more data. A 480i video stream can be up-scaled to a 1080i or 1080p 1920×1080 display with glorious results and I guarantee you that it looks better than that so-called HD 720p movie you spent at least 3 hours downloading over the Internet while your family complains the Internet connection is really slow.

But truthfully speaking, the whole Blu-ray versus HD-DVD format war is silly because a regular dual-layer DVD can easily store 93 minutes of 12 mbps 1080i or 1080p H.264 or VC-1 encoded video with bare minimum HD quality that looks much better than normal MPEG-2 480i DVDs. This format would have been extremely easy to produce and the players could have cost less than $100. The only thing that HD-DVD gets you is that you can either store 3 hours of that same quality video or 100 hours of good quality 20 mbps H.264 or VC-1 video. Blu-ray players for some reason decided to forego the more advanced video codecs like H.264 or VC-1 and theyre using the old MPEG-2 encoding scheme which neutralized the capacity advantage of Blu-ray media. But instead, we have a format war where no one is really winning since Sony decided to cede their market in the next generation console wars with the PS3 to salvage the BlueRay format.

Another huge misconception is that people tend to confuse HD movie downloads over the Internet with HD IPTV. While the acronym IP stands for Internet Protocol, people have the meanings reversed because Internet always involves IP but IP doesnt always involve the Internet. What I mean by that is that IP could strictly be a closed-network thing on a LAN (Local Area Network).

Note: Its also a huge misconception that VoIP (Voice over IP) means Voice over the Internet because the vast majority of VoIP traffic happens on the LAN and gets switched over the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network).

IPTV requires 16 mbps per HD Channel and it would be IMPOSSIBLE for it to traverse the Internet in unicast traffic in the near tear or long term. IPTV works on a very localized level within a carriers own network where everything travels on local fiber-optic multi-gigabit networks on a multicast (or cached) level out to the DSLAM and only from there does it unicast to the user over a mile of a pair of copper cables. [Update 5:50 PM - Think of multicasting as a massive carpool where data is only transmitted once for everyone whereas unicast means the video bandwidth is multiplied by the number of users. Even a 2 mbps unicast stream turns in to a 20,000 mbps stream with 10,000 users where as a multicast or locally cached 16 mbps stream for 100,000 users is still means 16 mbps of traffic over the backbone.] Thats precisely why AT&T U-Verse wants to install miniature DSLAMs within a mile of their customers so they can support a 20 mbps DSL connection that can support a 16 mbps unicast HD IPTV stream over the last mile in addition to data access to the Internet. Other than U-Verse, Verizons FiOS (Fiber to the premises or home) is the only other way that IPTV can be delivered to the home. The Cable Internet companies dont really care about IPTV because they deliver their digital television over a different frequency over the same coax cable and its a broadcast technology that sends out the same analog/digital signal to everyones house.

This is precisely why HD Movie downloads are a big fat lie being pitched to consumers because even the delivery of 1.3 mbps unicast traffic will bring most parts of the Internet down to its knees if enough people use the service. The carriers are in a strategic position to be close enough to the customer that they can actually deliver true HD-quality IPTV with some level of video on demand and that scares the Googles of the world to death because theres no way an Internet based 1.3 mbps make-believe HD video service can compete with true HD IPTV. Thats precisely why Google lobbied so hard to defeat the Telecom bill last year which would have deregulated the Telcos so they could implement IPTV and Net Neutrality was merely a political poison pill to kill the Telecom bill. More on this later


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

Just finished reading article and comments on ZDNet. Bottom line don't expect real HD from Amazon Unbox or any other download service anytime soon. 

Thanks,


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

The premise is that HD over the internet is a lie because the bandwidth isn;'t there.

What a bunch of losers.

Tivo downloads video over the internet in non real time. It doesn't need to be real time. 

Streaming HD over the internet may be bogus via non FIOS lines for the forseeable future. But no word is mentioned about the non internet delivery scandal. Cable companies are only giving you one fourth the data of what an HD DVD or Bluray or the ATSC considers HD- well- that is utterly bogus. But zdnet is blowing the lid off HD IPTV.

ZNDET- what a bunch of morons.


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## ken125 (Jun 1, 2007)

fiuhd


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## bilbo (Dec 7, 2004)

"A typical DVD movie is approximately 6 GBs of data while a typical HD movie you download is only about 1.5 GBs of data."

Night at the Museum is not High Definition, and it is over 2 GBs. And it is only 99 cents for a rental at Amazon. It's funny how this guy uses streaming and downloading interchangeably like he doesn't know the difference. And as another poster said, if good quality HD content becomes available, I can upgrade my 5/2 FiOS internet to 15/2.


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## AFP1 (Feb 12, 2007)

As I said before, I did not Re-Print that Article to argue any point with anyone, as I really don't even understand some of what was explained in the Article to be able to argue a couple of the points made. But I mainly Copied the Article because I looked at it logically, not personally! But I did especially understand and agree that what was said Re: the Amount of Content included Online, could very possibly be true! And when it comes down to which Company to believe, I myself can only logically lean towards what an old, well known, respected and Multi- Award Winning Company has to say, rather than a few people here that only know what they have been told or Read by Tivo or Amazon, as none of us can really know what is actually being done by Tivo/Amazon themselves, not being the creators of the Machine plus the Programming itself! Maybe Tivo made the Unit and stated the Facts perfectly, but Amazon could be playing around with the Facts! OR, it could be the other way around! None of us can actually know beyond any doubt! Unless you Work right there and are way up in the Line of Management of the Project, you cannot possibly have any idea as to what they are actually providing! You may be very knowledgable regarding the Basic concept of HD, but we all really know nothing about what the Companies are actually doing with it! Remember, the Article did state it could have been done correctly and inexpensively as well! 
But even Microsoft has been caught cutting corners with their Programs! Few people even know it, but MS Vista is only a Program that was created to be replaced very shortly by yet another already being Tested Program! Just like Windows ME, which quickly turned into XP! It was only a Sales gimmick that provided Profit twice in that instance! Now Vista is the New ME!
*Plus, just think about this for a second. ZDNET had absolutely nothing to gain, except for possibly a Huge Lawsuit by printing that Article if it was incorrect. And I feel if they are not brought to Court very quickly, then what they said there IS actually true! But unlike ZDNET, Tivo/Amazon as well as others stand to lose a Ton of $$$ if what ZDNET has stated is actually true, as if it were not they would Sue in a NY Minute!! And ZDNET has not been around this long of a Time because the Staff are all Fools! Over the Years I have learned Many Proceedures & Tricks from them that even the local "Expert Repair Shop" told me could never Work and will screw up my Computer if tried! Being I take no single persons Word for anything, I took the Risks, and none of what I have ever learned from them has been wrong or ever hurt anything. 
Also, I sincerely doubt that ZDNET's Editors and Legal Dept. would ever permit that Article to be Printed and Distributed (To Millions) if they were not able to back up All that was said, just like with any Newspaper or TV News Station. ZDNET is no Newbie on the Block! They also have many more Experts Writing and Creating Programs of many types, both for themselves and us, than Tivo could ever do being a Single item Service.
I guess it just all basically comes down to people will believe and fight for what they *WANT to be true, but *Not for what is most probably true! Especially if they own an $800.00 Tivo Unit!
Psychology 101 will tell you that If people admitted to themselves that they may have made an expensive mistake, it may make them feel very Foolish for purchasing Tivo's S3, and none of us wants to ever feel Foolish! Admit it or not, 1 of them is correct. So why would any Company that has nothing to gain, but a Hell of a lot to lose, Print such irresponsible statements if not correct and can prove what was said? It just makes no sense! That is why I tend to believe what they say is actually true! You can believe as you wish. We live in America!
Finally, *There must be very valid reasons for all that was said! And by the way, I also own an S3, but putting aside any Personal Foolish feelings, simple logic tells me that ZDNET is not just making this all up! They would lose all the credibility they have gained over all these Years, especially regarding this now well known topic of HDTV!!
But soon HD will only be a thing of the past, as Technology has been accelerating in Product Changes faster than ever before!


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## AFP1 (Feb 12, 2007)

Justin Thyme said:


> The premise is that HD over the internet is a lie because the bandwidth isn;'t there.
> 
> What a bunch of losers.
> 
> ...


Although I don't feel ZDNET are a bunch of Morons, as they would never have grown so large over the last few Years, (*100 Times larger than Tivo) I do agree that there must be other ways to Download other than Networking! That only goes to show really just who are the Morons!! When any Company loses available Profits due to the lack of knowledge, they must be the ones who are Morons!
Also, just how is it that you are so sure about the endless availability of Bandwidth??
Are you in this Business, and at times need to Pay extra for exceeding Bandwidth?
If it were so readilly available, I am sure there would be no thought, mention or additional Costs for going over the allowed Max.
Even simpler, have you never even realized that Downloading is much faster at 3am than it is during the Day? That alone only proves that Bandwidth is not so readilly available!


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## AFP1 (Feb 12, 2007)

atmuscarella said:


> Just finished reading article and comments on ZDNet. Bottom line don't expect real HD from Amazon Unbox or any other download service anytime soon.
> 
> Thanks,


Thank You!!


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

the sky is falling...

the sky is falling...


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## AFP1 (Feb 12, 2007)

MichaelK said:


> the sky is falling...
> 
> the sky is falling...


Thank You for Sharing!! **Another Mouth Breather!


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## AFP1 (Feb 12, 2007)

bilbo said:


> "A typical DVD movie is approximately 6 GBs of data while a typical HD movie you download is only about 1.5 GBs of data."
> 
> Night at the Museum is not High Definition, and it is over 2 GBs. And it is only 99 cents for a rental at Amazon. It's funny how this guy uses streaming and downloading interchangeably like he doesn't know the difference. And as another poster said, if good quality HD content becomes available, I can upgrade my 5/2 FiOS internet to 15/2.


Mr. Baggins,
Did you Read what the man wrote?? I will quote it below.
"A typical DVD movie is approximately 6 GBs of data while a typical HD movie you download is only about 1.5 GBs of data. Do you honestly believe youre getting more image information in that 1.5 GB so-called HD movie you downloaded versus that 6 GB DVD movie?"

Now let me ask, what have you attempted to show here, except that you "Think" you are smarter than this person, and trying your best to make him look stupid by only repeating what he had stated can be true?
He said "Typical Movie", never mentioning any single Movie as you have with "Night at the Museum was *Over 2GB"", (*A Sure Bet to Win an Academy Award!! Why do you think it was only .99 Cents?) His point was on AVERAGE, Downloaded "HD" Movies are approx. 1.5 GB in *Image Content, and normal DVD's are on AVERAGE 6GB in *Image Content! I am sure "The Godfather" vs. any other Movie that is the normal 90 Mins long are both also much different in GB's of *Image Content than the Numbers he quoted as an example, but not by much for the same legnth of Time.
Then you went right off subject and started quoting symantics!! (Downloading/Streaming etc. Who cares? We all knew what he meant.) again trying to make him look like a Fool! Why bother to write? Nobody gained anything by it!
But let me ask, Do you Earn a Living Writing for any large Company using very intricate knowledge about any subject like he does?? Naw, I would Bet you are more like the $6 Buck an Hour McDonalds type!
Instead of trying to Dazzle us with Brilliance, you only Baffled us with BS!!


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

did you wake up in the wrong side of the bed this morning or are you always grating?


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

I may have read this post incorrectly but getting a true HD movie is about 14G/hour or say 28G for a two hour movie. To stream that movie would require 112 Mbs bandwidth on your Internet, I have fast service now from Camcast but it tops out at about 12Mbs (late at night), but if you can store the HD movie on a Set Top Box (Series 3 etc.) even at 6Mbs it would take you about 7.8 hours to fully download the 2 hour movie, start the evening before and watch it the next night, this is possible except that your Internet provider may not like you using up so much of the bandwidth.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

to be honest I get confused with the different bitrates (what are bits per second and what are bytes per second.)

But isn't ATSC OTA HD 19.2 mbps in mpeg2? And directv figures mpeg4 at SOME point will yield 2:1 gains? So in theory you could get a 9.6 mbps MPEG4 stream at the same quality as OTA HD today. So if you have a 10 mbps cable or fios line then THEORETICALLY you could stream it in real time.

Now real world that's not happening anytime soon- the streamer isn't likely to think it's possible that alot of people can get that- so why bother attempting. 

But One day in a couple years MAYBE that's possible- I know in the past year my cable company went from 1 to 3 to 9 megs/second all for free. And they sell an upgraded speed too. So who know - maybe in 2 year they have a 20 meg line as the basic speed.

And then still you have to rely that some how that can be stable- so it's not likely at all.

BUT, all that said- as others have pointed out streaming and downloading are 2 different things.

Tivo has always done the download vs stream method- even for MRV within the home. So there's no reason they couldn't do HD Downloads. With a 10m/s cable line that's not unreasonable to download overnight or during the work day (if I'm getting my megs all correct- if not please feel free to correct- and then all my math is totally off by a factor of 8- LOL)


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## Todd (Oct 7, 1999)

Uh, I don't know about other services, but HD movies for the Xbox 360 probably average around 6 GB, not 1.5 GB.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

Todd said:


> Uh, I don't know about other services, but HD movies for the Xbox 360 probably average around 6 GB, not 1.5 GB.


those mpeg4?


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## GoHokies! (Sep 21, 2005)

MichaelK said:


> did you wake up in the wrong side of the bed this morning or are you always grating?


Every thread he starts is like this.

Generally speaking, copying and pasting of articles like this is frowned upon (that pesky copyright thing).

ZDnet is the bunch of mouth breathers (what the heck does that mean?) for the reasons already posted. The bandwidth is there. Maybe not for streaming, but definitely for download! My personal bandwidth situation is about to get a lot better, they've been doing work on FIOS in our area and I came home from work today to a front yard that was covered in lines of colored spraypaint - it looks like Miss Utility was out and Verizon will be getting their fiber right into my yard, so it looks like FOIS here I come!

HD over the internet isn't the rocket science that ZDNet makes it out to be, and it's going to be great.


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## David Platt (Dec 13, 2001)

It seems that the OP posted this here for discussion, but is not only dismissing any valid points anybody brings up, but also belittling and personally insulting everyone who happens to disagree-- all the while admitting that he doesn't even understand a large portion of the article himself. What's the point of even replying?


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

HD over the Internets will fail, because it's not possible to transmit more than circa 1 MBit (1000 kBytes/sec) unless you have HDMI all the way from your home to the base station, or at least a strong antenna connected to your motherboard.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Huh? You mean real time HD?

There is a lot of Big Lies going on about HD, so regardless who brought up the subject, it is interesting. 

For example, I am curious if the 6GB xbox360 number is for wmv mpeg4, and what the size would be for a comparable PQ Mpeg2. 

It's really odd to me that something that uses the same compression format but only transmits one fourth the data can be legally called the same thing.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

I believe the issue is that HD is a threshold characterization. It's like some professional certifications: You can pass one test and call yourself a certified muckitimuck, but among certified muckitimucks there are higher and higher orders. If you want to know how high up the chain one is, you have to ask about a specific order.


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## AFP1 (Feb 12, 2007)

bicker said:


> I believe the issue is that HD is a threshold characterization. It's like some professional certifications: You can pass one test and call yourself a certified muckitimuck, but among certified muckitimucks there are higher and higher orders. If you want to know how high up the chain one is, you have to ask about a specific order.


Just as in the newest Geico.com "Caveman Commercial", where the "Caveman" is being interviewed on the News, I will ask the same question. 
"WHAT"??


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## AFP1 (Feb 12, 2007)

Justin Thyme said:


> Huh? You mean real time HD?
> 
> There is a lot of Big Lies going on about HD, so regardless who brought up the subject, it is interesting.
> 
> ...


Well, to say this simply, what the Article was saying is like a "Loaf of Bread"! 
You can Buy a Small Loaf, or the Large Family size Loaf, but they are still both called a "Loaf of Bread", only the "Content" in one Loaf is less than in the other!


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

AFP1 said:


> "WHAT"??


The point is that the term "HD" refers only to a pretty low threshold.


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## AFP1 (Feb 12, 2007)

MickeS said:


> HD over the Internets will fail, because it's not possible to transmit more than circa 1 MBit (1000 kBytes/sec) unless you have HDMI all the way from your home to the base station, or at least a strong antenna connected to your motherboard.


Besides the Technical aspects, I feel it may fail mainly because Tivo owners in general like to Watch a lot of either Movies or Shows, (Look at the people here that List their Units, many have multiple 300 Hour Units!) and after the first couple of Bills come rolling in and they then can't Pay their Mortgage because of it, Rentals and/or Purchases will dwindle down drastically. PPV went through the same thing! At first, Providing Cable Companies (Adelphia, Comcast etc.) Stock Prices went through the Roof! But then quickly went right back down to just about where they were before they ever introduced it. 
Lets Face it! It is just too damn easy to simply sit on the Couch and Click a Button if you want to watch something other than what is "Freely" available! To get in the Car and go Search a Store to Rent a Movie requires much more effort, that is why it is done much less. But all of these Min. $1's up to to Whatever the Price add up very fast over 30 Days, Especially if you have Kids! I can easilly see the Typical Family of 4 receiving Bills in the Hundreds of Dollars each Month just for TV! And with the Economy the way it is, what will they do then? Cut down on Food, Heat/Air, Gas etc?? I know just myself could easilly Rent 10 Movies per Day, as I am Disabled and Home most of the time!
"Heart Specialists" will then be the ones that will really benefit from it all!!


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## AFP1 (Feb 12, 2007)

bicker said:


> The point is that the term "HD" refers only to a pretty low threshold.


*Sorry!
I understood what you were referring to, but just had to throw in that comment Jokeingly because of the way you Worded the Post. But basically when you really think about it, "HDTV" has no set Rules as to what the Numbers are required to be. (Which the FTC should correct!) So, Anything that may only be just slightly better then a Regular 480 TV can technically be called HD. Even the *True Meaning of HDTV means a couple of different things as far as the amount of Lines of Resolution! That Article basically stated that One 1080 TV may have less "Image Content" than another 1080 TV. But they both are still able to say they provide 1080 which is true but misleading, as the Public in general Thinks 1080 is 1080 with no variations between the two! Most people and I include myself, are not totally familiar with every Term or way these Companies do things. Most people still think Sony makes CRT TV's, when in reality all they do is stick their nameplate on a Generic Korean TV! (*Plus add $200.00 onto the Price!)
I purchased an "APEX" 20 inch Flat Screen TV in a Supermarket for $79.95. It's a great TV! But only a Month later, the *Exact Same TV was either at Best Buy or Circuit City, (I don't remember as I "Live" in Both), Selling as a "Sony" for $299.00!! *Unless it's Plasma, it's not a Sony! I Sold TV's for 25 Yrs, and even their Reps. told us that! But CRT TV's made today are all good, unlike 25 Yrs. ago when Sony really made a Sony!! (I know I am off subject, but thought I would add some info for those who are unaware)
Also, Companies just love to play around with Words! But if HD had to be an X Spec. across the Board, then CO's. could simply state that what they are Selling as HD means "Higher Definition", which is what we are really getting Online right now! *Not the true intended meaning. You could also argue the point that Some TV Stations have always given us "Higher Definition" than others, only because their Signal Output may be stronger, thus providing a better picture just like a DVD does being a Direct Signal! But that same TV can only give you what it was made to give!
One of my TV's Read in Big Bold Print right on the front, (I'm sure everyone has seen this!) "HD Ready" ("Ready" is very tiny) from back in the Days when most Monitors were already "Ready" simply by adding an HD Tuner to it. But by no means is my TV an HDTV. It's just like Any Car is "Race Ready" *IF you went out and spent $250 Grand to make it "Race Ready"!
HD is just a basic term that right now can mean many things! It could even technically mean anything from what it was intended to mean, all the way down to "Horrible Definition"! **The main problem is there are no Set Rules!! Maybe that is why we can only Download Movies using the Internet, as the Internet itself also has no real set Rules about anything but Spamming, and even there I still get a Ton of it each Day!


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## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

AFP1 said:


> One of my TV's Read in Big Bold Print right on the front, (I'm sure everyone has seen this!) "HD Ready" ("Ready" is very tiny) from back in the Days when most Monitors were already "Ready" simply by adding an HD Tuner to it. *But by no means is my TV an HDTV.* It's just like Any Car is "Race Ready" *IF you went out and spent $250 Grand to make it "Race Ready"!


It is most definitely an HDTV. If you bought an S3, you probably wouldn't even use the built-in tuner. Or you could hook up an Xbox 360 and enjoy HD movies/games. Definitely doesn't need to have a tuner to be a true HDTV.

I see your point about needing to spend more $$$ to see HD (xbox, S3, tuner, etc). But that doesn't make it any less of an HDTV.

Please start using paragraphs. My eyes hurt. 

And can somebody post a link to the original article on ZDNET please.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

AFP1 said:


> *Sorry! I understood what you were referring to, but just had to throw in that comment Jokeingly because of the way you Worded the Post.


Well, some people tend to pick apart what I write, so I try to write very carefully. I find it an engrossing challenge.



AFP1 said:


> But basically when you really think about it, "HDTV" has no set Rules as to what the Numbers are required to be.


Actually, there are rules, set forth by an industry entity, and ratified by reference by the FCC -- the rules just outline a very low threshold: Anything with at least 720 lines of resolution (and no specification on horizontal resolution). I'll try to find the recent discussion about this -- it was probably on the AVS Forums. (The thread was about someone suing a retailer because they advertised a display as HD but it had less horizontal resolution than we typically see. The customer lost.)



AFP1 said:


> So, Anything that may only be just slightly better then a Regular 480 TV can technically be called HD.


That's not true. There is a mid-ground, typically called EDTV. If I recall correctly (please pardon my sketchy memory about this), 480i and 576i is SDTV, 480p and 576p is EDTV, and then anything with 720 lines or better is HDTV.



AFP1 said:


> Most people still think Sony makes CRT TV's, when in reality all they do is stick their nameplate on a Generic Korean TV! (*Plus add $200.00 onto the Price!)... *Unless it's Plasma, it's not a Sony!


Reselling is a very well-established and well-respected practice. If Sony puts their name on it, it is a Sony.



AFP1 said:


> Also, Companies just love to play around with Words!


Marketing truly is an art. Customers, as a group, are so flaky.


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## minckster (Aug 31, 2006)

greg_burns said:


> Please start using paragraphs. My eyes hurt.


 Hear! Hear! The poster you're referring to is on my ignore list for that exact reason. His or her posts are _painful_ to try to read, so I gave up.

On the downside, the topic of this thread interests me, but I can't follow the discussion without his or her comments. Sigh! The balancing act that is life.


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## GoHokies! (Sep 21, 2005)

MickeS said:


> HD over the Internets will fail, because it's not possible to transmit more than circa 1 MBit (1000 kBytes/sec) unless you have HDMI all the way from your home to the base station, or at least a strong antenna connected to your motherboard.


C'mon, everyone knows that you can't connect an antenna straight to your motherboard and expect it work that way, it has to go straight to the see-pee-you!


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## GoHokies! (Sep 21, 2005)

greg_burns said:


> It is most definitely an HDTV. If you bought an S3, you probably wouldn't even use the built-in tuner. Or you could hook up an Xbox 360 and enjoy HD movies/games. Definitely doesn't need to have a tuner to be a true HDTV.
> 
> I see your point about needing to spend more $$$ to see HD (xbox, S3, tuner, etc). But that doesn't make it any less of an HDTV.


Of course My Car could Be driving ready, but NOO!!!I have to pay for gas!!! What aaabout that?!??!?***



> Please start using paragraphs. My eyes hurt.


Proper capitalization, spelling, grammar and some form of sentence structure wouldn't help - I can really only follow APF's comments through the more lucid little bits that others are quoting.



> And can somebody post a link to the original article on ZDNET please.


Please. I can't seem to find it.


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## AFP1 (Feb 12, 2007)

David Platt said:


> It seems that the OP posted this here for discussion, but is not only dismissing any valid points anybody brings up, but also belittling and personally insulting everyone who happens to disagree-- all the while admitting that he doesn't even understand a large portion of the article himself. What's the point of even replying?


Only because a couple of people are debating points with me! **Like You!
You mention "Valid Points", yet I see nothing here that is proving anything said in them valid! People are only twisting points made in that Article by using hypothethical situations only to try to make themselves look to be more informed than a person who does this for a Living, and especially a Company that had nothing to gain by Printing the Article but a Lawsuit if they were incorrect! ZDNET is not a stupid Company! They have been around for almost as long as Home Computers, something most other Companies cannot say!
Just common sense is the issue here! **How can you really think they would have ever even Printed the Article if they could not prove what was said?? If so, then you really need to learn more about basic Business! I am positive the Editor and Legal Dept. approved the Article before it was ever Printed, especially being it is such a popular topic!
I am not argueing any points made here, nor do I care personally if anyone disagrees, because it was not myself who wrote the Article. I am only trying to make the point that basic Common Sense only tells you that it must be true!
It just annoys the Hell out of me when people with Very little knowledge compared to the *Real Experts, can be so adamant about them being so completely wrong! If they were so wrong, I am sure a Lawsuit will be Filed first thing Monday Morning!
So for now, Lets just wait till then and see what happens! I will Place 20 to 1 Odds it will be nothing! *Then their Points will be proven!
The only thing that I do agree with what you wrote is, and I quote, "What's the point of even replying?" *But going 1 step even further, I now am thinking, "What was the point in my Posting the Article to begin with, being you are all such "Experts" already! But Exactly what is it that qualifies you as an Expert? At least I can admit that I am not one! *I am also in no way completely in the Dark regarding this Topic as I initially led you to believe!! 
But you believe whatever you want, I could care less!
I am going with the Real Pro's, not the "Wanna Be's"!


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## AFP1 (Feb 12, 2007)

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

If by you stating the former you mean the latter, (Stupidity) I am definitely sure!!


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## AFP1 (Feb 12, 2007)

"It is most definitely an HDTV."

I meant As Is.


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## GoHokies! (Sep 21, 2005)

AFP1 said:


> "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein
> 
> If by you stating the former you mean the latter, (Stupidity) I am definitely sure!!


No, I'm pretty sure that old Albert meant to say it exactly that way. Thanks for proving him right.


> I meant As Is.


It is an HDTV "as is". Give it an HD source and it will display HD. As is.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

I think folks many folks don't care about the technical fundamentals-

Folks very much do care when they spend a couple weeks salary on a new 50 inch HD display and their so called "HD picture" from Comcast, Direct or Cox looks bad

They want to know what it is they should look for on the box. (For more technical consumers, folks can read a lot of info on avsforum by searching on "overcompression" or "hd-lite"/hdlite (where the term was coined). There is a StopHDLite website, but it is a little fluffy.)

It is absurd that the FCC has refused to set any standards to address OverCompression, and the charade of upscaling SD and reselling as HD.

I propose that there be two requirements for a definition of TrueHD:
*Can't be upscaled- 1080i or 720p that has been upscaled from a lower resolution cannot be called TrueHD.
*Limits on Overcompression. The compression level of the HD signal shall be clearly labelled in a simple form: Good, Better, Best. Technically, it shall correspond to how aggressively the signal was compressed. Some folks will get into heated arguments over the specs, but at the end of the day they should correspond to high standards that can be achieved with current technology:

Best TrueHD equals the data rate what you can get on an HD DVD or Bluray disk using the entire disk for an hour and a half movie.
 Better TrueHD should correspond to the best that can be practically delivered OTA or via cable. ATSC defines the maximum for OTA as 20Mbps for MPEG2. This might correspond to 10Mbps for MPEG4. 
"Good" TrueHD is anything else above 10Mbps for MPEG2.
 Nothing less can be called TrueHD, but something else- HDLite, whatever.


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## AFP1 (Feb 12, 2007)

GoHokies! said:


> No, I'm pretty sure that old Albert meant to say it exactly that way. Thanks for proving him right.
> 
> It is an HDTV "as is". Give it an HD source and it will display HD. As is.


You are absolutely correct technically. But what I meant when I said "As is", is there is No HD Tuner hooked up! But I also said that if one were hooked up, it would be HD on any capable Monitor if you would have read it correctly. And the Companies that displayed HD Ready the way they did, I am sure felt that most common people would think it was ready to receive HD where/when available, not being "Experts" on the subject. Even when I first saw an HD Ready TV I asked about it, and was told by the Stores Manager that "It meant it is real HD! It only is stated that way because there were only a couple of Stations Broadcasting HD, and only some of the time"! Being in the Business but never having carried one at the time, I knew there had to be a difference, but he was on Commission and just wanted a Sale! I know I am showing my Age, as then Real Sales People were on the Floor, not $7 an Hour Clerks that know nothing like today! 
This was at the beginning of HD, (*Which will be replaced soon!) when nobody including all the Experts here knew anything about it other than it might provide a better picture. They could not actually know for sure, as the Concept was not even near ready for sale. They were only being tested. And no Stations wanted to transmit it because it meant they now had to replace their Equipment and also by increasing the Bandwidth by many times over, it would cost them much more to Air! 
And still even now, after all the Time it has been available, there are only approx. 30 Stations Broadcasting in HD! *Why? Cost, Plain and Simple!
Tricks on the Public are played every Day by major Companies! It was the same as when Stereo TV came out. Sure, they included a Stereo Amp, but unfortunately unless you used an Outdoor Antenna, Cable TV (Which was the only option at the time) *Did Not even transmit a Stereo Signal for Years! It was all BS anyway as the Speakers were so close together. All Stereo Manufacturers and Publications recommend that Speakers be a Min. of 11 Feet apart to even be able to notice a deceint seperation, unless your Head is only 6 inches from the TV basically creating a set of Headphones. But the TV's Speakers were at best 3 Feet apart. You still hardly notice Stereo using even a Big Screen TV without using a seperate Amp and Speakers, unless you use the "Magic Sound" Button as I have on one of mine!
But how many people even knew about any of that then or even now? So back then I Sold many Stereo TV's only because it was that Months new Gimmick!
Plus being very familiar with Audio Systems and their many various hook up Tricks, including creating 6.1 Surround Sound that didn't even yet exist on Paper! But it can easilly be created as 6.1 without using any seperate Amp. just by knowing how to connect the Wireing and using 3 Crossovers and an Equalizer! It sounds exactly the same, but the only downfall is you don't have enough Power to make it rattle the Windows! 
*I Bet you have never even heard of that one!


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## AFP1 (Feb 12, 2007)

"Please start using paragraphs. My eyes hurt."

Sorry, but I do! But when you write more than 1 paragraph, this Forum repositions every Line up against the left side!

Just as I noticed that "Sorry" is now up against the side, but when written was an inch inward.


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## AFP1 (Feb 12, 2007)

Go to ZDNET.com and Register if not. It was sent again today in the Blog section.
Yesterday it was a Main Story.


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## AFP1 (Feb 12, 2007)

AFP1 said:


> Before I Copy/Paste this here, let me say that it came direct from ZDNET.com, and not myself. So please, as I don't even understand half that is said, let's not start argueing over this!
> I just thought you might like to read it as well!
> 
> Theres a lot of buzz lately about the delivery of HD TV and Movie content over the Internet with shows like Lost being delivered by ABC.com and other video download services with XBox360 or iTunes. I even have friends and colleagues telling me that BlueRay or HD-DVD wont make it because HD will simply be delivered over the Internet. But theres one dirty little secret that people are forgetting or that they dont understand, ITS NOT HD theyre getting over the Internet. Heck its not even NTSC 480i (720×480 60 fields interlaced) DVD quality when you really look at the amount of video data youre getting!
> ...


 I cannot understand how anyone can be so ignorant as to just dismiss all that was stated here!! This is really only common sense! Why having nothing to gain would a huge company such as ZD ever risk a Lawsuit if it were not able to be proven?? Anyone that would argue these points not being involved with the Project, are simply trying to justify what they believe to be true, but not what may be really true!!
Why not argue the point with ZDNET?? *Naw, that won't work either. No matter what they may prove to you, you still will believe only what you want to!


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

AFP1 said:


> Tricks on the Public are played every Day by major Companies!


Cue the X-Files theme.


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## TiVo Troll (Mar 23, 2006)

Other posters have already gotten to the core of the matter. Why keep repeating the ZDNET article? A file's size and download speed are two completely different things!

From *post #3*:

"Tivo downloads video over the internet in non real time. It doesn't need to be real time."

From *post #5*:

"It's funny how this guy uses streaming and downloading interchangeably like he doesn't know the difference."


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## TiVo Troll (Mar 23, 2006)

greg_burns said:


> ...can somebody post a link to the original article on ZDNET please.


*Why HD movie downloads are a big lie*


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

I don't see how comparing file sizes is a useful way to analyze quality. Unless they were encoded using the same encoding algorithm, then the argument is not valid and lacks real knowledge of video content. Btw, I'm pretty sure Amazon wouldn't be using MPEG-2 for HD content anyways.


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## Langree (Apr 29, 2004)

AFP1 said:


> I cannot understand how anyone can be so ignorant as to just dismiss all that was stated here!! This is really only common sense! Why having nothing to gain would a huge company such as ZD ever risk a Lawsuit if it were not able to be proven?? Anyone that would argue these points not being involved with the Project, are simply trying to justify what they believe to be true, but not what may be really true!!
> Why not argue the point with ZDNET?? *Naw, that won't work either. No matter what they may prove to you, you still will believe only what you want to!


Do you take everything you read at ZDNet at face value, never questioning their facts or findings?

As far as arguing the point with ZDNet, you posted the article here and defend it vehomently, even tho you admit you don't understand the technical details in the article.

You are debating out of ignorance.

"Just because the article says so" is not a valid discussion point.

You remind me alot of someone else who post here.


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## GoHokies! (Sep 21, 2005)

AFP1 said:


> I cannot understand how anyone can be so ignorant as to just dismiss all that was stated here!!


I cannot believe how anyone can be so ignorant as to just dismiss all that was stated here in this forum and rest a technical argument on "ZDNet says so, so it must be right" without actually comprehending the technical details of what is being discussed.


> You are absolutely correct technically. But what I meant when I said "As is", is there is No HD Tuner hooked up!


Even a HDTV with a built in tuner won't work "as is" you still have to hook up an HD source (cable or antenna) in order to make it work, it can't just magically start displaying HD.


> Sorry, but I do! But when you write more than 1 paragraph, this Forum repositions every Line up against the left side!


Indentations do not a paragraph make! Properly constructed and punctuated paragraphs, perhaps separated by blank lines will make your posts readable, and the forum software isn't to blame for that.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

rainwater said:


> I don't see how comparing file sizes is a useful way to analyze quality. Unless they were encoded using the same encoding algorithm, then the argument is not valid and lacks real knowledge of video content. Btw, I'm pretty sure Amazon wouldn't be using MPEG-2 for HD content anyways.


I have made that association for Cable and Satco's. Yeah tt's suboptimal, but will at least give a crude indication for most suppliers. My thinking was this. For folks for whom wasted bandwidth means fewer channels, there is strong economic incentive to pay for folks that understand how to squeeze the most quality for a given data rate. Although that skillset is not a constant across all individuals, profit motive forces the resultant file size to track picture quality. I admit there is a huge assumption I am making here- and it is that the Cable and Satco guys are technically competent. Everyone here is aware that I have been fairly insulting towards the management of such companies, but I believe they have some very capable engineers working for them, so I don't think that is an unfair assumption.

The only service with bandwidth to burn is maybe Verizon, so the economic assumption will not apply to them. They could do non hand tuned Constant bit rate hardware transcoding and simply bump up the data rate to get the PQ they wanted. In their case then yeah, larger file size would mean nothing.

It would be real neat if there were something that could establish automated PQ measurements, conceptually similar to the automated benchmark you could run like there are for judging performance of computers. I know only of some PQ DVDs that the guys on Avsforum talk about, but nothing automated.

If you have a better quick metric, let's hear it. Otherwise, one of my first questions will be: What is the file size?


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## btwyx (Jan 16, 2003)

lessd said:


> I may have read this post incorrectly but getting a true HD movie is about 14G/hour or say 28G for a two hour movie. To stream that movie would require 112 Mbs bandwidth on your Internet, I have fast service now from Camcast but it tops out at about 12Mbs (late at night),


What's your definition of "true" HD? I always distrust any point which makes a point of using "true" as a benchmark.

The definiton I'd use is one which fits in an ATSC stream, that's 19.2Mb/s or about 9GB/hr. I've seen quite acceptable HD in about 7GB/hr.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

btwyx said:


> What's your definition of "true" HD? I always distrust any point which makes a point of using "true" as a benchmark.
> 
> The definiton I'd use is one which fits in an ATSC stream, that's 19.2Mb/s or about 9GB/hr. I've seen quite acceptable HD in about 7GB/hr.


I will not argue with 9G/hour because you are correct, what is the definition of "true" HD. But 1.5G/hour, that's hard to call it HD


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

lessd said:


> I will not argue with 9G/hour because you are correct, what is the definition of "true" HD. But 1.5G/hour, that's hard to call it HD


But it all comes down to the format used. Size is a meaningless comparison.

I can take a youtube-video and encode it to 720*480 MPEG-2 and burn it to a DVD. Just because the file-size is now bigger than the original doesn't mean the quality is better.


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## AFP1 (Feb 12, 2007)

Langree said:


> Do you take everything you read at ZDNet at face value, never questioning their facts or findings?
> 
> As far as arguing the point with ZDNet, you posted the article here and defend it vehomently, even tho you admit you don't understand the technical details in the article.
> 
> ...


 My Dear Ethel,
First, The only thing I am debating is how people so quickly dismiss something only because they WANT to believe something different without even researching it! I Bet that most that commented never even bothered to view that Article! 
**Did You?? (*Don't answer, I really don't care!)
And Second, ZDNET, a Huge Company with Editors, Reporters, Engineers, a Legal Dept. etc, plus having nothing to gain other than a Big Lawsuit, is not going to just print something that cannot be backed up! (*Just like TV and Newspapers!) They are not a 1 Man Bedroom operated Internet Company like most! 
So yes, not having ALL the Facts, (I never said I understood nothing!) only common sense would tend to make me believe their points, rather than points made by people here that are not even involved in the Business!
And speaking of ignorance, It's like comparing The New York Times to The National Inquirer! *Which one is always in Court? And why?
*But you probably read The Inquirer as well! (I Bet you are from Long Island!)
Initially I only copied the Article for everyones benefit. But after I read the replies, I had to say something regarding their sheer ignorance and closed Minds! But like most things here, if you say it's Black, others will argue that it's White!

*But I am now done replying about this Topic!! I am turning off replies to this. Let all the "Experts" here like you believe whatever you wish! It makes absolutely no difference to me, so lets just end it all here!! 
I am Sorry I ever bothered to even copy it, simply trying to help out!
*Have a Mediocre Day!


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

Its kind of hard to follow this thread but I would like to go back to the heart the the ZDNet article and try to understand why people either agree or not.

To me the article seems to be trying to say a number of things 2 of which are:

*One* that if millions of people tried to download and/or stream HD media that was in the quality range of OTA HD broadcasts or HD/Blu-ray moves that there would be insufficient band width for the data to cross the Internets current back bone.

*Two* that current services claiming to be providing HD content are not providing content that has any where near the quality of OTA HD broadcasts or HD/Blu-ray moves.

I have no information that allows me to know if either of the above is true or not for those that believe they are not true could you please explain why?

Thanks,


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## Langree (Apr 29, 2004)

AFP1 said:


> My Dear Ethel,
> First, The only thing I am debating is how people so quickly dismiss something only because they WANT to believe something different without even researching it! I Bet that most that commented never even bothered to view that Article!
> **Did You?? (*Don't answer, I really don't care!)
> And Second, ZDNET, a Huge Company with Editors, Reporters, Engineers, a Legal Dept. etc, plus having nothing to gain other than a Big Lawsuit, is not going to just print something that cannot be backed up! (*Just like TV and Newspapers!) They are not a 1 Man Bedroom operated Internet Company like most!
> ...


It is better to let people think you are a fool than to open your mouth and prove it.


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## David Platt (Dec 13, 2001)

AFP1 said:


> *But you probably read The Inquirer as well! (I Bet you are from Long Island!)


Dude, you _really_ need to stop it with the personal attacks before you get banned. It's possible to argue with people without calling them names or personally attacking their character.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

atmuscarella said:


> Its kind of hard to follow this thread but I would like to go back to the heart the the ZDNet article and try to understand why people either agree or not.
> 
> To me the article seems to be trying to say a number of things 2 of which are:
> 
> ...


That is what this Thread is about, thanks for putting it down so most of us can understand it but most of us don't have the information to answer it. I can guess that 1 and 2 are true but I do not know for sure. Will the new Internet standard that being talk about solve this problem ?


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> Nothing less can be called TrueHD, but something else- HDLite, whatever.


What about "Un" TrueHD?


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## Langree (Apr 29, 2004)

HDTiVo said:


> What about "Un" TrueHD?


That's only in regards to the sound, unless I missed something.


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

atmuscarella said:


> Its kind of hard to follow this thread but I would like to go back to the heart the the ZDNet article and try to understand why people either agree or not.
> 
> To me the article seems to be trying to say a number of things 2 of which are:
> 
> ...


I believe that currently both statements are true, at the very least B).

But so what? There isn't a hard and fast rule for what is HD anyway. If someone wants to call their 1024*576 streaming videos HD, is there something that prohibits them from doing that? If not, let them do it.


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## dt_dc (Jul 31, 2003)

atmuscarella said:


> *Two* that current services claiming to be providing HD content are not providing content that has any where near the quality of OTA HD broadcasts or HD/Blu-ray moves.
> 
> I have no information that allows me to know if either of the above is true or not for those that believe they are not true could you please explain why?


I don't want to make broad over-generalizations about _all_ on-line HD content ... but here's one specific example ... re: ABC.com's planned HD channel (including episodes of Lost which the original blog specifically mentioned so, seems relevant):


> http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6442478.html
> 
> ABC to Stream HD Shows Online
> ABC.com to Feature Content from Lost, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, Ugly Betty
> ...





> http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6448086.html
> 
> How ABC.com Plans to Deliver HD Online
> Compressed HD Video Will Not Equal Quality on Cable, DBS
> ...


Then again, since they've outlined exactly what they plan to do ... not sure it can be classified as a "dirty little secret".


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

> Originally Posted by *MickeS*
> But so what? There isn't a hard and fast rule for what is HD anyway. If someone wants to call their 1024*576 streaming videos HD, is there something that prohibits them from doing that? If not, let them do it.


I don't think it matters much at all - this is one case where I think the "consumer" can easily decide if the product is acceptable or not without knowing any technical data about the video.

Where I think the article potentially becomes more useful is in explain why (at least for the short run) we won't see high volume services providing high quality HD Video. This is of importance to people with HD TVs and Series 3 Tivos, many of which have complained that Amazon's Unbox is too low quality and they won't be interested in that type service until they can get HD quality videos.

If someone can connect the dots about compression, it also explains why some digital cable/satellite feeds are better than others (SD and HD).

Thanks,


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

atmuscarella said:


> I don't think it matters much at all - this is one case where I think the "consumer" can easily decide if the product is acceptable or not without knowing any technical data about the video.


I think it does matter, for the same reason we have other certificaitons on a products, and lawsuits when vendors falsly advertise. Consider the following scenario.

Internet product A is labelled as HD
Internet product B is labelled as HD.

Both are compressed using the same codec, skillfully squeezing the maximum PQ for the amount of data allowed. But product B is the same movie, only it has 4 times the data as product A.

How does the advertiser of product B inform customers that B is very very diffierent from Product A? With 50 inch HD screens at $1000, the market is no longer limitted to folks who understand what MPEG2 vs MPEG4 give you, let alone what progressive versus interlaced means.

That's why I advocate that the FCC establish technical specifications for what can legally be advertised as good, better, best TrueHD.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

> Originally Posted by *Justin Thyme*
> I think it does matter, for the same reason we have other certificaitons on a products, and lawsuits when vendors falsly advertise. Consider the following scenario.


 Generally I support consumer projection and government standards. In this case I just don't know if the benefits out-way the cost. I do believe that it is important that people understand that all HD video content is not equal. But given that a person's TV and their own eyes may make much higher quality video look no different than lower quality video, I can live with people judging video quality by their own experience.

There may come a time when regulations and standards become useful, but I think the industry needs to be left alone for awhile longer to see how things develop.

Thanks,


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

So you are saying that for each video each consumer must buy it and judge for themselves?

What do you expect them to do? Return it if it doesn't look good in their subjective opinion? 

It is illegal to label an SD television as HD. One can display 4 times the resolution of the other. Now, from across the room, a small screen will look the same whether it is SD or HD. But the label is still meaningful and necessary for commerce. Accurate definitions predated the commerce in HD displays and digital cable ready devices, so why should it be any different for HD Content?

Similarly, internet commerce in HD content will be injured if there is no distinction between HD video that has 4 times the picture information as another.

Is it that you think that its really just splitting hairs- the difference between a HD movie and the same HD film with 4X the picture data?


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

> Originally Posted by *Justin Thyme*
> Similarly, internet commerce in HD content will be injured if there is no distinction between HD video that has 4 times the picture information as another.


Funny I find myself defending just the opposite of my normal views. I do not think digital video including HD video is any where near maturing. Compression is a developing art and science, many claim Dishs HD is far superior to directs and that a good part of the reason is superior compression techniques, not just more data. Japan is looking at the next HD that will be far technically superior to the best 1080p videos/moves.

The cost of Unbox or other services isn't that high if you don't like the quality you just don't go back, and after all you still got to watch the show you wanted. All of these type services will be dependent on repeat customers, I have no doubt that some will go for low price and others will go for higher quality and I don't believe additional standards will change who people choose to give their repeat business too.

The bottom line is I just don't see additional regulation/standards as beneficial at this time, when streaming or downloading HD content becomes main stream that may be the time to regulate and/or set new consumer friendly standards. But frankly I think it will be years before you can say streaming or downloading HD content is in the main stream.

Thanks,


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I've only read the first page of this thread, but I'm curious where this guy got his data? Where did he download this alleged "HD Movie" that is "only 1.5GB" in size? The reason I ask is because I've seen a few HD movies posted on BitTorrent and they're almost always compressed to fit onto a single layer DVD, meaning they are 4.7GB in size NOT 1.5GB. Heck Most high quality SD moves are designed to fit on two CDs, which is more then 1.5GB. And AFAIK none of the commercial download services even offer HD content. So I ask again... Where did this guy get his data? Because if we're dealing with made up data then the argument is moot.

Edit just found this information about XBox 360 HDTV downloads MS just started offering...


> # Downloads are in VC-1 (aka WMVHD) at 720p, 6.8Mbps video with 5.1 surround.
> # An average HD movie download should be between 4-5GB, and a two hour SD movie would be 1.6GB.


So it looks like this guy might be confusing the size of SD and HD content.

Dan


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## Langree (Apr 29, 2004)

Dan203 said:


> I've only read the first page of this thread, but I'm curious where this guy got his data? Where did he download this alleged "HD Movie" that is "only 1.5GB" in size? The reason I ask is because I've seen a few HD movies posted on BitTorrent and they're almost always compressed to fit onto a single layer DVD, meaning they are 4.7GB in size NOT 1.5GB. Heck Most high quality SD moves are designed to fit on two CDs, which is more then 1.5GB. And AFAIK none of the commercial download services even offer HD content. So I ask again... Where did this guy get his data? Because if we're dealing with made up data then the argument is moot.
> 
> Dan


But it's ZDNet and they sure as heck know more then us when it comes to these here technical things and stuff.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Also this guy is a moron if he thinks that the new MPEG-4 codecs can't compres beyond 1.4x that of the original DVD. A few years ago I took about a dozen of my DVDs and ripped the main movie from them. In their original MPEG-2 format they took up on average 5-6GB. I then compressed them using DivX set to it's maximum quality based setting with absolutely no size restrictions. When done every single one of them, even the action movies, were cut at least in half with no perceived quality difference. I've also downloaded my fair share of movies and TV shows from BitTorret that looked beautiful at bit rates far lower then used on an average DVD. MPEG-4, and it's variants, are much better then this guy is giving them credit for.

I've also read that most HD-DVD titles only take up 8-10GB for the main movie, and their perceived quality is far superior to that of broadcast HDTV. So cutting that in half and retaining broadcast HDTV quality doesn't seem unreasonable. Although I've never personally run any test on this, so I can't say for sure.

Dan


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> So you are saying that for each video each consumer must buy it and judge for themselves?
> 
> What do you expect them to do? Return it if it doesn't look good in their subjective opinion?
> 
> ...


I for one just think that there are not a lot of meaningful ways to classify HD content right now, so to say that they are "a big lie" just because a different compression method is used is pretty silly.

For TVs it's easy - use the pixel count to determine it.

For internet downloads - use bitrate I guess, and set the limits per compression/encoding method that was used. Which is pretty much exactly what is being done right now, yet it doesn't seem to help much, as it's not that easy to compare between different methods based on these numbers alone.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

MickeS said:


> ... to say that they are "a big lie" just because a different compression method is used is pretty silly. For TVs it's easy - use the pixel count to determine it. For internet downloads - use bitrate I guess, and set the limits per compression/encoding method that was used.


 Sounds eminently reasonable to me.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

rainwater said:


> I don't see how comparing file sizes is a useful way to analyze quality. Unless they were encoded using the same encoding algorithm, then the argument is not valid and lacks real knowledge of video content. Btw, I'm pretty sure Amazon wouldn't be using MPEG-2 for HD content anyways.


Also don't forget beyond the "flavor" of encoder it matters the quality and generation of the encoder. And probably in movie downloads case even more importantly if it's real time or multipass.

Directv has been using MPEG2 for maybe 8-10 years- (at first they used mpeg1) in that time they have gotten newer encoders and can get the same quality with less and less bits. Newer DVD's look better then some older ones because the encoding tools have gotten better.

Then real time vs multipass (particularly with mpeg4) is hugely different. I'd say that it's very possible that xbox, amazon, netflix, however can probably give the same picture quality as Directv or Dish's MPEG4 HD in maybe half the mpeg4 bits just because they can use multi-pass encoding and take days if they wanted to.

So while full bitate atsc movies might be sent in realtime encoded mpeg2 at 19.2 mbps. A downlaod service probably could provide the same quailty using multipass mpeg4 encoding at like half that bit rate. (give or take 50% I really am no expert- but point is there's a massive differnence for the amount of bits needed for the same quality if you use differnt methods to encode.)


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## dt_dc (Jul 31, 2003)

Justin Thyme said:


> That's why I advocate that the FCC establish technical specifications for what can legally be advertised as good, better, best TrueHD.





Justin Thyme said:


> It is illegal to label an SD television as HD.


Actually, no, AFAIK (except in a round-about false-advertising or perhaps IP infringement kinda way) ... it's not illegal to label an SD television as HD.

The CE SDTV / EDTV / HDTV labels and logos (and technical requirements) were introduced as a voluntary labeling standard by the CEA.
http://www.ce.org/shared_files/resources/161dtvdeflogos.pdf

SDTV / HDTV / whatever labeling requirements were never adopted by the FCC, or FTC, or anyone else (again, AFAIK). The FCC has "television" labeling requirements ... and "digital cable ready" labeling requirements ... and plenty of other labeling requirements ... but nothing to differentiate SD / ED / HD.

Of course, the terms are now commonly enough used that I would imagine slapping an HD label on an SD set would be an invitation to a false advertising lawsuit. And, I'm sure someone at the CEA trademarked (or copyrighted?) their stylized SD / ED / HD logos and labels to make sure they weren't misused.

But anyway, those labels and logos were voluntarily introduced and are voluntarily followed ... and of course they were introduced _in part_ because of the _potential / possibility / threat_ of the FCC or some other government body doing something similar ... and the desire by the CEA to have them mean what the CEA wanted them to mean ...

But no, nothing illegal in labeling an SD television as HD (except, again ... potential false-advertising or IP infringement). No 'legal' standards for what is and isn't an HD TV ... or SD TV ...


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> ...
> 
> It is illegal to label an SD television as HD. One can display 4 times the resolution of the other. ....?


bad example- you can sell a tv with 720 lines by 100 columns and call it HD in America. It would probably look much worse than SD.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

dt_dc said:


> Actually, no, AFAIK (except in a round-about false-advertising or perhaps IP infringement kinda way) ... it's not illegal to label an SD television as HD.
> 
> The CE SDTV / EDTV / HDTV labels and logos (and technical requirements) were introduced as a voluntary labeling standard by the CEA.
> http://www.ce.org/shared_files/resources/161dtvdeflogos.pdf
> ...


you probably know more- but if I recall the FTC threatened action because people were selling 480p plasmas as HD so they told the CEA to do something or face regulation (as you suggested). So the CEA made up the bogus definations we have today (so that the 1024x 768 plasma's off the day could be classified as HD although they didn't meet 720x1280. And the FTC shut up and let it happen.


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## dt_dc (Jul 31, 2003)

MickeS said:


> For internet downloads - use bitrate I guess, and set the limits per compression/encoding method that was used. Which is pretty much exactly what is being done right now, yet it doesn't seem to help much, as it's not that easy to compare between different methods based on these numbers alone.





bicker said:


> Sounds eminently reasonable to me.





MichaelK said:


> Also don't forget beyond the "flavor" of encoder it matters the quality and generation of the encoder. And probably in movie downloads case even more importantly if it's real time or multipass.


And heck, there's the actual content itself.

Compare the bitrate needed* for "TrueHD" (c) for something like Ambient.TV's HD content (or ... Comcast has something similar on demand). Mostly static / still images with some text / voiceover / music ...

Compare that with the bitrate* needed for "TrueHD" (c) for shots of Carnival from Rio ... or the confetti / baloon shower at the end of a political convention ... or certain other content that doesn't compress well (fireworks, strobes, lightening, moving water, etc).

A bitrate that allowed perfectly good PQ for the former would look like garbage applied to the later. A bitrate required for good PQ for the later ... the former would just end up filling the stream with null packets ...

* - By most modern / current / in use encoding compression schemes / algorythms / techniques.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

Dan203 said:


> Also this guy is a moron if he thinks that the new MPEG-4 codecs can't compres beyond 1.4x that of the original DVD. A few years ago I took about a dozen of my DVDs and ripped the main movie from them. In their original MPEG-2 format they took up on average 5-6GB. I then compressed them using DivX set to it's maximum quality based setting with absolutely no size restrictions. When done every single one of them, even the action movies, were cut at least in half with no perceived quality difference. I've also downloaded my fair share of movies and TV shows from BitTorret that looked beautiful at bit rates far lower then used on an average DVD. MPEG-4, and it's variants, are much better then this guy is giving them credit for.
> ....
> 
> Dan


and that's all with people using free software on home computers- I'd imagine the stuff that the big guns buy that is purposebuilt can do even better.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

dt_dc said:


> And heck, there's the actual content itself.
> 
> Compare the bitrate needed for "TrueHD" (c) for something like Ambient.TV's HD content (or ... Comcast has something similar on demand). Mostly static / still images with some text / voiceover / music ...
> 
> ...


YUP!


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

It's a complex issue- resolution matters (despite the fact that cable, cea, and dbs all pretend it doesn't- they all cheat the number of columns). THe FTC should be ashamed that they allowed that to happen. Resolution is about the only NUMBER that you can use as as an empirical thing and the government let the CEA corrupt the one number that we had.

Beyond resolution- the bit rate you encode to is also relevant. (for example- directv sends their SD local channels with the same resolution as analog cable- but I can tell you they filter the piss out of it so the colors are muted so they can save some bits.) So resolution alone wont cut it.

And beyond that the encoding is important. It's possible that directv and dish might one day send HD down in MPEG4 at half the bit rate of MPEG2 HD and it will look just as good. So should they be held to some bit rate standard? Todays MPEG4 realtime encoders on dish and directv probably need 1.5 or even twice the amount of bits that similar encoders will need in 5 years.

so you get a problem that you can't set a number for bitrate.

So you can wind up getting stuck with "what does it look like" and that's a pretty ugly slope. In fact I think the FCC has said that a stations primary Digital channel has to "look" as good as it's current analog channel and then they can simulcast or datacast or sell off the leftover bandwidth and that's fine. But how do you define what that minimum "look" is?


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## btwyx (Jan 16, 2003)

MichaelK said:


> It's a complex issue- resolution matters


A lot less than a lot of people think.


> So you can wind up getting stuck with "what does it look like" ... But how do you define what that minimum "look" is?


There are some reasonable well defined procedures for doing viewing quality studies. They usually end up using a benchmark such that the quality score given to the compressed version is only 1 grade (out of 5) worse than the uncompressed version.


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## btwyx (Jan 16, 2003)

No one seems to have posted a link to the original: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=511


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

I ask the question again. If an HD movie were encoded with 4 times the picture data of a competing BrandX copy of the movie, what terms would the vendor be permitted to use that the other could not use? It is not just sophistry to point out that the term would be an simplification. It is self evident. It is precisely why such consumers need such labels. Because they are simple.

It seems to me that there are a lot of useful terms like HDTV, Dolby, Digital Cable Ready.

Why is unreasonable that there be any distinctions made about HD video content? We make distinctions about the hardware, we make distinctions about sound recordings using such labels.

The max an ATSC frequency can get is 20Mbps. It is very common for cableco HD channels to get transmitted at 5Mbps. Think that's not a big deal? Here's a portion (1/5 height- 270 pixels) of a screenshot of a frame from an HD movie. One has 50% more data. Just imagine what 400% more data gets you.








above is 8.3Mbps








above is 12.5Mbps**​
Totally subjective? Come now. Would consumers find it pointless to have a label that can be used to differentiate these products? Come now.

The truth is, the only thing unreasonable about this is that it would force video distributors to compete on the quality of data they are delivering. And as we know, competition is so very unreasonable for monopolies to contemplate.

** example thanks to Xylon at AVSForum.


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## TiVo Troll (Mar 23, 2006)

btwyx said:


> No one seems to have posted a link to the original: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=511


*Not lately!*


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## TiVo Troll (Mar 23, 2006)

from post 63:


> So...for each video each consumer must buy it and judge for themselves?
> 
> What do you expect them to do? Return it if it doesn't look good in their subjective opinion?


Hmmm.

Why not?

That's the opinion that really matters to a buyer.


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> I ask the question again. If an HD movie were encoded with 4 times the picture data of a competing BrandX copy of the movie, what terms would the vendor be permitted to use that the other could not use?


I don't know why there has to be terms or labels, but I guess it would be nice if they were forced to reveal the bitrate and compression method they use. I'm sure that eventually "non-tech" people would start to make somewhat informed decisions based on that, just like with audio purchases (think mp3 vs wmv vs aac at different bit rates for example).

I just don't see a need to call it "true hd" or similar. Just the facts, ma'm.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Justin Thyme said:


> What do you expect them to do? Return it if it doesn't look good...





TiVo Troll said:


> from post 63:
> Why not?


How do you propose that the customer return an internet download.



MickeS said:


> I don't know why there has to be terms or labels...


Micke, maybe the valuation terms "true"/ good/ best has thrown you. If so I am sorry because- as far as I'm concerned the labels could be neutral- eg. yellow blue and pink Fizbin logos.

Are you serious there should be no labels associated with products? You must be joking, because where does that take us- Maybe everyone should just know how medicine works- why do we need that "Doctor" label?

People should be familiar with technical specifations? Admit it. You don't know what Grade AA quality eggs means. You shouldn't have to. You shouldn't have to be able to specify exactly what "Fresh" orange juice means.

USDA Prime- how much marbling is enough marbling in a steak to make it Prime rather than Choice?

If we had no such labels, these producers would be delighted to produce lower quality eggs, "fresh" orange juice that is 70% from concentrate, with more than 50% of its sugars from high fructose corn syrup, or beef that didn't have to be corn fed in order to increase marbling.

Cable and Satco guys would love to continue to be free of any meaningful labels that could be used to distinguish between the crap that they shovel as "HD".

That's the nature of the big lie with HD movies. A lie that was completely untouched on in this uninformed ZDNet article.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Justin Thyme said:


> I ask the question again. If an HD movie were encoded with 4 times the picture data of a competing BrandX copy of the movie, what terms would the vendor be permitted to use that the other could not use? ...
> 
> above is *8.3Mbps* ... above is *12.5Mbps***


Specifying Mbps seems fine to me.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

MickeS said:


> I don't know why there has to be terms or labels, but I guess it would be nice if they were forced to reveal the bitrate and compression method they use.


And indeed, nothing stops those who want to distinguish their superior product in that manner from doing so.


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

bicker said:


> And indeed, nothing stops those who want to distinguish their superior product in that manner from doing so.


Yup. Seems good enough to me.


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> Micke, maybe the valuation terms "true"/ good/ best has thrown you. If so I am sorry because- as far as I'm concerned the labels could be neutral- eg. yellow blue and pink Fizbin logos.
> 
> Are you serious there should be no labels associated with products? You must be joking, because where does that take us- Maybe everyone should just know how medicine works- why do we need that "Doctor" label?
> 
> ...


I'd say food is a little more important than video downloads.


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## Martin Tupper (Dec 18, 2003)

MickeS said:


> I don't know why there has to be terms or labels, but I guess it would be nice if they were forced to reveal the bitrate and compression method they use. I'm sure that eventually "non-tech" people would start to make somewhat informed decisions based on that, just like with audio purchases (think mp3 vs wmv vs aac at different bit rates for example).
> 
> I just don't see a need to call it "true hd" or similar. Just the facts, ma'm.


There are terms and labels because the _sellers _are using terms and labels. Call it HD, or don't. But if they are going to use the term "High Definition" or "HD" to market their product, they either need to quantify the "definition" of their product or conform to an established HD standard.


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## Martin Tupper (Dec 18, 2003)

MickeS said:


> I'd say food is a little more important than video downloads.


Food safety is certainly more important. Food quality? Not so much. You aren't going to become ill if you drink concentrated OJ or eat USDA Prime meat. You'll just tend to get ripped off if the seller does not disclose what it is he's selling.


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## TiVo Troll (Mar 23, 2006)

Justin Thyme said:


> How do you propose that the customer return an internet download.


Good point!

But while a download customer might get burned once because picture quality wasn't as good as pitched, there's no reason to get burned from the same source twice. 
---
Slightly OT but related, I notice that the same brand new releases that are available from Unbox are available from the supermarket four blocks from me for $1.50 overnight. (It's a better than average deal.)

I can be watching a brand new release at full DVD quality with a whole bunch of extras, and interesting info on the slipcase within a half hour. But Unbox downloads at TiVo's 'Best Quality', while far from perfect, are at worst resoundingly adequate.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

When a seller knows the quality of a product but it is difficult for the consumer to determine the quality in advance, who does that benefit?

Absence of qualtiy standards favours the monopolies- why? Because it is much harder for you to switch after you jump, and much easier for them to bait and switch. Part of the big lie with DirecTv was that they once broadcast their digital channels at eye popping quality levels. Now, they are broadcast at much lower bitrates. But the barriers to switching are very high, and besides, many folks won't notice as the bitrate is stepped down 100Kbps per week.

Currently there is no way of consumers demanding with their dollars that suppliers provide a certain quality level, because they have no established quality levels to demand. If the Cableco decides to economize on their infrastructure, they can just bump up the compression level. The consumer has no way of complaining that they orderred USDA prime but didn't get it. It benefits the cableco that the consumer is kept inarticulate about their complains- "It looks funny", "the picture looked bad on the game, but when I got the service the football games looked much better..."

Internet delivery offers the promise of providing competition to monopolies based on quality. But absence of quality standards returns us to the meat markets of the thirties where there were no standards for meat quality. The economic incentives are lopsided in favour of delivering lower quality products. Just as meat producers had strong incentive not to feed cattle corn, in internet delivery, you go for the smallest file size (faster downloads, lower GB bandwidth charges).

Without standards, consumers will get burned more often than not and conclude that Internet HD is a big lie- that internet HD is mostly junk. And who would benefit from that? It's a perfect strategy for choking a baby in its crib, and strengthening the hold of monopolists who control media flow into the home.

Devices like Tivo have the theoretical ability to switch providers in an automated way, provided that it has a parameter it can select for. Maybe in that future time the utility of a simple consumer understandible term will diminish. In the case of Cincinatti signal drop outs, we can forsee a Tivo or Vista MCE that could switch from Cable ESPN to Satellite ESPN. Certainly, this isn't going to happen overnight, but assuming that internet distibution is not murderred in its crib, then Tivo and MCE devices could take over the job the label was doing examine a show's published codec details and Mbps rate, and more accurately estimate the best possible PQ for the given content.

Sure, devotees of quality standards can go overboard- there is no doubt about the fact that everything can start to look like a nail if there is no consideration of the craft of skillful use of the tools of and role of government in economies. Economic theory suggests that product labeling is well suited for situations where there is asymmetric information- where the provider understands the quality of a product, but the consumer does not. It is not well suited for achieving social goals (eg- an extreme case- whether a product conveys true "French" values).

Enjoy your USDA prime. That industry is as strong as it is because of standards, not despite them. If anti regulatory zealots have their way, it will be the US's loss. We can relearn the lesson the hard way and let the EU set the standards and see all the HD internet content business go to them.

Sink or swim. With this inevitable globalization of content delivery, it will be interesting to see how different regulatory philosophies play out.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

This is standard practice all across the consumer marketplace. For example, folks purchase a Disney timeshare based on an expectation that the theme parks will remain a continuous, world-class attraction, but that doesn't constrain Disney from reducing service quality levels, reducing attraction operating hours, etc., whenever they wish.

You talk about USDA prime, but -- if you recall that other thread where we're talking about the recent study on a la carte preferences -- folks are only willing to pay for USDA Industrial Grade.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

So, you think most business is like the con jobs done with Timeshares? Are Timeshare contracts really the kind of shining example of the unregulated wonders of market segments that have no constraints on the lies they can tell?

Getting back to reality, Disney hotels are more typical but is not an example of asymetric information. I can get a Star rating on Disney theme hotels, read reviews on them etc. 

How does the consumer know in advance what quality their cableco will transmit the big game in? Maybe the guys should all meet at Harry's house for the game because he has the better HD setup, and we know that because Dish is delivering the most picture data.

But we can't know. The information is known to the providers, but hidden from consumers.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Justin Thyme said:


> How is the disney example asymetric information. I can get a Star rating on Disney theme hotels, read reviews on them etc.


The parallel is with regard to the point made about "barriers to switching" -- in the case of the timeshare, you've already paid $15,000+ for the timeshare, so changes to the attractions which were the foundation on which you made the decision to purchase the timeshare are analogous to changes in the service characteristics, such as picture quality, provided by a satellite service after you've spent the $200-$300 for their service-specific equipment. The reason why that came to mind is that we were just discussing this very topic on a Disney forum.



Justin Thyme said:


> How does the consumer know in advance what quality their cableco will transmit the big game in?


They don't, just like we timeshare owners don't know if Disney will cut their operating hours next year or the year after.


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## Martin Tupper (Dec 18, 2003)

bicker said:


> You talk about USDA prime, but -- if you recall that other thread where we're talking about the recent study on a la carte preferences -- folks are only willing to pay for USDA Industrial Grade.


But that doesn't give butcher permission to claim that the USDA "CANNER" he is selling is USDA "PRIME".


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Cross post. I decided I could say what I wanted to say better in my edit. 

Do you really want to hold out Timesharesas an example of how business should be done?


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Martin Tupper said:


> But that doesn't give butcher permission to claim that the USDA "CANNER" he is selling is USDA "PRIME".


Correct, and that's indeed NOT what is happening.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Justin Thyme said:


> Do you really want to hold out Timesharesas an example of how business should be done?


I will most surely hold out the Disney timeshare as an example of how business should be done.


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## GoHokies! (Sep 21, 2005)

bicker said:


> Correct, and that's indeed NOT what is happening.


Right, it's all just labeled as "beef" and you've got to do the research.

I don't claim to know what the right answer is, and while I think some type of definition of what "HD" is, the people that would really use it already care enought to know to do the research.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

GoHokies! said:


> Right, it's all just labeled as "beef" and you've got to do the research.


Even that doesn't capture the issue here, because the issue involved people expecting something to never change, even when there was absolutely no claim ever made that things would never change. It's basically just unreasonable expectations of a certain color.



GoHokies! said:


> I don't claim to know what the right answer is, and while I think some type of definition of what "HD" is, the people that would really use it already care enought to know to do the research.


Indeed, and I wonder to what extent complaints from such folks are solely because their technical bent is overshadowed in the marketplace by the vast majority of folks for whom "HD" is a sufficiently detailed characterization.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

btwyx said:


> ....There are some reasonable well defined procedures for doing viewing quality studies. They usually end up using a benchmark such that the quality score given to the compressed version is only 1 grade (out of 5) worse than the uncompressed version.


interesting.

something to think about.

I guess the government could make a standard test clip and then see what it looks like after being compressed but not sure that's super realistic.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> How do you propose that the customer return an internet download.
> 
> ....


never mind an internet download- is it possible at all in this day and age to return ANY peice of opened(or viewed) software?

Isn't it pretty much, break the shrinkwrap and you own it? If it's diffective than you can exchange for the exact same product but it's impossible to get your money back inmost cases.

no?


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

bicker said:


> Even that doesn't capture the issue here, because the issue involved people expecting something to never change, even when there was absolutely no claim ever made that things would never change.


You are very confused.

This has nothing to do with the right of a vendor to sell a different quality product. The issue is whether there is a label that tracks that difference in quality. For HD content, there is an immense difference of quality possible, but there is no analog of USDA prime, USDA choice, or USDA select.

Vendors have knowlege of the difference in quality that they are delivering to their customers, while the customer is kept ignorant of an understandable way of articulating the difference in quality. It is difficult to understand how that is good for a healthy marketplace. Without USDA prime label, what would consumers be able to do besides say, "the meat used to taste juicy, and now it doesn't".

With the label, the vendor may well decide to sell the lowest grade HD for a lower price. That is their choice, and the consumers may well decide they want to pay less.

What is unfair about that?


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> Without USDA prime label, what would consumers be able to do besides say, "the meat used to taste juicy, and now it doesn't".


What's wrong with that? Then they know next time not to buy that particular brand of meat. These are not life or death decisions we're talking about here. Let the market work itself out and things will be fine, IMO.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Ok. Maybe you could do without quality standards USDA Prime, USDA choice and USDA select grades.

Other folks value these grades. Why do they hurt you? Similarly, if you saw the HD quality grades, you could ignore them. Free country.

What's wrong with that?


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Justin Thyme said:


> You are very confused.


Not at all.



Justin Thyme said:


> This has nothing to do with the right of a vendor to sell a different quality product. The issue is whether there is a label that tracks that difference in quality.


HD is a label. It tracks difference in quality (versus SD, for example), just simply not at the level of detail that *you* want.



Justin Thyme said:


> What is unfair about that?


You are very confused. This isn't a matter of fairness, but a matter of lack of unfairness. When and if there is every a situation where it becomes to the benefit of both sides in the transaction to provide greater detail about quality level, then the marketplace will bring that about. You're advocating a win-lose scenario, since all what you're advocating does for the suppliers, in general, is reduce the supplier's flexibility.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

Justin Thyme said:


> With the label, the vendor may well decide to sell the lowest grade HD for a lower price. That is their choice, and the consumers may well decide they want to pay less.
> 
> What is unfair about that?


a coworker brought up a question that will show this problem nicely. he had just gotten HD for his DirectTV and upgraded things and so forth. He watched a Golf tournament advertised as shown in HD. He noticed that the aspect ration and quality varied as they moved around various holes on the course. he asked me and I replied that not every camera out there would be an HD camera and any cut in segments would have been done before hand and so forth entailing yet a different set of cameras and production work.

so basically some of the video presented was HD, some was lower resolution converted to HD and on some they could not do anything as it was live action and they just had to show the resolution and format as the camera caught it.

how in the world do you put a label on that?


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

One of the main uses of the TCF is sharing information about what you "get" when you buy a TiVo. That includes the positive aspects and the negative aspects. Customers who want more detailed information than suppliers are providing have two legitimate choices: (1) Forgo the offering, because it doesn't satisfy their need for detailed information; or (2) Research the offering more deeply, to seek to obtain additional detailed information. Forums, neighbors, sales personnel, and looking at the device actually working in a showroom are all valid actions. However, let's not lose sight of #1: The customer unequivocally has the right to forgo the offering, because it doesn't satisfy their need for detailed information.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

ZeoTiVo said:


> a coworker brought up a question that will show this problem nicely. he had just gotten HD for his DirectTV and upgraded things and so forth. He watched a Golf tournament advertised as shown in HD. He noticed that the aspect ration and quality varied as they moved around various holes on the course. he asked me and I replied that not every camera out there would be an HD camera and any cut in segments would have been done before hand and so forth entailing yet a different set of cameras and production work.
> 
> so basically some of the video presented was HD, some was lower resolution converted to HD and on some they could not do anything as it was live action and they just had to show the resolution and format as the camera caught it.
> 
> how in the world do you put a label on that?


NBC nightly news does this all the time (when this news went HD), most clips are in SD the studio shots are in HD.


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## Martin Tupper (Dec 18, 2003)

The problem with that scenario, taken to its extreme, is that if no seller is required to disclose what is actually in his product, consumers would be unable to made educate purchasing decisions on anything. If gas stations didn't have to disclose the octave ratings of the gas they sold, how would you know where to buy gas that meets your needs? If packaged food didn't include ingredients lists and nutritional value, how would you know what foods were in keeping with your diet and/or allergies. If car manufacturers didn't have to publish their fuel efficiencies, how would you know which one best met your needs?

I have zero problem with online vendors offering compressed videos for download. However, if they are going to market those videos as HD, then they need to disclose what those marketing claims actually mean.


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## classicX (May 10, 2006)

Justin Thyme said:


> *ZNDET*- what a bunch of morons.


Thanks for that little chuckle.


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## classicX (May 10, 2006)

bilbo said:


> ...





AFP1 said:


> Mr. Baggins


This must be a comedy thread, because I'm laughing out loud at every other post.


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## classicX (May 10, 2006)

GoHokies! said:


> My personal bandwidth situation is about to get a lot better, they've been doing work on FIOS in our area and I came home from work today to a front yard that was covered in lines of colored spraypaint - it looks like Miss Utility was out and Verizon will be getting their fiber right into my yard, so it looks like FOIS here I come!


Not to thread jack, but: they are going to dig up your yard without your permission to install FiOS? My neighbors and I would have a fit if they just came and dug up everyone's front yards.


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## GoHokies! (Sep 21, 2005)

classicX said:


> Not to thread jack, but: they are going to dig up your yard without your permission to install FiOS? My neighbors and I would have a fit if they just came and dug up everyone's front yards.


They haven't started digging yet, but it's painted up like they're about to start. I would think before they moved into anyone's yard they would get permission. I never really thought of that (mostly because I really want FIOS and anything that gets it closer to my doorstep is a good thing by me.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

GoHokies! said:


> They haven't started digging yet, but it's painted up like they're about to start. I would think before they moved into anyone's yard they would get permission. I never really thought of that (mostly because I really want FIOS and anything that gets it closer to my doorstep is a good thing by me.


permission for utility work comes from the municipality, not from the private property owner for right of way issues. Now digging a tranch to connect directly to your house for service - that is when the homeowner gets involved


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

It is hard to understand why it is desirable to perpetuate a situation where it is impossible for consumers to become informed of the quality of the goods they are purchasing.

Impossible? Yes. I appreciate that the technically oriented folks here think that consumers should be more encouraged to deeply research the products they are buying. Let's look at the practicalities of that.

Consider a scenario where the consumer is making a buying decision and is trying to do research on the HD content they are about to pay for. The choices are to continue with HBO for the next month because they have HD Star Wars coming up, or whether they should go a la carte for the next month, cancel the HBO and get an HD version of StarWars over the internet.

Both suppliers have strong economic incentive to squeeze the movie down to the smallest size possible.

Both suppliers know what bitrate and codec details they are encoding a show in, but the consumers do not. On what do they base their decision? No such information is available.

That's the first point. It is asymmetric information situation between producer and consumer, and the classic situation that labeling best answers.

But some of you more intimate with video encoding realities object to the simplification of a good better best label. Alright. Let's consider the practicalities of the proposal that the consumer consider the technical details. Say the producer was required to disclose all the encoding details for a movie.

OK. We are well informed technically. How many of you understand what QPEL setting would be correct for the various classes of movies you watch? The few of you that even knows the meaning of the BMC acronym are not going to recall offhand the minute and second offset into the film to look for statistics on what block size setting was used for the motion prediciton.

So considering the realities, none of the alternatives proposed are practical.

So I say again- *It is hard to understand why it is desirable to perpetuate a situation where it is impossible for consumers to become informed of the quality of the goods they are purchasing*. Proponents of alternatives have not responded to questions about who would be harmed by such "good, better, best" quality labels for HD. Perhaps the answer is that the public has little sympathy for the monopolies that have double profits while simultaneously reducing the quality of the content they are delivering.


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## btwyx (Jan 16, 2003)

Justin Thyme said:


> It is hard to understand why it is desirable to perpetuate a situation where it is impossible for consumers to become informed of the quality of the goods they are purchasing.


I'm not against some labeling of the content, I'm not sure that a good labeling scheme is available. A good labeling scheme would have to be easy for the consumer to understand, meaningful, and not a burden on the content providers to provide accuratly. Having a half assed sceme pushed on the industry by politicians is probably worse than having none at all.

Your idea of having good, better, best ratings has the advantage that its easy for consumers to understand. I don't see how you've suggested that these ratings be arrived at in a meaningful way. Just looking at bit rates is not meaningful, the encoding details have a lot of effect and bit rates between encoders are not comparable.

The only meaningful way to rate video content I'm aware of is to do proper double blind viewing tests. This would be quite a burden on the producers to come up with these, not to mention they're subject to manipulation to put their meaningfulness into question.

Could you explain, in detail, what your proposal is how its meaningful and not a burden?


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## dt_dc (Jul 31, 2003)

Justin Thyme said:


> It would be real neat if there were something that could establish automated PQ measurements, conceptually similar to the automated benchmark you could run like there are for judging performance of computers.


BTW, there are some pretty cool automated HD picture quality analysis tools that can take into account compression and stat muxing and everything else that plays into the signal path ...

Stuff like:

Tektronix
http://www.tek.com/site/ps/0,,25-20585-INTRO_EN,00.html

OmniTek
http://www.omnitek.tv/pqa.php

Etc.

Feed an original, uncompressed, clean / good / pure reference video in one end ... the end result of compression and stat muxing and grooming and what not in the other end ... bang. Automated, objective, repeatable PQA scores ...

Of course, I'd trust my own eyes more ... but anyway.

And as btwyx has pointed out:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5219089&&#post5219089
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5213577&&#post5213577

_The_ common / standard / accepted way of measuring picture quality ... and indeed, part of what the automated tools aim to emulate ... is subjective studies where subjects rate the difference between a 'good' image on one side and a 'degraded' image on the other under controlled conditions as recommended by the ITU-R:
http://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-BT.710-4-199811-I/en


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## Stu_Bee (Jan 15, 2002)

Universal HD channel advertises itself as :"offers the best of NBC Universal in 100% 1080i HD, 24/7. Programming includes premiere sporting events, unedited and uninterrupted films and award winning series."
=====
Yet their schedule includes 4:3 aspect shows like Nothern Exposure, and I have seen them crop other older 4:3 series to 16:9 and call it HD.
Truth in HD labeling should include the source material as well as their encoding technique.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Does the picture look good or does it not look good? Well- if you were doing that with USDA grades, then you'd have to have rooms full of taste testers for each side of beef for each cow. The USDA doesn't use an ITU-R approach. Why should visual quality be graded differently?

Let's step back and understand first what grading labels do. Uniform grade identification provides a standardized way of communicating values between buyers and sellers and signaling consumer preferences back through marketing channels to the producer.

It has to be practical to apply or it is useless to the market it is designed to strengthen.

So first off, such grading labels for food do not guarantee percieved pleasure. USDA prime does not mean the standard is saying that you will think the USDA prime ribeye is as juicy as the USDA prime flank steak. Just because the USDA allows a producer to call something chili doesn't not mean you are going to like it. A cut of meat either does or doesn't have a specified amount of fat marbling. A video either bursts up to 19Mbps in an action scene or it doesn't. In such a scene, it either does use 16 pixel blocks for motion estimation or it doesn't.

Secondly- I challenge the hidden premise of some posters that a standard is meaningless if there are possibilities for distortions. "SAT scores are meaningless", "Passing the board certification test is meaningless!" Sure, there are flaws. Is a measure meaningful or isn't it? To some, it is not "meaningful" unless it has the highest accuracy possible using an impractical ultimate measurement technique. Unquestionably, the ultimate would be to have a room full of testers judging the Picture Quality of each and every encoding of each and every movie.

But we aren't talking about ultimates. The goal is to provide a few labels that are simply "more meaningful" than the current system.

*Which is nothing.*

The question is, is it possible to create a grading system that is more meaningful than the system today where there is no standardized way for consumers to understand the differences in quality between HD content?

Analogous to the USDA guidelines, we can get into disagreements about whether it is legal to say a patty is 100% beef if it contains any partially defatted beef fatty tissue (which all of us informed consumers knows by the acronym PDBFT). But at the end of the day, some a grading system that more often than not tracks quality is better than no grading system.

Do you think that a classification system for HD video is not possible?

If so, I have to admit that I would be skeptical of such a claim. We are familiar with the endless debates on AVSforum.com about codecs and PQ, and it is true that everyone seems to have very strongly felt opinions. But while we may not agree on the details of the following trial balloon proposal, I think all that needs to be shown is that a grading system is possible that is more meaningful than no grading system.

Now for one trial balloon proposal. I would start with the simple and move to complex as driven my industry input. Meaning- at first only measure the rough differences and surface those to the user. EG- 100% beef patty means no mule meat mixed in. In response to further games, you go further- prohibiting PDBFT.

The factors are:

The volume of data delivered
The density of the data delivered
The density of the content when the file is displayed.

#1 corresponds to the bitrate. 
#2 factors the techical strength of the encoding job to concetrate the visual information. It's not just the encoder name, but let's start there. For example, the vendor may be restricted to MPEG2 main profile high level. What this factor is will be highly debated. Is H.264 Part 6 three times as dense as MPEG2 high level main or is it more like four? What's the number? Is chili still chili if it has less than 20% meat?, or does it have to be 30%? Well, there is an explosion of compression techniques and options to play with on each one. A best estimate is made, and may be revised as industry proof is submitted that their technique and hand coding should have a stronger density factor. Maybe their encoder bursts up to very high datarates accurately as needed and has a really great motion estimator. Say Amazon Unbox can show using an industry accepted metric of frame differences complexity, that their algorithms plus their third pass hand tunings provides fewer distortions as measured by an industry accepted measure of artifacts per second. What are those metrics? Let industry produce them. If there is sufficient concensus and science behind a metric, then the determination of the density factor may be based on it. A competitor can come in and say that the FIOS's density factor for onDemand videos unfairly favors them, because FIOS has been lazy with their encodings and are using a single pass hardware encoder device that has been shown in tests as doing a much poorer job than Fios's density factor indicates.
#3 This factor considers how complex the picture is that is to be compressed. Obviously, if nothing is happening in the picture, then you could pretty much transmit a still photo and not transmit anything more until something changed in the picture. That is, a Hidef surveillance video of a room with no camera movement and no one in the room could realistically be transmitted in a very small file and be the "Best" HD picture possible, even compared to the same picture stored at bitrates possible on a bluray disk. I would defer indefinately on making an estimation of this portion and instead drop the value labels. For example, there might be a yellow HD logo, blue HD logo, purple HD logo. Consumer knows from experience that they like the purple HD logo for sports, but yellow HD logo is just fine for Oprah or talking heads.

So factor one (Volume) times factor two (Density) equals an HD picture information number, and the number falls into a non value label that corresponds roughly to the highest practical quality possible (on bluray or HD-DVD) versus the lowest possible while still being perceptively better than an upscaled SD video. (Say 6Mbps for Mpeg2).

We can quibble on the aspects of this. The important question to consider is- what evidence is there that it is impossible to practically apply picture data standards that are intelligible enough to aid consumers in better discerning between HD content products?


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## btwyx (Jan 16, 2003)

Justin Thyme said:


> Secondly- I challenge the hidden premise of some posters that a standard is meaningless if there are possibilities for distortions.


It wasn't hidden when I said it. If a marketing department can distord a grading scheme in some manner, it becomes pretty worthless. There needs to be some third party verification of this sort of thing.


> So factor one (Volume) times factor two (Density) equals an HD picture information number,


The problem here is your factor 2. There needs to be a standard for it. You aren't proposing such a standard, you're giving the paramters of such a standard. Its going to have to be hashed out by someone. You seem to be setting aside the only standard which does exist.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Sorry. What standard would that be that this would set aside?

Is an SAT score worthless because it is possible to distort it by going to SAT classes that describe how to use the process of elimination to guess answers rather than a proper measure, which would be to have the student calculate and print the answer?

I don't understand your point about "the problem" you see. If producer A supplied a bitrate of 6Mbps at Mpeg2 main profile high, they would qualify for yellow grade. If producer B provided an H.264 part 6 at 2Mbps, they qualify for yellow.

Producer B can come back with metrics that DT_DC outlines to show that they qualify for blue, just as the USDA responds to complains about shenanigans played with competitor Beef patties containing PDBFT.

I was describing a dynamic system using an adversarial process that makes appeals to industry accepted standards.

Perhaps you disagree with the fairness of the starting point determination- what I referred to as the "best estimate"?


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

MichaelK said:


> those mpeg4?


VC-1


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## btwyx (Jan 16, 2003)

Justin Thyme said:


> Sorry. What standard would that be that this would set aside?


Your comment:


Justin Thyme said:


> The USDA doesn't use an ITU-R approach. Why should visual quality be graded differently?


If you're not saying the existing standard is unsuitable for this, what are you saying?


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

The ITU-R scheme that DT cited measures picture quality. This proposal does not set aside that standard because it's goal is no more to measure picture quality than the USDA measures Taste Quality with its labels.

You want to sell something and call something Chili, it has to have 30% meat. The USDA doesn't taste test the chili and tell you if they think it realizes all the meaty taste that such 30% meat content could theoretically achieve in the hands of skilled cooks. 

An HD label doesn't tell you that you will have better Picture Quality. It just states the techical parameters of what it is. Similarly, the proposed yellow, blue and purple grades simply gives consumers an idea how much data muscle is being pumped into the home for a given show.


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## btwyx (Jan 16, 2003)

Justin Thyme said:


> Similarly, the proposed yellow, blue and purple grades simply gives consumers an idea how much data muscle is being pumped into the home for a given show.


But how are these arrived at? The ITU stuff is the only game in town at the moment.

You also just seemed to say the grades are not about how good the video is. If so what are they about? I would hope that if you bought a blue video it had roughly the same visual quality as any other blue video, if not what is it doing?

I also wonder if video quality scales in the way you propose. You propose bandwidth*scale factor as your metric. Does perceived video quality scale with bandwidth like that? I'm not sure it does.


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## rodalpho (Sep 12, 2006)

While all of the grading stuff is interesting, I think we've lost the point of the thread, which is that the OP feels that HD movie downloads are overcompressed and cruddy looking. Seeing as the only legal source of HD movies is the xbox360, and they're 4.5Mbps wmv9 (and thus not overcompressed) it's clear that's simply not true.

ABC's downloads may or may not look cruddy. Nobody has seen one yet to judge. Properly tuned h.264 can do some magical stuff.


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## nhaigh (Jul 16, 2001)

I think what I understand HD downloads to be are a way off yet. The Sony online store carries movie trailers in what they label as 1080P (mp4), HD and SD formats. To me 1080P is HD!!! I downloaded the trailer for Transformers the movie and it was 145Mb in 1080P. The trailer is but a few minutes long. Even an hour long TV program will be impossibly large for download purposes. The quality of the trailer is fantastic though.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

The difference here is that you have a label like 1080p that you can use. You pick up a can, it says chili on it. If they want to put just 10% meat into it, what stops them from calling it chili? The USDA. 

When you buy an HD movie, what stops a vendor from putting one fourth or one eigth the visual data in it? 

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. If their frame dimensions are 1080i or 720p, they are HD.

Consumers cannot compare between HD DirecTv movie broadcast in MPEG4 with an HD movie broadcast in a different bitrate in MPEG2, versus a hypothetical HD movie downloaded from Unbox, versus an HD movie on an HD DVD but hardly using a fourth of the disk? 

That's what the big lie is in HD movie distribution, whether it is online, on disk, or off coax from your satco or cableco.

btwyx- It was my intention from the start to assert that an analog of the USDA system would eschew determination of percieved picture quality, just as the USDA eschews telling you whether they think one chili has better taste quality than another. 

An analog of the USDA system would be useful if all it did was what I proposed- If it restricted itself to measuring how much information is being transmited, normalized against the compression technique used. I gave an example of this, and suggested a mechanism for disputing the fairness of these factors.

This would allow comparisons to be made by technically naive consumers that would assist them in understanding what to expect between very different versions of the same show labelled as HD from DirecTv, Comcast, Unbox etc etc.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

nhaigh said:


> .... I downloaded the trailer for Transformers the movie and it was 145Mb in 1080P. The trailer is but a few minutes long. Even an hour long TV program will be impossibly large for download purposes. The quality of the trailer is fantastic though.


Is it really impossibly large?

assuming the above trailer is just 2 minutes long. That's 72.5 Mb per min. So 60 minutes is 4.35 Gb and 120 minutes is 8.7Gb.

While it might not be impossible with dialup and difficult with DSL, high speed cable or fiber could easily deal with that as a download. It might not be supper common but a sizable number of people have those fast connections.

To be honest I get all futzed up with mega BYTES and mega BITS but worst cast you should be able to download such a movie overnight if you have one of these newer high speed connections- no?

My cable provider's BASIC speed is 10Mbps - and for 20 dollars more I can get 20 Mbps. So assuming basic speed of 10MB per second and your trailer above that's 72.5 Mb per MINUTE- my connectiong should be THEORETCIALLY able to handle that in faster than real time. 60 seconds per minute means I should get 600Mb per minute and I only need 72.5 for the "fantastic" quality of that trailer. (again I get messed up with the bits and bytes but isn't my THEORETICAL speed about 8 times faster then need be? or is it just fast enough for realtime becasue of the bits/bytes?)

I know real world is likely not going to match that theoretically over the course of 2 hours. But it's not unrealistic to think I could download that overnight is it? VOD or PPV might not be realistic at this point but scheduled downloads dont seem all that nutty.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

> Originally Posted by *MichaelK*
> But it's not unrealistic to think I could download that overnight is it? VOD or PPV might not be realistic at this point but scheduled downloads dont seem all that nutty.


I know this thread is long and goes in several direction, but the question really isn't if individuals have enough band width at their end but if the Internets back bone has enough band width for millions of people to be regularly downloading large HD video files.

Thanks,


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

atmuscarella said:


> I know this thread is long and goes in several direction, but the question really isn't if individuals have enough band width at their end but if the Internets back bone has enough band width for millions of people to be regularly downloading large HD video files.
> 
> Thanks,


I'm sure that if everyone started today to download 100 gigs a day it would be a problem.

But the reality is right now only a small portion have so fast connections and only a small portion of them would avail themselves of HD downloads. So I would assume (I know I know- LOL) that today the backbone would be just fine to handle it.

As more and more people get into more intensive use then the backbone would ramp up over time.

Could the internet backbone of 1995 when everyone had pay per minute dialup deal with the file sharing, streaming, VOIP, mobile use, etc, etc that we have today? I wouldn't think so?

So as use increases so too does the backbone- no?

So If all of a sudden tons of people started downloading HD movies at night it would choke things- but is it realistic to think that would happen anytime soon?

My provider sales the upgrade to 20Mbps - I'm sure if 20 people on my block tried to max that out at the same time TODAY that the cable company would choke- but just 3 years ago I'm sure they would choke if 20 of us tried 1Mbps and today I'm thinking they could handle that.

I guess the guestion is this:

*Can the internet scale up over time at a rate sufficient to keep up with the increased demands of HD downloads?*

How many S3's, HD Media Center PC's, and HD xboxes are there deployed- and how many people are really using them to download to at the present?

I haven't seen anything that says in x years the current system tops out and collapses from overuse. I HAVE heard about new IPv6 or something and "internet 2" - are those sort of things required to keep the current system from collapsing? Or can the current system continue to scale over time?

(forgive my ignorance if I'm completely off and sorry for all the questions- I'd truly like to learn)


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

> Originally Posted by *MichaelK*
> Can the internet scale up over time at a rate sufficient to keep up with the increased demands of HD downloads?





> Originally Posted by *MichaelK*
> (forgive my ignorance if I'm completely off and sorry for all the questions- I'd truly like to learn)


In my opinion you are asking the right questions unfortunately I do not have the answers. Part of what this thread was about was if the Internet could replace HD content from other sources (HD DVDs, OTA HD, Cable & Satellite HD, etc.), anytime soon. We also got into the quality issue and that dominated the thread.

Thanks,


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

anyone see that skyangel is dumping DBS delivery and going to IPTV?

(I'm thinking DISH is providing the cash to make the change since they petitioned the FCC to be bale to buy the skyangel transponders)

http://sev.prnewswire.com/computer-electronics/20070608/CLF04908062007-1.html

so apparently they at least think you can stream tv over the net- IN SD.



> IPTV is not the same as what consumers might consider to be traditional web streaming and provides a real viewing experience on your TV.


Will be interesting to see how that pans out. HD is only like what- 6 or 10 times more bits then SD- it's not like orders of magnitude more.

I also wonder if they wouldn't work out a deal with tivo maybe so it works on tivo. Not sure if tivocast can be fixed to work for streaming- but maybe they would just put their whole schedule up online and you could set up season passes to download their shows?


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

MichaelK said:


> *Can the internet scale up over time at a rate sufficient to keep up with the increased demands of HD downloads?*


I'm not sure if that is really an issue. While I've heard of individual web sites being brought down by too much traffic, I've never once heard of the Internet going down because of too much traffic.

According to this article 24 major cities are only using 7 to 8% of their total network capacity (total amount of lit fiber-cables). The lit fiber cables made up only 3 to 4% of the total number of cables available (meaning 96 to 97% of the cables were dark fiber). This means that only 0.21 to 0.32% of the total available bandwidth is actually in use. The article also claims that Internet growth is actually slowing down.

Here's a quote:


> Video is driving the users experience, which is prompting providers to buy more IP transit bandwidth to handle the increase in traffic on their long-haul networks, Schoonover says. But this will not eat into fiber glut, he says.
> 
> Theres plenty of fiber in the ground for years to come, Schoonover says. In terms of the long-haul major routes, they just have so much glass in the ground that theyre just going to put lasers on either end and call it a day. Most of that fiber is capable of significant DWDM deployments of 96 wavelengths per fiber pair. So youre getting almost a terabit of data traffic per fiber pair. Thats just a lot.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

morac, - Good article, I actually find the last 2 paragraphs interesting:



> What, then, is the legacy of all that unused fiber from the late 1990s and early 2000s?
> 
> Telecom industry wasted $100 billion putting down all those redundant long-haul fiber strands, says the University of Minnesotas Odlyzko. One of the great tragedies is that if the $100 billion could have been used instead to take fiber to the home, we would have had more than half of the households in the U.S. wired up with fiber.


It also mentions video phones as something that could use up large amounts of band width and may require investment in new backbone tech.

Thanks,


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## TiVo Troll (Mar 23, 2006)

Ultimately though, do current trends hint that in perhaps less time than expected the virtual superhighway will ultimately get bogged down and require a continuing flow of infrastructure investment greater than the amount required to realize a return on the investment?


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

> Originally Posted by *TiVo Troll*
> Is there an Achilles Heel to 'Net Neutrality'???
> Ultimately though, do current trends hint that in perhaps less time than expected the virtual superhighway will ultimately get bogged down and require a continuing flow of infrastructure investment greater than the amount required to realize a return on the investment?


I know the term "Net Neutrality" doesn't have an exact meaning and depending on who you are talking too can have fairly different meanings, but I haven't seen a definition that has price controls built in and/or that would prevent future investment and pricing that would allow for a return on the investment.

thanks,


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

atmuscarella said:


> morac, - Good article, I actually find the last 2 paragraphs interesting:
> 
> It also mentions video phones as something that could use up large amounts of band width and may require investment in new backbone tech.
> 
> Thanks,


When they puit in most of that fiber, they didn't have the technology to enable the fiber to carry as much data as they do now. If they knew the capacity per pair was going to increase so rapidly they would have never installed so much. The company I used to work for back then eventually went under. They dealt with alot of outside cable plant installations. They went from 750 million gross revenue to 250 million in one year. Then went into bankruptcy and finally got broken up by the banks that owned them from the bankruptcy.


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## TiVo Troll (Mar 23, 2006)

atmuscarella said:


> I know the term "Net Neutrality" doesn't have an exact meaning and depending on who you are talking too can have fairly different meanings, but I haven't seen a definition that has price controls built in and/or that would prevent future investment and pricing that would allow for a return on the investment.


You're right. Basically _Net Neutrality_ would mandate that everyone gets charged the same rate for internet carriage. Guess I'm thinking that a "little guy" should get a significant mandated price break from rates charged services which are bandwith hogs.

I'm not an expert by any means. Is there an inadvertant unintended downside to my thought?


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

TiVo Troll;

What I am saying is "Net Neutrality" doesn't currently have a fixed definition. So until or unless there is actually legislation that defines what "Net Neutrality" is legally the term doesn't have a agreeded upon universal meaning.

If you read what Wikipedia has to say about it you can spend allot of time getting to what it *could* mean. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Neutrality

This is the article's first paragraph:


> *Network neutrality* (equivalently "net neutrality", "internet neutrality" or "NN") refers to a principle that is applied to residential broadband networks, and potentially to all networks. Precise definitions vary, but a broadband network free of restrictions on the kinds of equipment attached and the modes of communication allowed would be considered neutral by most advocates, provided it met additional tests relating to the degradation of various communication streams by others.[1][2][3]


So any discussion about how "Net Neutrality" could/would effect something is difficult because it is unlikely we would both be defining "Net Neutrality" in the same way.

Thanks,


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Furthermore, even narrowly defined, it isn't clear that "net neutrality" is a win-win proposition, and therefore it will necessarily remain controversial and not something on which to hinge unilateral assertions.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Thread hijack by the anti-regulation tag team. The last vocabulary lesson we had was that "monopoly" is also a meaningless term for use with video content delivery.

What does this political subject have to do with Tivo?


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

I agree that "net neutrality" should not be discussed on TCF. I sure wish folks assert things about it that I need to rebut.

Now, if the moderators agreed with us, it would actually MEAN something.


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## TiVo Troll (Mar 23, 2006)

atmuscarella said:


> What I am saying is "Net Neutrality" doesn't currently have a fixed definition. So until or unless there is actually legislation that defines what "Net Neutrality" is legally the term doesn't have a agreeded upon universal meaning.
> 
> If you read what Wikipedia has to say about it you can spend allot of time getting to what it *could* mean.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Neutrality
> ...





bicker said:


> Furthermore, even narrowly defined, it isn't clear that "net neutrality" is a win-win proposition, and therefore it will necessarily remain controversial and not something on which to hinge unilateral assertions.


The gist of my (acknowledgedly lightweight) thought proposes a protected service tier for what are probably the least profitable-to-service users of the internet; small, low volume users who consume the least amount of internet resources yet represent the greatest opportunity for free speech for individuals or small organizations of limited means.

I'm not actually proposing anything at this point, but am merely asking what the theoretical downside to the proposal is.


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## TiVo Troll (Mar 23, 2006)

Justin Thyme said:


> Thread hijack by the anti-regulation tag team. The last vocabulary lesson we had was that "monopoly" is also a meaningless term for use with video content delivery.
> 
> What does this political subject have to do with Tivo?





bicker said:


> I agree that "net neutrality" should not be discussed on TCF. I sure wish folks assert things about it that I need to rebut.
> 
> Now, if the moderators agreed with us, it would actually MEAN something.


Youse guys should report these posts to the Moderators!


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

bicker, I think Justin Thyme just put me in the anti regulations camp.  

In various threads: 

1. I have been anti regulations when Justin Thyme thought they were needed and 

2. I have been for regulations when bicker thought they weren't needed. 

So as always I continue to meander between various camps of thought.  

Thanks,


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

How does "Net Neutrality" have anything to due with TiVo? At this point I don't see that it does, however it could if having or not having "Net Neutrality" regulations effected TiVos ability to expand Internet content delivery through networked TiVos (including hopefully HD content for Series 3 TiVos at some point). 

Thanks,


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Now for something that does have to do with Tivo and this thread.

Does it encourage competition that video distributors can shut off the spigot to content from competitors, or make it so expensive that no sane person would buy video for download to Tivos and other third party devices?

The Internet connection capable of delivering video content from competitors to the home is usually only available from one company. Coincidently, it also happens to be the company that wants to deliver all the video to those homes. Whether that is Comcast, or Cox, or Verizon, those companies are in the position of being able to give their video services perferential. If you like, preferential treatment could be referred to as a non-net neutral treatment. In any case, this tilting of the playing field could take the form of delivering the monopolist's internet phone and video packets in a prompt fashion so there would not be interuptions. As pointed out, such sluggishness that was discussed in the OP's article would not have a great affect on Tivo, since Tivo can do non real time delivery of video. There are other sorts of preferential treatment, such as non uniform pricing of Gigabytes of Video delivered to the home. 

If you can only download 10GBs per month, real competition for HiDef video downloads from the internet is a Big Lie.

Similarly, if there is no truth in labeling, and vendors are permitted to omit comprehensible labels that differentiate between Hidef products that may have up to one fifth competitor products deliverred to the home, then the promise of competition from internet suppliers is a Big Lie. How can consumers be expected to have any idea why the internet dowload is any better tha the HD show on HBO, if HBO is not required to inform consumers how severely they have compressed the show? How can we ever expect to have our Vista or Tivo machines choose between competitors supplying a movie, if there is no basis on which to estimate the quality of the internet HD download versus cable delivery?

Absence of labeling, and allowing vendors to give unfair advantage to delivery of their content makes Internet HD delivery a Big Lie.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Justin Thyme said:


> If you can only download 10GBs per month, real competition for HiDef video downloads from the internet is a Big Lie.


Most providers have no official limit on how much you can download a month (meaning it isn't specified anywhere), but many have unofficial limits (sometimes called "invisible caps"). If you go past this artificial limit you will get a warning telling you to cut back on how much you download. If you don't drop below that number the following month your service will be terminated.

The "magic number" apparently varies dramatically even within the same provider, so someone might be able to get away with downloading 500 GB or more a month and not have a problem and others may download only 100 GB and get flagged.

Amazon Unbox movies are a few GB each. I've downloaded a number of them in a few day period and didn't have a problem, but it comes down to what your ISP decides is "too much" under the TOS.


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## TiVo Troll (Mar 23, 2006)

Justin Thyme said:


> If you can only download 10GBs per month, real competition for HiDef video downloads from the internet is a Big Lie.


Where does that 10GB per month number come from; a reference from the *article*; a reference from another source, or is it merely an arbitrary number?



> How can consumers be expected to have any idea why the internet dowload is any better tha the HD show on HBO, if HBO is not required to inform consumers how severely they have compressed the show? How can we ever expect to have our Vista or Tivo machines choose between competitors supplying a movie, if there is no basis on which to estimate the quality of the internet HD download versus cable delivery?
> 
> Absence of labeling, and allowing vendors to give unfair advantage to delivery of their content makes Internet HD delivery a Big Lie.


Without labelling, quality could still be assessed the old fashioned way by a user's 'lyin' eyes'! While not perfect, a user's subjective opinion is still a valid guide. There's no excuse for a viewer to be misled by a vendor's implied content quality after one unsatisfactory experience.

But, as pointed out earlier in the thread, there are two additional factors which greatly influence downloaded picture quality; whether a download is being streamed in realtime, and the encoding standard being used for the download.

Whether government should mandate vendor labelling for downloaded content is as OT here as NN is. Both issues may ultimately influence TiVo service and pricing, but currently are distantly connected at best.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

And they both only lead to heated political arguments which the moderators have indicated are not welcome here. 

Next subject...


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

TiVo Troll said:


> Without labelling, quality could still be assessed the old fashioned way by a user's 'lyin' eyes'!


Umm. Same response as before. Cable and Satellite companies vary their compression rates from show to show. How do you know in advance what it is you are buying?

Let's get a concrete example. You want to have a Matrix Party next month. Your (legal) choices electronic delivery choices are:

Pay for the cable or SatCo PPV airing.
Buy Matrix from Unbox
Buy Matrix from XBOX Live
Say they are all HD. How do you have any idea in advance which one will probably have the best picture quality?

Same question if they are SD. Just because it is a digital channel, doesn't mean you are getting the kind of data you would get off of a DVD. They compress the heck out of these channels, and there is no way of knowing what it is you will be watching until you have already made your purchase decision.

In technical jargon, that is an assymetric information condition between buyers and sellers. In lay language, we just say we are getting screwed.

This is on topic for online delivery of HD movies. It directly relates to Tivo because internet delivery of content is very much part of it's business plans.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

For monthly services, it is _normal_ to try it for a little while, cancel if you don't like it, and keep subscribing only as long as you do like it.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Eh? What monthly service? PPV, Amazon Unbox and XBox Live are not monthly services. You buy one show at a time.

There is nothing that tells me what I am going to get before I purchase it. There is no guarantee that because the PPV movie I buy today was not heavily compressed that the next one won't be. Similarly for internet video. If you buy a 1080p video download, you could get one sixth of what another supplier sells also as 1080p, or what the same supplier sells for a similar movie. It all has to do with the compression rates, and even the retailer themselves may not even have a clue what it is. 

Presumably we believe that small businesses should continue to have as much a chance as large businesses on the internet, and that we are considering a scenario that is not just populated by Unboxes and XBox Live services. Presumably we believe that accurate labeling is necessary to promote commerce. Presumably we believe it's a bad thing to have asymetric knowlege between what the producer knows is in the product, and what the consumer can figure out in advance of purchasing the product. That's why we have labeling regulations, just like we have traffic regulations. If you are ideologically opposed to parking signs, I have nothing more to say, but there are such things as sound business regulations, and they are desirable because they promote commerce.

You wrote in this thread that the bitrate was good enough for you. Presumably you have since learned that this is insufficient. You need to understand what the bitrate is after being normalized for the compression efficiency of the encoding technique. 

The problem with the resultant number is that they are not comprehensible to non technical consumers. Anything simple like 3 color coded grades would suffice- Good, better best HD- whatever.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

TiVo Troll said:


> Where does that 10GB per month number come from; a reference from the *article*; a reference from another source, or is it merely an arbitrary number?
> 
> ....


the only place I've ever seen a 10Gb a month cap is verizons EVDO- yes that's right- Verizon's CELL PHONE internet. Even then they dont say it's a hard cap- they say somethign along the lines of that servers are prohibited and using your EVDO as a landline replacement is against the TOS and that someone who uses more than 10GB a month might be such an abuser. They carefully dont say it's a hard cap but through it out so they can if they want to.

that number is pure BS when it comes to wired broadband.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

morac said:


> I'm not sure if that is really an issue. While I've heard of individual web sites being brought down by too much traffic, I've never once heard of the Internet going down because of too much traffic.
> 
> According to this article 24 major cities are only using 7 to 8% of their total network capacity (total amount of lit fiber-cables). The lit fiber cables made up only 3 to 4% of the total number of cables available (meaning 96 to 97% of the cables were dark fiber). This means that only 0.21 to 0.32% of the total available bandwidth is actually in use. The article also claims that Internet growth is actually slowing down.
> 
> Here's a quote:


I'm sure myself that there's WAY too much fiber. I work in the environmental business and we got jobs all the time in the 90's and early 00's where they were laying fiber through contaminated areas (like old rail lines). They routinely would lay like 6-10 conduits (they called 'em ducts) and then only pull the minimum fiber through 2 conduits for the minimum capacity with some redundancy. If you are digging a trench from NY to DC then it's trivial to toss in another 6-8 ducts while the trench is open. In many cases part of the payment for the ROW was some extra ducts for the property owner that they thought they could lease out later. (NJ's easy pass systems along the NJ Turnpike, Garden State parkway, AC expressway and numerous rail line projects were done that way) So not only is there spare fiber all over but they could probably increase the fiber by ten fold in a year with ease just by pulling more lines in empty ducts in the ground.

But what I wonder and havne't a clue about is- are the protocols capable of being ramped up that much more? (is that what the IP6 thing is all about?)

And I know they now have switching gear that using mirrors to switch fiber but can the switches and routers handle a huge increase too? Is that as simple as just adding loads more of them or do they have like a max througput no matter how many you add?


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

I posed a hypothetical of the form: If your download limit were X, then: Big lie.

Fill in the X as you please. If any of you bothered to look at the article Morac linked to, you would have learned what he said is true. You don't know what the X is, because they won't tell you. But folks are getting their internet service cut off a year for exceeding their invisible limit.

Specifically, it is a big concern for cableco's if consumers start downloading movies:



> Today, he said, an average subscriber downloads about one gigabyte per month, but even if everyone on the network began downloading just one movie a month, it could have a dramatic effect on the network. Downloading is "certainly going to increase dramatically over the next five years," he said. "And even if it's double or triple or quadruple, it's going to place a lot of pressure on networks that are being pressured right now."


That's not BS.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

MichaelK said:


> And I know they now have switching gear that using mirrors to switch fiber but can the switches and routers handle a huge increase too? Is that as simple as just adding loads more of them or do they have like a max througput no matter how many you add?


Actually, we shouldn't be in the mode of thinking that we are up against the laws of physics yet. Recent advances in silicon photonics are being hailed as an enormous step towards revolutionizing optical switching technology, similar in impact to that of the development of the first transistors. In 2004, the Journal Nature reported that Intel has succeded in development of a silicon switch for light. It turns out that if you split a beam into two waveguides, apply a charge to one of the guides to set the second beam out of phase, that the two beams will cancel themselves when recombined.

The trick was how to marry the light emitting layer with the silicon waveguides. Last year, researchers at UCSB learned how to join an IR laser generating indium phosphide layer with a silicon laser waveguide. The glue layer is about 25 atoms thick.

Such extremely inexpensive optical switching is a spinoff of Intel's goal of terabit speed processors, requiring terabit IO which only optical links can deliver.

Anyhow, simple switching capability will be much earlier than the Teraflop chips. This spinoff promises to reduce the cost and bulk of fiber switches down to practically nothing over the coming years, boosting backbone speeds by a thousand fold or more.

The only problem with all of this is that those that own the last mile fundamentally owns those consumers, and has formidable disincentives for allowing competitors the bandwidth they need to compete.

So how quickly this will be rolled out in the last mile is anyone's guess, but I am beginning to believe that a structural solution might be needed- like horizontal divestures in anti trust actions against these vertical monopolies, splitting off the physical plant for the last mile service as a regulated entity, and everything else is deregulated.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Justin Thyme said:


> Eh? What monthly service? PPV, Amazon Unbox and XBox Live are not monthly services. You buy one show at a time.


Yes. And indeed the same applies for any recurring purchase. You use reputation, reviews by others, and you own past experience, each time, to decide whether or not to make the next purchase.



Justin Thyme said:


> There is nothing that tells me what I am going to get before I purchase it. There is no guarantee that because the PPV movie I buy today was not heavily compressed that the next one won't be.


And so going in you know there is no guarantee, so you factor that into your decision, deciding whether or not the risk of getting what you've seen them do in the past (heavily compress an offering) is worth the cost of the purchase.

It's a lot like the landscapers. Each time they come around, there is no guarantee that they won't bottom out the chariot and cause a really bad bare spot. However, we decide who to use based on reputation, how well they've done for us in the past, etc.


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## TiVo Troll (Mar 23, 2006)

Justin Thyme said:


> Let's get a concrete example. You want to have a Matrix Party next month. Your (legal) choices electronic delivery choices are:
> 
> Pay for the cable or SatCo PPV airing.
> Buy Matrix from Unbox
> ...


At this point downloading is in it's infancy. I'd still rent _The Matrix_ DVD rather than downloading it in any format, both for quality and included extra features.

Actually I could be even be watching _The Matrix_ quicker and cheaper as a DVD! The supermarket four blocks away rents brand new releases for $1.49 overnight.

DVD's have taken standard-def to its ultimate. In a few cases a DVD can subjectively look better than the same material transmitted in supposedly hi-def when it isn't done quite right.

As far as high-def goes I can wait. S3 doesn't accept hi-def downloads and apparently won't for awhile. HD DVD (or Blu) recorders aren't available yet either.

In general though, yep, a user may get burned once or twice, but there's no excuse to continually get burned by a service!

BTW, you should cover your "*assymetric*" a li'l better!


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

I say again. There is no way for the consumer to judge based on past experience that what they will get today from their PPV will be what they got yesterday.

Your objection applies to all labeling. As a consumer, I like the fact that folks can't call something chili that isn't chili.

Deciding to do away with the principle of truth in labeling in the marketplace is fairly radical. Among other things, what it does is establish a disincentive to newcomer small businesses because no one can really be sure whether the newcomer is not using mule meat or no meat at all. 

Really- you just don't like regulation of any kind so this is rather pointless, isn't it.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

Justin Thyme said:


> Your objection applies to all labeling. As a consumer, I like the fact that folks can't call something chili that isn't chili.


but you buy ground beef without knowing what it was made of. S brisket or sirloin, etc.. So you can say 100% quality ground beef even though it is made from some lesser cut of meat than another brand that just says ground Beef. They do have to disclose the amount of fat as well.

People do buy things based on perceived quality without some govt. standard on levels of quality. I think all that is needed is just a minimum standard to label something HD and that should include audio quality as well. anything less can not be called HD anything above that competes by advertising how they are better. Add in some truth in labeling on things like compression rate as a standard number and you are good to go, I think


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

Justin Thyme, 

I can not speak for others but I am not generally against regulation/consumer projection legislation and or labeling. I do however have to believe that the benefits have to out way the costs before I support it. In the case of downloadable/streamable video quality rating labeling, I do not see the benefits outweighing the costs (yet). At this point I don't even know who would set the ratings and if anyone would agree on what they should be. 

You have compared a quality ratings system to beef grading (which I support). I would say you should look at downloadable/streamable video like buying the beef in a restaurant not like buying the beef in a store. You can have 3 restaurants all selling meals using the same grade beef however one meal can taste great, the next can be ok, and the third can stink the only way to know is to buy the meals and find out or rely on your own past experience or other peoples recommendations. 

We are in the infancy of compression technology, I think we should let the providers see what they can do before we add costs or impose restrictions. Once labeling is required then costs have to go up to pay for it. Also for it to be meaningful there has to be some type of oversight (police) and some type of penalty system (courts & fines) to enforce the standards again all of which will cost money. 

When downloadable/streamable video has become common/in the main stream and the tech has settled out then I can see a point where it would be reasonable to expect enforceable quality ratings. Which would hopefully be developed by the industry itself. 

Thanks,


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## TiVo Troll (Mar 23, 2006)

Justin Thyme said:


> I say again. There is no way for the consumer to judge based on past experience that what they will get today from their PPV will be what they got yesterday.
> 
> Your objection applies to all labeling. As a consumer, I like the fact that folks can't call something chili that isn't chili.
> 
> ...


If your post is directed at mine, just above it, yes it is pointless, primarily because its conclusion, regarding my views on regulation in general, is totally wrong.

If your post isn't directed at mine, so state, and I'll delete this one.

I do believe that performance generally does follow a predictable pattern and a user can judge from past performance whether its worth dealing with a vendor repeatedly.

I do believe that you continue to post OT in this Forum, in violation of Forum policies, advocating a political position: i.e. that government should regulate internet download quality specifications.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

I agree wholeheartedly with the notion that the government should not set up a bureaucracy for policing the quality of video.

Never did I propose such a thing. 

All I proposed was that the vendors be required to give an indication of how much visual data they were delivering. I was not vague about how "visual data" was measured. this was calculated as data rate times a normalization factor that adjusts for the efficiency of the compression technology used. 

There is a huge difference between an SD or HD movie that a vendor has decided to use their compressor to squeeze a file down to one fourth of what they used to squeeze the file to. 

Benefits? As I stated earlier, uniform labels provide a standardized way of communicating values between buyers and sellers and signaling consumer preferences back through marketing channels to the producer.

The overall benefit for consumers knowing what they are buying is that competition is strengthened. A grab bag system of video delivery makes this pitch to the consumer- "hey trust me- I'm not telling you what's in the bag, but most of the time you liked it, right? So let's stick to our long term relationship. Sign here on item 7, 27, 38, and initial there on 66...." Uniform labeling gives a chance for unknown small competitors to chip away at that hegemony. To be able to sell one or two movies the consumer would otherwise buy from their normal provider. The small competitor can make the pitch that they are delivering more movie for less money. This forces the video provider to compete. 

What we have today is grab bag video delivery. The bag is marked Digital SD, or HD. The bag may have one sixth of the visual data that the guy down the street is selling. 

Compliance costs- well gee. How hard is it to take the size of the file, divide by the number of minutes it plays, multiply by a normalization factor for the profile you used to compress the file? Does that seem excessively difficult to you?

Consumers don't want or need a Gestapo when they ask for honesty about a product. Bureucrats are unnecessary for consumers to be able to seek redress. EG: The landlord claims they rented me a home with a carpet that had no burn spot in it, I say it did. I take them to small claims and show the judge the move in photos. Happens all the time. If I buy a PPV movie for electronic download from Comcast and the guide says they were delivering one level of data and they delivered another, I can challenge them for fraud, and join with others in a class action suit. Happens all the time. No cops. No bureaucracy. 

What are the benefits of requiring a vendor to state what they are going to deliver, a promise that if not kept risks legal penalties? Well- this is a fairly generic question about consumer law isn't it. Comcast gets burned with a large court settlement, and they learn that it is too costly to fudge the compression rates in order to deal with bottlenecks in their network. It forces them to deliver what they told the customers they were going to deliver.

Benefits to internet delivery marketplace: Consumers have a way of knowing whether the internet provider is promising to deliver substantially more visual data than the movie delivered by the cable or satco network. Because they can compare, there is competition. 

Consumer confidence- The disincentives for delivering lots of visual data (bandwidth costs, QOS costs for sustained data rates) must now be balanced against legal liability for not delivering a level of data that was promised.


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## TiVo Troll (Mar 23, 2006)

Justin Thyme said:


> All I proposed was that the vendors be required to give an indication of how much visual data they were delivering.


Required? By whom?

If government it's an OT political advocacy issue.

But if left to the marketplace it wouldn't be "required", just a feature of a service that a vendor could choose to offer for competitive advantage.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

The article also did not give any treatment of the last mile portion of the Big Lie concerning internet video downloads. That concerns both the data bottleneck due to the disincentive to upgrade to glass, and the naivete about the leverage that the owners of the last mile have. First, the naivete.

If a video distributor owns the last mile to the home, if they see internet video competitors horning in on their consumers, they can be expected to use the tools they have to compete. There's going to be hanky panky.

Maybe folks are right- that regulations governing caps, preferential delivery of packets, you-name-it-game that could be played in the last mile... it would just be a never ending quagmire since there would always be strong economic incentive to defeat or bypass the governmental regulations in some way. 

The horizontal divestiture approach is an interesting alternative that hasn't been discussed much yet. Maybe using anti- trust to force divestiture of the last mile from these companies is the best way. Operation of the last mile would be in the same manner that localities have regulated companies that operate the last mile for electricity delivery to the home. There is no financial disincentive for upgrading using silicon photonics switches, allowing internet video distributors to supply video to the home if they so choose, no conflict of interest in selling bandwidth to multiple competing landline phone companies. 

The main argument I see against that sort of approach is that so long as there are Verizons laying glass that is theoretically upgradable to terabit speeds to homes, then dang- stay out of the way. On the other hand, public utilities with thin margins can raise capital, and they have no economic disincentive to replace all copper with very thick glass lines. There are some communities that simply aren't economically interesting enough for Verizon's to serve for various reasons- including the small size, rural nature, and existence of an entrenched copper provider.

Upgrade of capacity in the last mile is a key challenge to enabling the market for internet delivered video to devices such as Tivos.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Justin Thyme said:


> I say again. There is no way for the consumer to judge based on past experience that what they will get today from their PPV will be what they got yesterday.


Just like EVERYTHING else in life.



Justin Thyme said:


> Your objection applies to all labeling.


No, my objection is to fostering unreasonably specific expectations that are not based on explicit promises.



Justin Thyme said:


> As a consumer, I like the fact that folks can't call something chili that isn't chili.[


Chili can mean a lot of different things, and that's *okay*.



Justin Thyme said:


> Deciding to do away with the principle of truth in labeling in the marketplace is fairly radical.


Which is why no one said anything about that. You want to call it a matter of truth, but there is no untruth here, there is no lying, there is no deception. You are the one who made it clear that HD isn't explicit -- that it is vague -- it is not a lie because you choose to call it such, because calling it such appeals to your own personal sense of purity.



Justin Thyme said:


> Among other things, what it does is establish a disincentive to newcomer small businesses because no one can really be sure whether the newcomer is not using mule meat or no meat at all.


Just like EVERYTHING else in life.



Justin Thyme said:


> Really- you just don't like regulation of any kind so this is rather pointless, isn't it.


I've advocated appropriate regulation. This isn't appropriate -- it's just your own personal preference.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Justin Thyme said:


> I agree wholeheartedly with the notion that the government should not set up a bureaucracy for policing the quality of video. Never did I propose such a thing.


Then you should go back to your earlier message and remove the legalistic phrase, "truth in labeling" and the word regulation. In the absence of that, you're simply hiding the true intent of your perspective by using innuendo.



Justin Thyme said:


> All I proposed was that the vendors be required to give an indication of how much visual data they were delivering.


Now you're contradicting yourself, within the same message -- there is no rational way to reconcile your claim that you're not advocating regulation with your claim that "vendors should be *required*".


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

bicker said:


> Chili can mean a lot of different things, and that's *okay*.


Well, feel free to try to sell some that doesn't have 30% meat. If you do, you will face not just lawsuits but the USDA.

Sorry, but your position against any sort of regulation is radical, and I have no interest in a generic debate on your unusual theories regarding consumer rights.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> I posed a hypothetical of the form: If your download limit were X, then: Big lie.
> 
> Fill in the X as you please. If any of you bothered to look at the article Morac linked to, you would have learned what he said is true. You don't know what the X is, because they won't tell you. But folks are getting their internet service cut off a year for exceeding their invisible limit.
> 
> ...


true- but who's to say that the limits today are the same limits as tomorrow?

while unpleasant if you are the user ahead of the curve I think the market will likley take care of that.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

MichaelK said:


> true- but who's to say that the limits today are the same limits as tomorrow?
> 
> while unpleasant if you are the user ahead of the curve I think the market will likley take care of that.


I see. Kind of like how the market took care of the problem of third party access to the video distribution networks of vertical monopolies?


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

to be honest with the advent of telco fiber and sprints nationwide wimax I'm much less concerned about the last mile then i was just a short time ago.

in the area's lucky enough to have it FIOS really forces cable to do the right thing with data. And I can only imagine that sprint/nextel's decision to dump their local telco was related to their massive program to do nationwide wimax. Perhaps they thought they no longer needed the copper last mile?

I saw a blurb the other day that a pile of big guns with dish, directv, intel, (I think google and MS where involved too) petitioned the FCC to auction the next bandwidth slices in nationwide chunks to allow other wireless last mile competitors to prosper.

Per my post above- it's even funny to think you can take up to 10 gigs a month on your cell phone now a days and that's completely fine with VZW. (I think sprint might truly still be unlimited with their evdo but I'm not sure)


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> I see. Kind of like how the market took care of the problem of third party access to the video distribution networks of vertical monopolies?


what are we talking about now- total bandwidth caps or net neutrality?

net neutrality I'm not sure what happens there.

But in my humble opinion bandwidth caps will continue to go up and up and up. Such cabs might exist for a long time but in my mind they will continue to rise as the technology allows and the market dictates.

Who has forced all the gains in DL speeds in the past 3-5 years? The market.

My cable company had ONE WAY cable modems just 3 years ago. Since then they rebuilt their whole plant. IN the past year the DL speeds for the BASIC cable modem service went from 1 to 3 to 9 mbps without any increase in price. My area is served by the armpit telco emparq (the local telco that sprint threw away)- so I'm more likely to see snow in July then fiber from my telco. So there's not even direct local competition yet my cable company just keeps chugging away and jacking up the speeds.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Big difference between then and now. The cableco's never had a conflict of interest in delivering bandwidth. With Unbox and Xbox Live, they do now. Do you think they aren't going to notice that their network is getting stressed severely by data that is coming from their video competitors? 

My skepticism about market forces regarded consideration of non uniform pricing and restrictions on video deliverred to the home. Caps is just one form of restriction. Pricing is another. I don't think that cable can be counted on to be impartial about setting prices for bandwidth necessary to deliver internet video from competitors. They weren't even slightly impartial about cablecards. 

Caps are hard to defend if you have gobs of excess capacity. You be the cableco exec. If you have the bandwidth on copper for your own video delivery needs, you could lay glass to increase your capacity so that your competitors have an easier time competing with your content. Yeah, you could also gas up a chain saw and hand it to an axe murderer but the question is:

Why would you?

So long as there are 3 or 4 providers of affordable broadband capable of internet video delivery in an area then market forces can take care of imbalances. That's not reality today. Tomorrow? Ok. Where are those providers coming from? 

Wimax? It would be nice if it were the white knight. There are some big questions about how it scales up to handle video delivery data volumes in urban centers. Even at its outset Wimax pricing is not competitive and the rates are underwhelming. I don't know what the cost of wireless broadband in your area is, but McCaw's Clearwire only promises "up to" 1.5Mbps. That's not any 70Mbps that the 802.16 yahoos gab about. The reality is that Wimax may be a solution for rural, but is way way shy of what you need for the more densely populated neighborhoods where most of the population of the US lives. 

Glass? The costs have skyrocketed to upwards of $300 per foot causing some analyists to note that there is no great buildout of fiber going on and observe that the hopes for wide penetration of fiber to the home are quickly fading. 

How many decades before there are such competitive choices for the majority of Americans? 

Market forces will solve the last mile? I see no reason for optimism. We are near last among developed countries for broadband penetration. For the broadband we have, it is half the speed and twice as expensive as elsewhere.

We have tried laissez faire with broadband, and the Alfred E Newman shrug-your-shoulders, "what me worry" attitude is not cutting it. Maybe it is time to rediscover the benefits of constructive and proactive government policy and involvement in building industry and technological capability to be competitive in the international markets.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Justin Thyme said:


> Well, feel free to try to sell some that doesn't have 30% meat. If you do, you will face not just lawsuits but the USDA.


So now you've gone off the reservation AGAIN, by trying to equate usage of the unregulated term HD with what you claim is a regulated term "chili". Pick a side, Justin.



Justin Thyme said:


> Sorry, but your position against any sort of regulation is radical


It would be if I really was against "any sort of regulation". That's just a lie you tell to make my position sound more extreme, and to vainly attempt to make your position sound more reasonable. If you were engaging in intellectual honesty, you wouldn't have to lie about what my position is.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

> Originally Posted by *Justin Thyme*
> Market forces will solve the last mile? I see no reason for optimism. We are near last among developed countries for broadband penetration. For the broadband we have, it is half the speed and twice as expensive as elsewhere.


I find it highly unlikely that the "market" will fully solve the "last mile" problem. Sure in areas that Verizon wants to protect their current investment and that have high enough density and income Verizon will be able to come in with FIOS, but for many areas it will be financially imposable to have FIOS. Given our Country's Geographic size and low population density if we decide high speed Internet is a necessity like electricity and telephone then the government will have to be involved and we will have to have some type of subsidy plan, just like electricity and telephone.

However I find it hard to believe that FIOS type high speed internet (or cable/satellite TV) is a necessity. I know plenty of people who have neither. I think people need to remember that all of this stuff is not a necessity. I actually lived the first 2 years of my post college life without a telephone or TV - they just cost too much and I didn't have the money - I survived just fine.

Thanks,


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

It depends on what kind of necessity one considers necessary.

If we were simply talking about entertainment, I wouldn't have the slightest interest. 

Ever hear of the Gutenberg press effect? What happenned was you had this device that allowed a tremendous increase in the variety of information people could recieve. Not just the network stuff that the local monk-scribes were permitted to churn out. No- we were talking anything you wanted to get your hands on. Plays by Euripides- Plato- you name it. 

The flood triggered the Rennaisance.

Nowdays, people don't read much. Their primary source of information is video. 

Consider this- What happens when large populations are able to have video their way- That is- they are able to pursue their individual tastes- and enrich and build on the perceptions of the world that are simpatico with theirs.

You get a much more diverse and interesting world because it is more individuated.

That matters.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

atmuscarella said:


> However I find it hard to believe that FIOS type high speed internet (or cable/satellite TV) is a necessity. I know plenty of people who have neither. I think people need to remember that all of this stuff is not a necessity. I actually lived the first 2 years of my post college life without a telephone or TV - they just cost too much and I didn't have the money - I survived just fine.
> 
> Thanks,


The last mile build out question has another implication as well. If you build it out to the broadest possible base then more business oppurtunities are also possible. It is about economic development on a large scale. It almost is no different than a county building an office park with low rents to attract businesses to the area and increase the tax base.

You just have two overiding principles to deal with
1. make sure no company gets unduly penalized that operated fair and square under the current business/legal environment

2. Make sure all companies have an equal chance of benefittting from such an infrastructure


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

It seems to me that a reasonable model is that of the post 90's restructured electrical utilities which required the utilities to separate transmission to the home (which is a natural monopoly and requires regulation) from generation (which became deregulated and responsive to market efficiencies). 

This does not concern merely the previously mentioned proposal to use anti-trust to force horizontal divestiture of the last mile into analogous regulated data transmission utilities.

Picture the requirement that when analog Television spectrum is freed up that it may only be sold to regulated data transmission utitilies for sole purpose of the broadband internet Wimax to every home. Rules for such utilities would closely track those for electric utilities.


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## CharlesH (Aug 29, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> It seems to me that a reasonable model is that of the post 90's restructured electrical utilities which required the utilities to separate transmission to the home (which is a natural monopoly and requires regulation) from generation (which became deregulated and responsive to market efficiencies).


  Like it happened here in California, where they have recordings of workers at electricity providers discussing and snickering among themselves how they are sticking it to those Californians big time by playing price-inflating games such as with how the electricity was routed? Unfortunately the perps (Enron) conveniently went bankrupt, so the state got only pennies on the dollar of the settlement the court ruled for them.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Not sure what the California experience implies for internet delivery of video. The transition here would be to creation of utilities for the last mile where none existed before. I don't understand the details of the California situation, but as I recall, you are describing a fraud that occured after existing utilities were separated from power generation activities.

Just sketching out what the Wimax variant might look like, a customer might have a set amount of guaranteed bandwidth. Their Telephone provider could allocate it to VOIP, or their streaming video provider could have them allocate it to their streaming video. The customer pays the same regulated fee per month of service to the internet utility regardless how the customer has it allocated. The utility might be able to sell additional guaranteed bandwidth to companies like google or whatever so that their video advertisements look good. They sell it at the going rate and can charge what the market will bear, but as a regulated utility, they cannot offer favorable pricing to one company over another company.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

the conversation is certainly interesting- i few points I'd make-

I like the idea of creating a regulated delivery utility and then allowing open access to whatever content suppliers want on- not sure it will ever fly but I too think that's the best idea.

For the majority of the population I suspect that verizon or att or rcn or some other alternate last mile will pop up. Verizon will do all the big cities in it's area and if the states Wise up they can twist telco arms by giving statewide franchises in exchange for minimum built outs. Here in NJ there's like 560 municipalities- they got a statewide franchise in December and already are live in 196 towns. They have plans on the table for 344 towns and have said they will add more after that. When you pull out the towns (like mine) that are served by crappy embarq and not VZ they probably will penetrate at least 75% of the towns they service with fios in like 24 months time which is probably going to be a higher percentage of the population they serve. NJ is dense and affluent so it makes sense to do much of that- but the state twisted their arm to a small degree about where and to a larger degree about how fast. There's no reason the denser states along the costs couldn't do similar deals. NY, PA, Ct, Va, De, Md, Ma could probably all get most of thier population covered with VZ fios if they wanted to. Ca and Tx seemed to have given away the store.

With much of the population hooked up with a second wireline provider you can save wimax for the more rural areas where apparently it is better suited. Areas where it's just a bit too sparse for the wired alternate I would imagine wimax would do well. In the middle of nowhere probably those poor folks are just beat- not sure anyone is going to even do wimax in the middle of the desert southwest as an example. And it's not needed in the cities because verizon or ATT or RCN will jump in there.

Clearwires 1.5mbps is still faster then rural dsl and it's first generation. wifi started out 11 then went to 22 then 54 in a matter of a few years. I suspect that the wimax people will come out with better faster methods over time also.

100% of the people wont get choices but still the majority of people should wind up with choices.

And who knows what that dbs/intel/google/skype/yahoo camp comes up with for plans with the tv spectrum to be auctioned: http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6422004.html

Directv and Dish certainly have an interest in figuring out a solution to the last mile issue- they might not be in business for forever if they don't. google skype(isn;t that ebay now?) and yahoo all have an interest in seeing to it they they have unimpeeded last mile access.

So yup I'm optimistic that there will be lots of bits available for all.

As above not sure what comes of those bits and if networks are forced to remain neutral or open or whatever but I really am optimistic that a lots of bits will be around for MANY (perhaps not all) of the people.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

What is the timeframe for the 344 town buildout for FIOS?


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

You can, of course, distort the meaning of "necessity" and "luxury" if you want, but it would only degrade the value of discussion, as you'd be using words to mean things other than what they mean, and your conclusions would be, at best, incomprehensible, and at worst, erroneous.

We're ostensibly talking about the difference between something being extremely clear and something being "very" extremely clear. IMHO, that difference is, in no reasonable person's mind, a necessity for survival on our civilization.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

MichaelK said:


> I like the idea of creating a regulated delivery utility and then allowing open access to whatever content suppliers want on- not sure it will ever fly but I too think that's the best idea.


It has worked elsewhere- Utah for example did this. Anyway, to answer the question about timing for the kind of broadband that would make HD movie downloads not a lie- For the forseeable future such service will continue to be delivered by companies with monopoly power.

One thing is certain- our current public policies have delivered two things:

Not even a second rate broadband infrastructure. The US is 12th among developed countries (OECD)
Further strengthening of the market power of duopolies controlling last mile delivery.
Naive laissez-Faire says this will work itself all out- technology will deliver etc if we just let it alone.

So why are we 12th place? Maybe it is because it is another big lie we have been telling ourselves regarding proactive government policy.

In any case, HD movie downloads are possible with Tivos in the kind of lthird rate broadband we have today over cable and dsl, so its progress will continue despite this lack of leadership in information infrastructure.


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

Did we ever figure out if 1.37 GB/hr 1114x723 MPEG2 videos are HD?


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