# Amazon Unbox in HD



## dolfer (Nov 3, 2000)

Has anyone heard any rumors about Unbox HD? 

Considering Xbox Live is able to do it, I would think Amazon should be able to pull it off.


----------



## jordanz (Jun 21, 2004)

I downloaded a movie last night! It works great. The Tivo HD is an amazing box. There are so many great features - I'm just beginning to explore them all.


----------



## Stu_Bee (Jan 15, 2002)

Jordanz...you didn't download an Amazon HD movie, which is what Dolfer is asking about.
---
Dolfer:
It sure is possible, but I guess the % of HD capable tivo's might make it less inviting to amazon for the expense of re-encoding all their movies to HD-mp4.
As the new S3-HD gets popular, I hope they do consider it.


----------



## dipdewdog (May 9, 2005)

dolfer said:


> Has anyone heard any rumors about Unbox HD?
> 
> Considering Xbox Live is able to do it, I would think Amazon should be able to pull it off.


It would be silly of them not to move toward HD content if they really want to compete with services like XBox live and Comcast's On Demand offerings, not to mention HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

Fingers crossed that it will happen soon.


----------



## dolfer (Nov 3, 2000)

Stu_Bee said:


> Jordanz...you didn't download an Amazon HD movie, which is what Dolfer is asking about.
> ---
> Dolfer:
> It sure is possible, but I guess the % of HD capable tivo's might make it less inviting to amazon for the expense of re-encoding all their movies to HD-mp4.
> As the new S3-HD gets popular, I hope they do consider it.


Stu, don't forget that Unbox also works with PCs. So luckily it's not based on Tivo numbers alone.


----------



## Chevy_Cowboy (Jun 24, 2007)

It'd be a nice first step if they'd just offer widescreen and 5.1 sound

As it stands Unbox is pretty silly IMO.


----------



## SugarBowl (Jan 5, 2007)

Downloadable HD is the "future" of home movie viewing. Not the present.


----------



## snathanb (Sep 13, 2006)

It takes me forever long just to download an SD unbox... 768k connection only.

But, really... if it weren't for the $15 credit Amazon gave me... I wouldn't even use it.


----------



## jordanz (Jun 21, 2004)

Stu_Bee said:


> Jordanz...you didn't download an Amazon HD movie, which is what Dolfer is asking about.


Oops - you're right. Sorry about that.

I do get HD movies on my XBOX, though


----------



## TerryTT (Aug 8, 2007)

SugarBowl said:


> Downloadable HD is the "future" of home movie viewing. Not the present.


Why? mpeg4 cable hsi or fios...


----------



## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

SugarBowl said:


> Downloadable HD is the "future" of home movie viewing. Not the present.


Download HD content through MS on the Xbox, and others, is really starting to take off.

I have an HD DVD player and now watching movies even at DVD resolutions is painful. I really hope that Amazon Unbox is offering decent HD movies sometime in the near future. :up:


----------



## vstone (May 11, 2002)

dolfer said:


> Stu, don't forget that Unbox also works with PCs. So luckily it's not based on Tivo numbers alone.


On the other hand, that might be why we aren't seeing any HD.


----------



## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

vstone said:


> On the other hand, that might be why we aren't seeing any HD.


I would imagine that making it so HD versions play on Tivo boxes or other "copy protected" devices would be a pretty trivial thing to do.

The real holdup with HD movies for download is the massive bandwidth requirements.

If you want to download the movie in any reasonable amount of time the transfer rate has to be quite high, if you have 10,000 people downloading a popular HD movie like '300' at 1000kbps each it's going to require some SERIOUS bandwidth at the server end.


----------



## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I don't expect to see HD content on Unbox until after TiVo gets the MPEG4 playback feature working on S3 units. Until then Amazon would have to use MPEG2, which would create a huge file that would suck up a ton of their bandwidth and take a very long time to download even on a fast connection. (HD MPEG2 is about 4 times the size of SD MPEG2)

Dan


----------



## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

Dan203 said:


> I don't expect to see HD content on Unbox until after TiVo gets the MPEG4 playback feature working on S3 units. Until then Amazon would have to use MPEG2, which would create a huge file that would suck up a ton of their bandwidth and take a very long time to download even on a fast connection. (HD MPEG2 is about 4 times the size of SD MPEG2)
> 
> Dan


Can the Tivo decode VC1?


----------



## yunlin12 (Mar 15, 2003)

The Tivo HD is capable of VC1, but not the S3

THD has Broadcom 7401
http://www.tivolovers.com/a-review-of-the-tivo-hd-digital-media-recorder/
http://www.broadcom.com/products/Ca...udio-Video-Graphics-System-Processors/BCM7401
It specifically says VC-1

Tivo S3 has Broadcom 7411
http://www.tivolovers.com/a-review-of-the-tivo-series3-hd-digital-media-recorder/
http://www.broadcom.com/products/Ca...udio-Video-Graphics-System-Processors/BCM7411
Which is H.264 capable, but not VC-1

Since both HDDVD and BlueRay uses VC-1, you think Tivo would get more HD compatibility with this new chip?


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

yunlin12 said:


> The Tivo HD is capable of VC1, but not the S3
> 
> THD has Broadcom 7401
> http://www.tivolovers.com/a-review-of-the-tivo-hd-digital-media-recorder/
> ...


If you read the BCM7411 product brief and not just the little synopsis on the web page, you'll see:
Multi-standard video decoding support for:
MPEG-2 [email protected]
MPEG-2 [email protected]
AVC [email protected] for 480i
AVC [email protected] 720p
AVC [email protected] 1080i
AVC [email protected] 1080i for Blu-Ray and HD DVD
*VC-1 [email protected] 1080i*

At the top of its list of features and:
VC-1 advanced profile decoder
 as the second line-item in its list of "Functional Components", and finally, the paragraph:


> *VC-1 Support*
> The BCM7411 supports Advanced Profile VC-1 streams up to 40 Mbps, as defined in the proposed SMPTE specification.


There's an implication that it can only handle 1080 VC-1 AP, which seems a bit silly, but that may be all that's required for an HD video disc player and that's what they were thinking of when they engineered the feature. Who knows?

The product brief for the BMC7401 doesn't seem to specify any format limitation for VC-1 encoding, and the device can handle VC-1 Simple and Main profiles as well as the Advanced profile. It can also output at 1080p24 and 1080p30 which the BMC7411 can't.


----------



## sbiller (May 10, 2002)

Dan203 said:


> I don't expect to see HD content on Unbox until after TiVo gets the MPEG4 playback feature working on S3 units. Until then Amazon would have to use MPEG2, which would create a huge file that would suck up a ton of their bandwidth and take a very long time to download even on a fast connection. (HD MPEG2 is about 4 times the size of SD MPEG2)
> 
> Dan


Dan,

Can you provide more details on the MP4 playback feature? Is this something that you expect to see in the next software update?

TIA,
Sam


----------



## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

mikeyts said:


> If you read the BCM7411 product brief and not just the little synopsis on the web page, you'll see:
> Multi-standard video decoding support for:
> MPEG-2 [email protected]
> MPEG-2 [email protected]
> ...


All versions of the BCM7401 and BCM7411 will decode MPEG-4 and VC-1 formats at 720p and 1080i. The BCM7401 and the latest revision of the BCM7411 (which the S3 may not have) can also handle 1080p24 decode and output.

The BCM7411 is the decoder used in the first-generation Toshiba HD-DVD players, as well as the Samsung BD-P1000 and BD-P1200 Blu-ray players.


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

dipdewdog said:


> It would be silly of them not to move toward HD content if they really want to compete with services like XBox live and Comcast's On Demand offerings, not to mention HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.
> 
> Fingers crossed that it will happen soon.


Don't hold your breath... ....the other dealbreaker (especially for those of us who are hearing impaired) is no closed captioning/subtitles.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

bkdtv said:


> All versions of the BCM7401 and BCM7411 will decode MPEG-4 and VC-1 formats at 720p and 1080i. The BCM7401 and the latest revision of the BCM7411 (which the S3 may not have) can also handle 1080p24 decode and output.
> 
> The BCM7411 is the decoder used in the first-generation Toshiba HD-DVD players, as well as the Samsung BD-P1000 and BD-P1200 Blu-ray players.


Thank you. So it's just another case of bad spec-sheet writing .


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Bierboy said:


> Don't hold your breath... ....the other dealbreaker (especially for those of us who are hearing impaired) is no closed captioning/subtitles.


I'm not even hearing impaired and I like to have the closed captions enabled. I've rented the odd HD movie from Xbox Live Video Marketplace and occasionally play something on Netflix "Watch Now" and I miss the captions a lot.


----------



## kb7oeb (Jan 18, 2005)

Dan203 said:


> I don't expect to see HD content on Unbox until after TiVo gets the MPEG4 playback feature working on S3 units. Until then Amazon would have to use MPEG2, which would create a huge file that would suck up a ton of their bandwidth and take a very long time to download even on a fast connection. (HD MPEG2 is about 4 times the size of SD MPEG2)
> 
> Dan


8 to 16GB for 2 hours depending on bitrate. Xbox live HD movie downloads (all are max 720p) are all around 4GB from what I have seen. I did download the free HD pilot of Jericho and the quality was very good considering the file size but I'll stick with my 1080i CBS.


----------



## kb7oeb (Jan 18, 2005)

mikeyts said:


> I'm not even hearing impaired and I like to have the closed captions enabled. I've rented the odd HD movie from Xbox Live Video Marketplace and occasionally play something on Netflix "Watch Now" and I miss the captions a lot.


It was almost a requirement for me to follow the dialog on Deadwood


----------



## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

jmpage2 said:


> The real holdup with HD movies for download is the massive bandwidth requirements.


I wouldn't say "Massive". It'll take about 5 times as long, give or take.



jmpage2 said:


> If you want to download the movie in any reasonable amount of time the transfer rate has to be quite high


Define "reasonable" I downloaded Hook in an hour and a half. I don't consider 7 - 8 hours to be too terribly unreasonable. 'Start downloading before you go to work or the night before and the movie will be ready after supper, at the very latest.



jmpage2 said:


> if you have 10,000 people downloading a popular HD movie like '300' at 1000kbps each it's going to require some SERIOUS bandwidth at the server end.


It's also going to be paying you better than $5000 an hour for the trouble. I work for a Telecommunications company who does nothing but sell bandwidth by the megabit, and believe me, for under $1000 an hour you can fairly easily buy 50 Gigabits/sec of Internet access. That's enough to service those 10,000 people's download requirements, with $4000+ an hour profit.


----------



## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

sbiller said:


> Dan,
> 
> Can you provide more details on the MP4 playback feature? Is this something that you expect to see in the next software update?
> 
> ...


Don't have any details. The hardware is capable of it, so it's just a matter of TiVo modifying their code to enable it. I have no idea what that entails or when/if it will ever actually happen. I was simply saying that if Amazon is ever going to offer HD content it's going to be in the much more compact MPEG4 or VC-1 formats, and NOT MPEG2. So if we're ever going to get it on our TiVo's then they need to enable that hardware.

Dan


----------



## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

Dan203 said:


> Don't have any details. The hardware is capable of it, so it's just a matter of TiVo modifying their code to enable it. I have no idea what that entails or when/if it will ever actually happen. I was simply saying that if Amazon is ever going to offer HD content it's going to be in the much more compact MPEG4 or VC-1 formats, and NOT MPEG2. So if we're ever going to get it on our TiVo's then they need to enable that hardware.
> 
> Dan


MS seems to be doing quite well with "HD Lite" 720P VC1 videos that seem to run around 4-6GB for a full length movie.

While certainly not up to the quality of an HD-DVD or Blu-ray disc it would certainly be a huge step up over DVD quality.

The biggest holdups with distribution of HD quality movies via download seems to be copy protection. Maybe Tivo doesn't muster up to what the movie studios want to see in copy protection with downloads of their HD stuff.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

If TiVo's on-disk protection passes muster for DFAST compliance, then it's probably good enough for this. I'm sure that we're not seeing HD downloads from Amazon yet because Amazon can't see a business case for it yet.


----------



## megazone (Mar 3, 2002)

dolfer said:


> Has anyone heard any rumors about Unbox HD?


Yes, I have.


----------



## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Ok, Sam Gigliotti said they were working on HD March 7. 


Gigliotti said:


> We're working on getting HD content for the Series 3, as well as cleaning up the 4:3 vs 16:9 issue. It just takes time to re-encode thousands of video files and get them uploaded to our CDN. You will see this situation improve in the near future. 3/7/2007 Engadget


Hmmm. There aren't thousands of HD titles out there- as of this date, there are only several hundred BD and HD DVD titles combined, and that is with the studios going flat out in order to fight the format battle.

Clearly something else is holding up HD Titles. Besides the usual suspects our choices:

It's Hollywood. Ok. They are the biggest usual suspect. Content providers wish to block users from having electronic copies of high quality content, ignoring the lessons of the MP3 ripping debacle, believing somehow this time things will be different for video.
It's Tivo. Amazon wants to distribute in MPEG4 format, but Tivo HD's MP4 is not ready to confirm performance with encoding profiles.
It's Tivo and Amazon. Amazon wishes to differentiate itself as the provider of premium HD better than the HD-lite deliverred by Cable or SatCos. However, Amazon has run into MPeg2 playback performance issues with high bitrate movies with current Tivo S3 software. Unbox had the option of going with HD no better than Cable and Satco quality, but chose to wait for premium HD bitrates that might be possible in some future Tivo SW revision.
It's Hollywood and Tivo. Hollywood wants stronger DRM possible only on the BCM7401 due to it's SVP support. Tivo has to write some code for secure processing that is to Hollywood's liking. That development had to wait until Tivo HD went gold.


----------



## Scopeman (Oct 22, 2002)

SugarBowl said:


> Downloadable HD is the "future" of home movie viewing. Not the present.


OK, I guess. For those who haven't had that option for months via the XBox 360 Live service. But for many of us this "future" you refer is called NOW. In fact, there's enough content on teh XBox 360 service that I can be snobby and *only* download those things available in HD, passing up things available only in SD. Unbox is behind the times.


----------



## aindik (Jan 23, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> Hmmm. There aren't thousands of HD titles out there- as of this date, there are only several hundred BD and HD DVD titles combined, and that is with the studios going flat out in order to fight the format battle.


I'm not sure if you are limiting "HD titles" to those things available on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, but there is much more HD content out there than that. HBO-HD is able to somehow obtain an HD transfer of nearly every movie it shows. And there's all that first run television being produced in HD just waiting to be downloaded.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Scopeman said:


> OK, I guess. For those who haven't had that option for months via the XBox 360 Live service. But for many of us this "future" you refer is called NOW. In fact, there's enough content on teh XBox 360 service that I can be snobby and *only* download those things available in HD, passing up things available only in SD. Unbox is behind the times.


The last time I looked it was still only about 20% of XBL Video Marketplace content, though that's not too shabby, considering. It beats Unbox .


----------



## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

aindik said:


> I'm not sure if you are limiting "HD titles" to those things available on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, but there is much more HD content out there than that. HBO-HD is able to somehow obtain an HD transfer of nearly every movie it shows. And there's all that first run television being produced in HD just waiting to be downloaded.


I have seen a LOT of crappy upscales from SD movies appearing on HD channels. It is obscene.

Regardless, even if several hundred is all there is, I would be happy with that much, and I was quite honest that I would prefer for Amazon to host my entire HD collection rather than me buying a disk and ripping it to a server. Just so long as I could download them with the current limitations there are now (2 machines- as many times as I want, downressed if necessary for portables.)


----------



## mitomac (Aug 11, 2007)

Justin Thyme said:


> Just so long as I could download them with the current limitations there are now (2 machines- as many times as I want, downressed if necessary for portables.)


You may only own certain movies for 90 days....I guess we are only 'buying' a limited use license. wtf?!

From the amazon unbox site:

"Please note that due to licensing restrictions certain new release movies are unavailable for re-download for an unspecified period of time starting 90 days after their release date. While these movies can be viewed as often as you like during this window, they cannot be re-downloaded from Your Media Library."


----------



## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

Justin Thyme said:


> I have seen a LOT of crappy upscales from SD movies appearing on HD channels. It is obscene.
> 
> Regardless, even if several hundred is all there is, I would be happy with that much, and I was quite honest that I would prefer for Amazon to host my entire HD collection rather than me buying a disk and ripping it to a server. Just so long as I could download them with the current limitations there are now (2 machines- as many times as I want, downressed if necessary for portables.)


Justin,

Having done direct comparisons between download "HD Lite" quality HD titles and the high bandwidth HD DVD versions that are done in generious 1080p (30GB of space) there's simply no comparison.

The High Definition disc versions are head and shoulders above the download versions. Without a doubt.


----------



## aindik (Jan 23, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> I have seen a LOT of crappy upscales from SD movies appearing on HD channels. It is obscene.
> 
> Regardless, even if several hundred is all there is, I would be happy with that much, and I was quite honest that I would prefer for Amazon to host my entire HD collection rather than me buying a disk and ripping it to a server. Just so long as I could download them with the current limitations there are now (2 machines- as many times as I want, downressed if necessary for portables.)


Real movies are not "SD Movies." They're filmed on film. As long as the film is available and in good shape, a real HD transfer can be made, no matter how old the movie is. That's how HDNet gets things like Hogan's Heroes in HD. It's a transfer from film.

Whether the TV channel gets a good transfer or devotes enough bandwidth to its HD channel is another question.


----------



## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

SD movies may not be "real" movies but then again even 1080p bluray is not comparable to 35 let alone 70MM. The kick in the pants I see about HD on disks is that when you compare an upscaled SD DVD to an HD DVD or bluray, you just got to wonder- how many folks are really going to pay $15 more for the HD disk. I definately see the difference- no doubt about that. But do the hoi poloi care? My wife thinks its a nitpick even on the 58 inch screen. Sometimes I think she is blind, but the point is there is a point of sufficiency for many folks, and it will be real real embarassing for the CE industry if DVD SD quality is that point of sufficiency for a large segment of the big screen market.

I was just pointing out that the huge amount of HD you see out there is partly a mirage. Many of the so called HD movies are actually upconverts. In fact a lot of the non movie content- especially talk and news is upconverted SD video as well.

Regarding Unbox, here is a comparison  of HD versus what you get now from Unbox. We also had an extensive discussion here about HD-Lite versus higher quality HD available on HD DVD and bluray. I posted the photos illustrating the difference between even minor differences in bitrate, so yeah, I am quite familiar with the issues.

The main problem I see is that there is no certifiable terms that providers can use to describe to consumers what level of quality they can expect to get. That was the main focus of the previously mentioned thread.

Anyway, it would be real cool if Amazon differentiated itself by offering an HD better than typical broadcast HD lite. Eg 19Mbps Mpeg2 or the corresponding rate in MPeg4 (of course that would depend on an upgrade to Tivo HD software to support MPeg4 playback).


----------



## gschoen (Jan 27, 2002)

I love the idea of Unbox but after paying for all my HD equipment I'm unwilling to buy low quality video. Anyone have an idea where we could register our support? I was trying to find an Amazon feedback link/email since I assume Tivo has no objection to HD content!


----------



## editor58 (Sep 5, 2007)

gschoen said:


> I love the idea of Unbox but after paying for all my HD equipment I'm unwilling to buy low quality video. Anyone have an idea where we could register our support? I was trying to find an Amazon feedback link/email since I assume Tivo has no objection to HD content!


I have a ton of $$$ invested in HD - I will NOT WATCH SD TV!! EVER AGAIN!!

UNBOX IN HD????

I'll believe it when I see it!
3 HD TV's
2 Surround Sound Set-Ups
SXRD & Panny Plasma

WTF is Tivo and Amazon thinking??

BluRay is DEAD before it began - HD-DVD was dead before that.

The future is NOW - People was to download HD content and Movies NOW. Not next year. Not tomorrow... NOW. I have OptOnline with boost. I can get a film in 3 hours. SO WHY NOT NOW???

UNBOX, go away! come back when you are a serious player with a real service.

TIVO!! You want to know why your stock price SUX??? Old ideas! Bad Timing! Too little too late! You will go the way of the TESLA Electric Roadster. A great idea with POOR CORPORATE EXECUTION behind it.

This is a serious business. I was among the first to own a Series 1 and your stock. I believe... yet you continue to make bad decisions and even worse alignments.

Get it together or you will die. Now is your chance. Finally you have recognition and sales. I'm ready to buy another Series 3... but wait, are we in for the same mis-steps and mistakes that continue to plague you?

Time will tell, but your time is running out.

-editor
5 Emmy Awards
In the TV Business at the network level


----------



## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

There will be no Amazon Unbox in HD until TiVo releases software for the TiVoHD and Series3 with MPEG-4 AVC support.


----------



## editor58 (Sep 5, 2007)

bkdtv said:


> There will be no Amazon Unbox in HD until TiVo releases software for the TiVoHD and Series3 with MPEG-4 AVC support.


Looks like I got it right again

TIVO!! You want to know why your stock price SUX??? Old ideas! Bad Timing! *Too little too late!* You will go the way of the TESLA Electric Roadster. A great idea with POOR CORPORATE EXECUTION behind it.

I called that one!!

-editor


----------



## bizzy (Jan 20, 2004)

editor58 said:


> A great idea with POOR CORPORATE EXECUTION behind it.


I have to agree with you there. Tivo's needed competent leadership for years, and it is sad to see a great product's goodwill and buzz squandered.


----------



## editor58 (Sep 5, 2007)

bizzy said:


> I have to agree with you there. TIVO's needed competent leadership for years, and it is sad to see a great product's goodwill and buzz squandered.


IMO Tivo Series 3 and Tivo HD users should band together and refuse UNBOX services. Amazon will see the loss of revenue and either dump TIVO or "Push for a Solution". Money Talks!

I myself, didn't invest almost $75K for a Full Blown Home Theater and
a complete HD Surround set-up for the Master Bedroom to watch poor quality broadcast and video.

1) I do not (rarely) watch anything in SD

2) I will watch CNET Downloads, etc. fully aware that their original content was for web delivery. In this case i just want the story.

3) Cablevision in the NY Area needs to now catch up to Direct TV in terms of HD Content. I really don't need upscaled Kung Foo movies 24/7

Finally: HD is affordable. Get your priorities in order. Quit Smoking, and Lighten up on the Beer for 6 Months and you can afford an entire HD setup!
TV only rots you brain, it doesn't give you cancer... at least the Government says it doesn't... so it must be true 

Really though... TIVO, get it together!

-editor


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

It's difficult to tell just how much TiVo has to do with "leadership" of Amazon Unbox. They added a feature to allow download and playback of content from the service, which launched for use on PCs and portables quite a while before TiVo did that. I don't think that they have anything to do with the content or any influence over what the format of that content is. There is still a wider selection of content for playback on PCs: PCs have been capable of playing HD video since the service launched and HD video has yet to be offered for them. I believe that Unbox works with Series2 Tivos as well, of which there are many more in the field.

I doubt that grossing about the lack of HD video on Unbox here is going to do anything to change it. I don't think that TiVo could do anything about it if they wanted to and I doubt that anyone at Amazon makes any point of reading these forums.


----------



## TexasAg (Apr 2, 2006)

editor58 said:


> I have a ton of $$$ invested in HD - I will NOT WATCH SD TV!! EVER AGAIN!!
> 
> UNBOX IN HD????
> 
> ...


Rants like this by someone in the "TV business at the network level" make it easy to see why network television stinks.


----------



## bananaman (Jul 18, 2005)

I have had a VUDU box for a few months now. It works. There are currently more than 50 HD shows available for instant viewing/download, in addition to 5000 SD shows. I recommend it.

I wonder what is holding TiVo up?

Right now I use my TiVo Series 3 for TV shows which I can watch live or record, and my VUDU for on-demand shows (including some TV shows). I used Unbox a little before I got my VUDU box, but got use to VUDU's instant delivery (including HD).

After seeing that TiVo/Unbox and VUDU really do deliver good SD and HD content, I got rid of all my DVD's. My DVD player is in storage. I won't be needing a Blu-ray player either!


----------



## sneagle (Jun 12, 2002)

editor58 said:


> Looks like I got it right again
> 
> TIVO!! You want to know why your stock price SUX??? Old ideas! Bad Timing! *Too little too late!* You will go the way of the TESLA Electric Roadster. A great idea with POOR CORPORATE EXECUTION behind it.
> 
> ...


You know living on the cutting edge can be difficult. The vast majority of Americans have neither HD TVs nor the ability to download shows. The majority watch the crap on network TV in SD. If they want to watch a movie, they watch AMC or the network edited version. Or they use PPV.

So, mellow out and enjoy living on the cutting edge on your $75K home theater. Wait a bit, and that edge will move forward. For a few more $$$, you'll be able to catchup.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

sneagle said:


> You know living on the cutting edge can be difficult. The vast majority of Americans have neither HD TVs nor the ability to download shows.


Mmmmm, not quite so true anymore. The CEA estimates that there are now DTVs in 50% of American homes, probably fueled by the attractiveness and recent affordability of flatpanels. When they emerged, everyone wanted one and for the past year the prices have hit a point where almost everyone can have one. They were one of the most popular items over Christmas this year and last year. The proliferation of them is one of the reasons why satellite and cable are competing over breadth of HD content--when there were only a handful of HDTVs out there, who gave a damn?

Broadband Internet service, on the other hand, is still a bit pricey and I doubt that market penetration is as high.


----------



## brettatk (Oct 11, 2002)

mikeyts said:


> Mmmmm, not quite so true anymore. The CEA estimates that there are now DTVs in 50% of American homes, probably fueled by the attractiveness and recent affordability of flatpanels. When they emerged, everyone wanted one and for the past year the prices have hit a point where almost everyone can have one. They were one of the most popular items over Christmas this year and last year. The proliferation of them is one of the reasons why satellite and cable are competing over breadth of HD content--when there were only a handful of HDTVs out there, who gave a damn?
> 
> Broadband Internet service, on the other hand, is still a bit pricey and I doubt that market penetration is as high.


This is the most recent article I could find (October 2007):

http://www.tvpredictions.com/nielsenhd103107.htm

I find it hard to believe the numbers have increased significantly since then. I'd say the percentage is much higher for people age 45 and below. Most older people are happy watching their 20 year old set in SD.


----------



## aindik (Jan 23, 2002)

mikeyts said:


> Mmmmm, not quite so true anymore. The CEA estimates that there are now DTVs in 50% of American homes, probably fueled by the attractiveness and recent affordability of flatpanels. When they emerged, everyone wanted one and for the past year the prices have hit a point where almost everyone can have one. They were one of the most popular items over Christmas this year and last year. The proliferation of them is one of the reasons why satellite and cable are competing over breadth of HD content--when there were only a handful of HDTVs out there, who gave a damn?
> 
> Broadband Internet service, on the other hand, is still a bit pricey and I doubt that market penetration is as high.


Does "DTVs" include the SD TVs with digital tuners that they sell in the supermarket now because the FCC now requires every new TV sold to have a digital tuner?

Those people aren't looking for Unbox videos (or any other videos) in HD.


----------



## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

also dont forget that some large amount of the unwashed masses dont even have an HD source connected to their HDTV. And probably more dont know when their cable/sat box is showing stretched SD vs HD.

But still i do think we are at the tipping point. 

So I think tivo and amazon will get to it during this year.

Still tHere's not exactly tons of people downloading HD via other means really. So not sure how the earlier poster can think it's too late....


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

aindik said:


> Does "DTVs" include the SD TVs with digital tuners that they sell in the supermarket now because the FCC now requires every new TV sold to have a digital tuner?


I'm pretty sure that they're not including DTV-tuning SDTVs in the estimate, which is of HDTVs. Anyway, not _nearly_ all DTV broadcast are HD even today.

I'm not sure where I read that number, and it might have been a projection. In July, the CEA's estimate was that 32% of households with televisions (about 110 million across the US) had HDTVs, but Nielsen estimated that only 13.6% had HDTVs _and_ the means to tune HD broadcasts. That was several months back and sales continue strongly since, with DirecTV and the cablecos hawking HDTV.

I can certainly believe that the number is sky-rocketing, given the unwashed guys straight from the construction site that I see hauling $600-$800 37" no-name HD LCD panels home from Wal Mart when I stop there from time to time.


----------



## aindik (Jan 23, 2002)

mikeyts said:


> I'm pretty sure that they're not including DTV-tuning SDTVs in the estimate, which is of HDTVs.


Well, the post to which I was replying said "DTVs." Of course a TV that can't display HD content is not an HDTV. But it is a DTV if it has a digital tuner.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

aindik said:


> Well, the post to which I was replying said "DTVs." Of course a TV that can't display HD content is not an HDTV. But it is a DTV if it has a digital tuner.


Sorry--I misspoke in the first post. I agree that an SD-only ATSC tuning television does qualify as a DTV, but I think that they were specifically estimating HDTVs.


----------



## dolfer (Nov 3, 2000)

Glad to see this post is alive again! C'mon Amazon! Where is Unbox HD for Tivo????


----------



## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

dolfer said:


> Glad to see this post is alive again! C'mon Amazon! Where is Unbox HD for Tivo????


AFAIK, they do not have HD content for the Unbox player yet. I'm guessing they are in the process of getting the agreements in place. I would be shocked if Amazon hasn't been working on HD content for a while now. Even when Unbox on TiVo was announced, Amazon was quoted as saying they intending on providing HD content on Unbox in the future.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Xbox Live Video Marketplace (now called the Video Store, I think) launched two months after Amazon Unbox and has featured HD content from the beginning. They don't have anything like the depth of content available on Unbox, but they do feature a healthy offering of HD films and television series. They only rent movies, so those are available for a certain limited time (typically months), like cable PPV and VOD. Currently, 37% of the movies available for rent are available in an HD version (116 out of 313). The encoding bit rate is remarkably low (VC-1, at a typical average of under 7 Mbps), but they're 720p multipass VBR encodings done "by hand" and they do a very good job--some of the guys who work on authoring them post as industry experts at AVS Forum. I did a spot comparison of various scenes of _300_ and it compared very well with the Blu-ray transfer, taking the lower resolution into consideration.

HD television content varies by network and isn't as prevalent as for movies (30 out of 274 series have some HD available), with the largest proportion of HD stuff being available for CBS series.


----------



## MScottC (Sep 11, 2004)

TexasAg said:


> Rants like this by someone in the "TV business at the network level" make it easy to see why network television stinks.


Trust me, not all editors in the "TV business at the network level" rant like this. I have similar accolades and cringed at that rant.

A happy TiVo user for almost 9 years now.


----------



## kas25 (Mar 10, 2003)

It should be interesting to see what Apple announces today regarding renting movies via Itunes. Perhaps they will mention HD content as well given the Apple TV can handle it.


----------



## Globular (Jun 9, 2004)

OK, let's all remember that a TiVo is a DVR... for recording shows... that is, and should be, it's primary function in life.

For that purpose it is still the best out there, by far in my opinion.

All the other functions available on the platform are gravy. I want Unbox in HD also, and I've told them so a few times. They are aware of the demand. I too expect to see it in a matter of months on my TiVo HD. (That's just idle speculation on my part).

-Matt


----------



## avmike (Jun 12, 2007)

Amazon Unbox is a joke! Forget, HD, they can't even give us movies in anamorphic widescreen! What is this 1.33:1 crap?

BTW I sent them a note probably 6 months ago about this. Their response was "We are working on it...."

Maybe someone can teach them how to rip and transcode DVD's... 

Mike


----------



## bferrell (Jun 22, 2005)

Yea, I'd settle for getting movies available faster than HD and widescreen right now (though I want both eventually). For me CONTENT is king, then quality. If I have to go to Blockbuster I'm likely not going to get widescreen or Blu-ray either... and when the wife wants to watch X, then X is what we're watching whether I have to take the drive or not!

B


----------



## drhankz (Jan 14, 2008)

bferrell said:


> Yea, I'd settle for getting movies available faster than HD and widescreen right now (though I want both eventually). For me CONTENT is king, then quality. If I have to go to Blockbuster I'm likely not going to get widescreen or Blu-ray either... and when the wife wants to watch X, then X is what we're watching whether I have to take the drive or not!
> 
> B


APPLE ANNOUNCED HD MOVIE RENTALS YESTERDAY
With Support from EVERY STUDIO


----------



## cgould (Dec 28, 2002)

drhankz said:


> APPLE ANNOUNCED HD MOVIE RENTALS YESTERDAY
> With Support from EVERY STUDIO


EXACTLY.
Time to step up, Amazon- or Apple is going to roll over on you.
That said, I won't use EITHER myself, because of the stupid-moron studio 24hr limit. I have kids, so I have to watch movies late at night, and so often we can't finish one a night- we have to split across multiple nights.
24hrs sucks for this. At least make it 36hrs, 48 better.
Fixed progressive download on Tivo would make it nicer too.

So all that said, I'm sticking with netflix, which of course gives perfect picture/sound (in full HD if I have it), subtitles, unlimited watching time...

but IF Unbox gets HD (ws/dd5.1), and >24hr watching time, I'd change. For one, I won't have to pay $400 for an HD DVD/bluray player... I already spent my $1000 on the Tivo STB, thank you...


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Actually, at $230 with HDMI connectivity, Apple TV is starting to look mighty appealing.


----------



## chinhster (Dec 6, 2007)

mikeyts said:


> Actually, at $230 with HDMI connectivity, Apple TV is starting to look mighty appealing.


Me too, but don't forget it's 720p for HD.


----------



## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

mikeyts said:


> Actually, at $230 with HDMI connectivity, Apple TV is starting to look mighty appealing.


Its appealing compared to Vudu. They are the ones that are really hurt by this announcement. However, I'm not going to drop my TiVos for Apple TV. And its not worth the extra money right now to drop my Netflix subscription. I will still get my movies that way and order the occasional move through Unbox. Even if Unbox had HD today, I would still use Netflix until Amazon offers a subscription plan.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

chinhster said:


> Me too, but don't forget it's 720p for HD.


So are ESPN, Fox and ABC, and movies look pretty damn good on either of the latter two. I doubt that you're going to see 1080i60 or 1080p24 HD downloads from anyone anytime soon: space and bandwidth is at a premium, and people aren't going to wait forever for these things to download. Even now, very few people have broadband connections at sustainable rates that would download a 720p movie in realtime (by which I mean downloading a 2 hour movie in only 2 hours). As I mentioned above, HD movies from the Xbox Live Video Store are 720p as well.


----------



## Grakthis (Oct 4, 2006)

mikeyts said:


> So are ESPN, Fox and ABC, and movies look pretty damn good on either of the latter two. I doubt that you're going to see 1080i60 or 1080p24 HD downloads from anyone anytime soon: space and bandwidth is at a premium, and people aren't going to wait forever for these things to download.


Why not? I mailed a movie back to BB online on Sat. I got my replacement movie Yesterday (tues). I waited 2-3 days for a movie. Are you telling me you can't DL and HD movie to your TiVo in 2-3 days?

A subscription + queue system would work just fine.

The AppleTV is still not read for primetime, BTW. It's only valid use is renting movies and if you're willing to pay $250 for the right to give them $4.99 per rental then you have too much money burning a hole in your pocket. Since you're posting on this forum then you already have a TiVo... are you telling me the upgrade to 720p from SD is worth $250 and a whole new input and interface? Not for me.


----------



## Pictor Guy (Apr 6, 2003)

Grakthis said:


> The AppleTV is still not read for primetime, BTW. It's only valid use is renting movies and if you're willing to pay $250 for the right to give them $4.99 per rental then you have too much money burning a hole in your pocket. Since you're posting on this forum then you already have a TiVo... are you telling me the upgrade to 720p from SD is worth $250 and a whole new input and interface? Not for me.


Maybe it's not worth it for you but this is just the news I needed to pick one up. Remember that the AppleTV will allow for more than renting movies. For me the biggest other driver is streaming my music library to my receiver from my Mac(s). The ability to rent movies is a bonus that makes last minute (720p) HD rentals a reality. I'll still keep my Netflix account for BD movies but I may end up reducing the Netflix queue if the AppleTV steps up with more HD movies.

Any movie rental service needs to be as good or better than DVD. "Near DVD quality" just won't cut it. VHS was "near DVD quality" and I haven't owned VHS or rented a VHS movie in over a decade. The AppleTV HD option is better than DVD (but not quite Blu-Ray quality). Amazon unbox needs some work and I refuse to pay for 4:3/stereo content, even a rental.


----------



## chinhster (Dec 6, 2007)

Grakthis said:


> The AppleTV is still not read for primetime, BTW. It's only valid use is renting movies and if you're willing to pay $250 for the right to give them $4.99 per rental then you have too much money burning a hole in your pocket. Since you're posting on this forum then you already have a TiVo... are you telling me the upgrade to 720p from SD is worth $250 and a whole new input and interface? Not for me.


The TivoHD is still not read for primetime, BTW. It's only valid use is recording TV and if you're willing to pay $299.99 for the right to give them $8.31 per month then you have too much money burning a hole in your pocket. Since you're posting on this forum then you already have a TV... are you telling me the upgrade to HD from SD is worth $299.99 and a whole new input and interface? Not for me.

Hey kettle, this is pot, you're black.

PS, I was only pointing out the 720p because some people weren't sure if it was 1080 or not. I don't have a problem with it being 720p.


----------



## aindik (Jan 23, 2002)

Pictor Guy said:


> I refuse to pay for 4:3/stereo content, even a rental.


I'm sure you pay quite a bit per month for lots and lots of it.


----------



## Pictor Guy (Apr 6, 2003)

aindik said:


> I'm sure you pay quite a bit per month for lots and lots of it.


OKay.... yes... but doesn't mean I have to watch it.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Grakthis said:


> Why not? I mailed a movie back to BB online on Sat. I got my replacement movie Yesterday (tues). I waited 2-3 days for a movie. Are you telling me you can't DL and HD movie to your TiVo in 2-3 days?
> 
> A subscription + queue system would work just fine.


It might work fine for _you_, but non-videophiles are going to have a hard time waiting more than a few hours for their movies to be ready to play, and if they can't sell this to the not-too-technical non-videophile, then it's not worth selling.


> The AppleTV is still not read for primetime, BTW. It's only valid use is renting movies and if you're willing to pay $250 for the right to give them $4.99 per rental then you have too much money burning a hole in your pocket. Since you're posting on this forum then you already have a TiVo... are you telling me the upgrade to 720p from SD is worth $250 and a whole new input and interface? Not for me.


Yes, I am telling you that, and Apple TV does a number of things other than just playing movie rentals, such as giving you access to your online photos, home movies, music library and to music on iTunes, with a interface indescribably slicker, faster and smoother than anything that TiVo implements, period. You can also buy episodes of a pretty wide array of television shows. It's also easy to plug into my system, with a cable to my router and one to my HDMI switch. It seems worth $230 to me--YMMV .


----------



## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

mikeyts said:


> It might work fine for _you_, but non-videophiles are going to have a hard time waiting more than a few hours for their movies to be ready to play, and if they can't sell this to the not-too-technical non-videophile, then it's not worth selling.


If the Apple TV is anything like the XBox, then it will be several hours before you can watch an HD movie. Jobs conveniently mentioned how quick it was to start playing a regular movie, but failed to mention HD rental start times.


----------



## drhankz (Jan 14, 2008)

cgould said:


> I have kids, so I have to watch movies late at night, and so often we can't finish one a night- we have to split across multiple nights.
> 24hrs sucks for this.


I don't think I have ever had to stop and restart a movie
other than for Bio Breaks.


----------



## Grakthis (Oct 4, 2006)

chinhster said:


> The TivoHD is still not read for primetime, BTW. It's only valid use is recording TV and if you're willing to pay $299.99 for the right to give them $8.31 per month then you have too much money burning a hole in your pocket. Since you're posting on this forum then you already have a TV... are you telling me the upgrade to HD from SD is worth $299.99 and a whole new input and interface? Not for me.
> 
> Hey kettle, this is pot, you're black.
> 
> PS, I was only pointing out the 720p because some people weren't sure if it was 1080 or not. I don't have a problem with it being 720p.


Wow. Do you actually believe this is a parallel? Seriously? How many ways do you want me to blow apart this argument?

Could we start with the fact that TV's aren't DVRs? That most TVs don't have QAM tuners or digital tuners?

Since we've already established that the TiVo adds DVR functionality and tuning capability that my TV doesn't have.... we can discuss if that's worth the cash outlay.

Yes. Yes it is.

Now we can discuss the bonus stuff... movie rentals and audio streaming etc.

Then we can look at the AppleTV. Which doesn't do the primary stuff TiVo does, and instead ONLY does the peripheral stuff.

So in conclusion, I don't think you could possibly be more wrong.


----------



## drhankz (Jan 14, 2008)

rainwater said:


> If the Apple TV is anything like the XBox, then it will be several hours before you can watch an HD movie. Jobs conveniently mentioned how quick it was to start playing a regular movie, but failed to mention HD rental start times.


As of January 29 - I will be able to answer your question.

That is when everything is released to the PUBLIC


----------



## Grakthis (Oct 4, 2006)

mikeyts said:


> It might work fine for _you_, but non-videophiles are going to have a hard time waiting more than a few hours for their movies to be ready to play, and if they can't sell this to the not-too-technical non-videophile, then it's not worth selling.


So is Netflix not worth selling? I think it's doing fine.

Seriously... how is a netflix style queue + download not worth selling?



mikeyts said:


> Yes, I am telling you that, and Apple TV does a number of things other than just playing movie rentals, such as giving you access to your online photos, home movies, music library and to music on iTunes, with a interface indescribably slicker, faster and smoother than anything that TiVo implements, period. You can also buy episodes of a pretty wide array of television shows. It's also easy to plug into my system, with a cable to my router and one to my HDMI switch. It seems worth $230 to me--YMMV .


Wow. Yuo do realize that every review I've read to date has universally blasted the interface, transfer rates and functionality of appleTV, right?

But you're applauding it? Ok. But you'll forgive me if I still think it's a joke.

It's the same price as a TiVo for less functionality, but you get the "benefit" of it integrating with iTunes. Which is a product of a monopolistic business model that anyone who values technology and innovation should reject anyways.

But, you know, the iTunes hate can be saved for another discussion.


----------



## chinhster (Dec 6, 2007)

Grakthis said:


> Wow. Do you actually believe this is a parallel? Seriously? How many ways do you want me to blow apart this argument?


I just thought your response was funny and ironic. You were criticizing someone for paying for a set top box that allows you to pay for movie rentals. I was pointing out you paid for a set top box that you pay a monthly fee to to record TV. Pot, kettle, black.


----------



## TexasGrillChef (Sep 15, 2006)

bferrell said:


> Yea, I'd settle for getting movies available faster than HD and widescreen right now (though I want both eventually). For me CONTENT is king, then quality. If I have to go to Blockbuster I'm likely not going to get widescreen or Blu-ray either... and when the wife wants to watch X, then X is what we're watching whether I have to take the drive or not!
> 
> B


Well either your lucky or unlucky in that aspect. I haven't decided yet.

My wife on the other hand is like me... only wants the best quality possible. So right now for US.... Its Blu-Ray/HD-DVD and if it ain't available their then regular DVD.

We *LOVE* the idea of downloading movies... However, currently Downloaded movies *DON'T *provide the features or quality we *REQUIRE*.

Downloaded movies *DON'T* include the "*Extras"*
Most don't/aren't anamorphic widescreen or don't have DD5.1SS and no HD offereings. At least from Amazon Unbox.

We have considered VUDU.... However VUDU rentals are *TOO EXPENSIVE...* (When you think about renting 30-40 movies per month) as compared to Blockbuster.com or Netflix.com

We currently have/use Blockbuster.com. We pay $34.95 per month and on that plan average about 40 movies per month. Some months more. Some months less. But basically *UNDER* $1/movie.

Amazon Unbox & VuDu when it comes to renting movies are WAY more expensive. They need a volume rental service. I would even be willing to pay to Amazon/Unbox $35 a month for 30 movie downloads.

So in the mean time... me & my wife are waiting for the "Download" system to get better with quality *AND* pricing.

TGC


----------



## drhankz (Jan 14, 2008)

Skisundown said:


> They just announced Apple was is offering HD downloads. Seems like everybody is going to head in that direction now.


I ordered my APPLE iTV online while Steve Jobs was announcing it.

CALL IT AN EXPERIMENT - but I want to see how it performs.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Grakthis said:


> So is Netflix not worth selling? I think it's doing fine.
> 
> Seriously... how is a netflix style queue + download not worth selling?


People, weaned on PPV and VOD on their cable boxes, will have a hard time accepting a box in their system that they order a movie from this morning and requires until tomorrow to start playing it. Even with low-average-bitrate 720p transfers it will take over a day to download a movie over many common so-called "broadband" connections.

And in the end, it's just a lot easier for studios to accept 720p as a standard for HD downloads. The vast majority of people couldn't appreciate the difference between that and 1080p anyway and it leaves something to hold out for video disc purchases. If someone figures out a way to hack and "liberate" these downloads, at least it's not their best version.


> Wow. Yuo do realize that every review I've read to date has universally blasted the interface, transfer rates and functionality of appleTV, right?
> 
> But you're applauding it? Ok. But you'll forgive me if I still think it's a joke.


You know, I curiously hadn't realized that every review that you'd read of Apple TV was negative, since I have absolutely no idea what reviews you've been reading. CNET gave it a 7.7 out of 10, their "Very Good" rating; Ars Technica rated it 7 out of 10 based on its current capabilities but wanted to give it an 8 for potential. They said, "Of the very limited things the Apple TV can do, it does well. Setting it up is simple, navigating it is simple, syncing with it is simple, and streaming content to it is simple. It's a pleasure to use in this way. We just wish Apple would support more features". I skimmed a bunch of reviews of the launch product (CNET, Ars Technica, iLounge, PC World, PC Mag, Digital Trends, etc) and that's pretty much the consensus opinion: "Apple TV does what it does well and with an easy-to-use, visually appealing, elegant interface, but we wish that it could do more". Well now, 10 months later, it does do a lot more (kind of like the gradual addition of new features to TiVo S3 after launch).

I've actually played around with a recent release of Apple TV and it seems pretty swift and its UI is _very_ aestethically pleasing and well designed, like most things Apple.



> It's the same price as a TiVo for less functionality, but you get the "benefit" of it integrating with iTunes. Which is a product of a monopolistic business model that anyone who values technology and innovation should reject anyways.
> 
> But, you know, the iTunes hate can be saved for another discussion.


Let's avoid that discussion, okay? I have no great love of the iTunes _Store_, although it's probably the best place online to buy television episodes, which is something that I do from time to time when I miss recording something or want to catch up on a series that I just discovered. But if you've ripped and manage your music online with the iTunes app (or merely registered a collection of MP3s with it that you ripped some other way), Apple TV gives you smooth access to it without the need to ever buy anything from the iTunes Store. It'd be nice if they'd add support for generic uPnP media servers (like the Xbox 360 and PS3)--perhaps they will, in the future.

Apple TV's list price is $70 less than TiVo HD, but it has a smaller disk drive. The version with the same 160GB of storage is about the same price; both models have built-in wireless-N--optional, slow wireless-G can be bought for TiVo, extra. Apple TV is designed from the bottom up as a general purpose networked media player and has a consistent interface for that throughout. I bought my TiVo S3 for recording HDTV and playing back those recordings and wish that it did that better. I don't expect for it to do anything else well at all and it delivers on those expectations--the TiVo-provided UIs for doing things like viewing photos and streaming music online are pathetic, unweildy and slow. Amazon Unbox on TiVo is virtually useless without a PC--the UI on TiVo won't let you browse any large subset of the things available for rental and purchase, and you can't even use it to see a list of the things that you own. But as Mark Twain said, "The remarkable thing about a dancing bear is not that it dances well..." 

For $230, the cost of a decent portable music player with the same size HDD, I think that Apple TV is worth trying. Again, YMMV. I wouldn't have bothered with it at $300 or before they decided to add HD movie rentals from 7 studios. If Amazon does add HD content for purchase/rental for TiVo soon, I _won't_ bother with it--with what I've got on my plate, it'll probably be a few months before I get around to trying it, anyway. I think that they'll do quite well with it and that an order of magnitude more people will own Apple TV than will ever use a TiVo. Of course, that'll partly be due to the fact that they spend massively on marketing, whereas TiVo pretty much doesn't advertise their product such that you'd notice .


----------



## Charles R (Nov 9, 2000)

I too am interested in HD downloads. It's one of the main reasons I purchased two TiVoHDs. I don't mind waiting overnight for the movie but I'd sure like some HD content. Apple's price of $3.99 or $4.99 (new releases) is fine with me as long as the movie is at least 720p and 5.1 audio. I'm about ready to sell one of my TiVoHDs and swap it for a AppleTV in the theater...


----------



## drhankz (Jan 14, 2008)

Charles R said:


> I too am interested in HD downloads. It's one of the main reasons I purchased two TiVoHDs. I don't mind waiting overnight for the movie but I'd sure like some HD content. Apple's price of $3.99 or $4.99 (new releases) is fine with me as long as the movie is at least 720p and 5.1 audio. I'm about ready to sell one of my TiVoHDs and swap it for a AppleTV in the theater...


By February 1 - I should be able to report on if Apple
did it right or wrong


----------



## derekcbart (Sep 2, 2005)

FWIW, I purchased an AppleTV the first week that they were originally announced. My reason was that I will watch short videos on my computer, but there is no way that I am going to watch one to two hours of video on my computer and the AppleTV made it possible to watch all of that backlogged material easy.

I'm just really glad that the "take 2" is a software update and not a hardware update.


----------



## bizzy (Jan 20, 2004)

I'm just glad I'm not getting soaked for another damn $20


----------



## chinhster (Dec 6, 2007)

Grakthis, you're missing one important benefit of Apple TV. Competition is good.

Regardless of your opinion of Apple TV, you have to admit that its offer of HD movies will force Amazon and Netflix to respond and that benefits all of us. Do you honestly think Netflix's removal of limits to online viewing was out of the goodness of their hearts and not a response to the then rumored iTunes movie rental? Do you think maybe Amazon might be working a little harder now to offer HD to Unbox? And would Amazon be able to offer DRM music if it wasn't for the "iTunes monopoly"? Don't forget, Netflix is partnering with LG to offer their own set top box. How are Apple and Tivo going to respond?

Hell, I hope Apple TV is successful. Maybe it will force Tivo to make Tivo Desktop half decent instead the total suckfest it currently is. I was hoping Tivo would be more of a media center but right now, it's just a fine DVR (that I paid $250 for in addition to monthly fees to replace my cable DVR that worked adequately because I had money burning a hole in my pocket, seriously). If the rumored updates to the Tivo in the spring don't correct that, I'm getting an Apple TV.


----------



## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

chinhster said:


> Grakthis, you're missing one important benefit of Apple TV. Competition is good.
> 
> Regardless of your opinion of Apple TV, you have to admit that its offer of HD movies will force Amazon and Netflix to respond and that benefits all of us.


I'll mention that X-box 360 has had HD rentals and purchases for a good while now and that didn't seem to speed up the availability of HD downloads from other companies.


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

Chevy_Cowboy said:


> It'd be a nice first step if they'd just offer widescreen and 5.1 sound
> 
> As it stands Unbox is pretty silly IMO.


And without Closed Captioning....which, for me, is a dealbreaker.


----------



## Luke M (Nov 5, 2002)

mikeyts said:


> Broadband Internet service, on the other hand, is still a bit pricey and I doubt that market penetration is as high.


According to this page:
http://www.internetworldstats.com/dsl.htm

There were 66,213,257 high-speed Internet subscribers in the U.S. as of June 2007.

So roughly 50% of households.


----------



## Luke M (Nov 5, 2002)

drhankz said:


> I don't think I have ever had to stop and restart a movie
> other than for Bio Breaks.


Never seen that one. Is it a foreign film?


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Luke M said:


> According to this page:
> http://www.internetworldstats.com/dsl.htm
> 
> There were 66,213,257 high-speed Internet subscribers in the U.S. as of June 2007.
> ...


That chart says that it's 21.9%, though it's a little over 50% so many households as watch television. We don't know what the overlap is--I know people who use the Internet but who pointedly have no televisions in their homes.


----------



## Luke M (Nov 5, 2002)

mikeyts said:


> Mmmmm, not quite so true anymore. The CEA estimates that there are now DTVs in 50% of American homes, probably fueled by the attractiveness and recent affordability of flatpanels.


The CEA has a goofy definition of digital TV that includes TVs that are neither high-definition nor digital.

But anyway, it's clear that flat panels are very popular and they are all "high definition" and, perhaps more importantly, 16:9.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Luke M said:


> The CEA has a goofy definition of digital TV that includes TVs that are neither high-definition nor digital.
> 
> But anyway, it's clear that flat panels are very popular and they are all "high definition" and, perhaps more importantly, 16:9.


Again, the numbers that they were quoting were specifically of _H_DTVs. The numbers were given in a CEA study entitled "HDTV: You Have the Set, But Do You Have the Content?" published back in June. The actual penetration rate number was 30% back then with an estimated 36% by the end of the year.

The study concerned itself in large part with how many consumers were actually learning what HDTV _is_ and getting themselves set up to view true HDTV. They found that only some 44% of those who'd bought HDTVs had some means of tuning high definition content, so though 30% of US households had high-definition televisions back in June, only 13% of US households were actually set up to watch any HD content (44% of 30% is 13% of the whole).


----------



## juggler314 (Dec 28, 2007)

mikeyts said:


> That chart says that it's 21.9%, though it's a little over 50% so many households as watch television. We don't know what the overlap is--I know people who use the Internet but who pointedly have no televisions in their homes.


Don't forget that the FCC defines broadband as 200Kbps or higher...pretty much a useless stat.


----------



## Carlos_E (Mar 12, 2007)

drhankz said:


> I ordered my APPLE iTV online while Steve Jobs was announcing it.
> 
> CALL IT AN EXPERIMENT - but I want to see how it performs.


I picked up one at the Apple Store. I'm waiting for the software update so I can start renting HD movies.


----------



## drhankz (Jan 14, 2008)

Carlos_E said:


> I picked up one at the Apple Store. I'm waiting for the software update so I can start renting movies.


They me at the APPLE store the update would happen
on January 29.


----------



## Carlos_E (Mar 12, 2007)

drhankz said:


> They me at the APPLE store the update would happen
> on January 29.


I hope you're working with a wireless N network. My network is G and my iTunes library is over 90 gigs. It took more than 24 hours and did not sync my entire library over G. I started over and plugged it in wired for the first sync. It took a couple of hours. I'm ordering the 1 terabyte Time Capsule to upgrade my network to N. Hopefully Tivo will have an N upgrade soon.


----------



## drhankz (Jan 14, 2008)

Carlos_E said:


> I hope you're working with a wireless N network. My network is G and my iTunes library is over 90 gigs. It took more than 24 hours and did not sync my entire library over G. I started over and plugged it in wired for the first sync. It took a couple of hours. I'm ordering the 1 terabyte Time Capsule to upgrade my network to N. Hopefully Tivo will have an N upgrade soon.


I just use OLD FASHION - Ethernet WIRE.


----------



## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Carlos_E said:


> Hopefully Tivo will have an N upgrade soon.


The N standard still hasn't been finalized so there's no guarantee that any of the "N" equipment out there will work with equipment compatible with the final spec. Apple TV can get around this because Apple also sells the Airport Extreme draft-802.11n router which will work with Apple TV, but that's the only "N" router that's guaranteed to work. TiVo doesn't make wireless (or wired) routers so offering a "N" wireless adapter at this point is premature.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Carlos_E said:


> I picked up one at the Apple Store. I'm waiting for the software update so I can start renting HD movies.


How do you like it so far as a media streamer?


----------



## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

Carlos_E said:


> I picked up one at the Apple Store. I'm waiting for the software update so I can start renting HD movies.


The movies might look ok on a smaller 720P TV but that's about it. 720P H.264 encodes running at a 5mbps average bitrate are not going to look very good. Many titles won't even have 5.1 DD.

Compare that with the 20-40mbps video rates at 1080P + lossless sound you get from Blu-Ray or HD DVD and you can see why many home theater fans aren't too excited by Apple TV.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

jmpage2 said:


> The movies might look ok on a smaller 720P TV but that's about it. 720P H.264 encodes running at a 5mbps average bitrate are not going to look very good. Many titles won't even have 5.1 DD.
> 
> Compare that with the 20-40mbps video rates at 1080P + lossless sound you get from Blu-Ray or HD DVD and you can see why many home theater fans aren't too excited by Apple TV.


I can attest that Xbox Live Video Store transfers, which are variable bit rate encoded at an average of about 6.5 Mbps, look really quite good on my 46" Mitsubishi 1080p LCD panel. As I stated in an earlier post, I compared frames from several scenes of a XBLVS transfers of _300_ to the Blu-ray transfer and was impressed by how well it compared, considering resolution. Definitely quite a bit superior to a standard definition DVD.

EDIT: I found a post in some guy's blog (here) where he'd done a technical analysis (with graphs, no less) of a 6.5 Mbps XBLVS transfer of _V for Vendetta_ versus the HD DVD. He found plenty of fault with it, particularly in black-level reproduction, but was impressed by how good it still looked.


----------



## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

mikeyts said:


> I can attest that Xbox Live Video Store transfers, which are variable bit rate encoded at an average of about 6.5 Mbps, look really quite good on my 46" Mitsubishi 1080p LCD panel. As I stated in an earlier post, I compared frames from several scenes of a XBLVS transfers of _300_ to the Blu-ray transfer and was impressed by how well it compared, considering resolution. Definitely quite a bit superior to a standard definition DVD.


I've also done comparisons on my 60" Sony SXRD 1080P set and to me the difference is night and day. My display is calibrated and has all the extra sharpness controls, color enhancements, etc, turned off.

The lower bitrate Xbox stuff looks "ok". The Blu-Ray and HD material practically pops off of the screen and doesn't pixelate or lose detail during stressful scenes with lots of action.

Sadly for the typical person with out of the box factory settings on their TV, you are probably right. They will deem it "good enough" and that will be that.

Personally I shudder at the thought of losing truly high quality HD material on optical disc with lossless audio, etc, due to download services taking off.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

No one's saying that it's going to be the be all and end all of HD movie production, but for casual film rental its a viable and convenient alternative that is palpably superior to standard definition DVD. I certainly wouldn't want my first viewing of the big release, video-and-audio-delight type film to be a download, but for many things they should be just fine. I don't think that Netflix or Blockbuster Online are going anywhere (well, Blockbuster may be in trouble), so don't fret. Certainly the brick-and-mortar video rental stores aren't going to suddenly disappear.


----------



## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

mikeyts said:


> No one's saying that it's going to be the be all and end all of HD movie production, but for casual film rental its a viable and convenient alternative that is palpably superior to standard definition DVD. I certainly wouldn't want my first viewing of the big release, video-and-audio-delight type film to be a download, but for many things they should be just fine. I don't think that Netflix or Blockbuster Online are going anywhere (well, Blockbuster may be in trouble), so don't fret. Certainly the brick-and-mortar video rental stores aren't going to suddenly disappear.


Fair enough. Recent moves by MS, Apple and others have left me under the impression that there is an active effort to kill high def optical media before it has a chance to take off... in favor of these sorts of download services.

I think the download services are a great idea, for those who aren't picky about AQ/PQ.

I just hope that for those of us who have invested a lot in our home theaters we will continue to be able to hold in our hand a high quality HD master of the movie that we can buy/trade/sell for years down the road.


----------



## Carlos_E (Mar 12, 2007)

mikeyts said:


> How do you like it so far as a media streamer?


I like it. I subscribed to a number of HD podcasts (720p) and they look great. It's quick and very responsive. The only issue I had was the first sync trying to sync 90 gigs over wireless G. I'm upgrading my network to N.


jmpage2 said:


> The movies might look ok on a smaller 720P TV but that's about it. 720P H.264 encodes running at a 5mbps average bitrate are not going to look very good. Many titles won't even have 5.1 DD.
> 
> Compare that with the 20-40mbps video rates at 1080P + lossless sound you get from Blu-Ray or HD DVD and you can see why many home theater fans aren't too excited by Apple TV.


If I want to own the movie then I'll care about the highest resolution and buy the film on blu-ray. But if it's just a movie I want to see only once, watching it in 720p is fine with me.


----------



## Adam1115 (Dec 15, 2003)

Forget Unbox HD, just give us DVD quality for pate's sake!!!

(LIKE THEY ADVERTISE!)


----------



## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

Adam1115 said:


> Forget Unbox HD, just give us DVD quality for pate's sake!!!
> 
> (LIKE THEY ADVERTISE!)


A DVD is 7-9GB. It would take hours to download which is why they cut the bitrate and get the filesize down to 1GB.

Personally I find such downloads look awful but some people say "good enuff!".


----------



## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

jmpage2 said:


> A DVD is 7-9GB. It would take hours to download which is why they cut the bitrate and get the filesize down to 1GB.
> 
> Personally I find such downloads look awful but some people say "good enuff!".


If TiVo enabled MPEG-4 support on S3s, the file sizes would drop dramatically.


----------



## ilh (Dec 21, 2007)

Are Unbox SD movies really 1GB MPEG2? That sounds terrible.

(1GB MPEG4 looks good at iPhone/iPod-sized resolution.)


----------



## bizzy (Jan 20, 2004)

Hi-def consumer media such as HD DVD and Blu-Ray discs are a completely seperate usage case and market than casual online rentals. I doubt anyone rational has the exact same quality expectations.


----------



## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

rainwater said:


> If TiVo enabled MPEG-4 support on S3s, the file sizes would drop dramatically.


I disagree. Apple TV has MPEG-4 support and their "DVD" version files are still 1GB and look terrible compared to SD-DVD.

Their "HD" downloads are 7-8GB, are H.264 5mbps bitrate files, and still look pretty bad from people who saw their demos at CES.

Of course "terrible" and "pretty bad" is relative. If you look at the difference between a calibrated TV and one that has out of the box settings it's easy to see how someone could find these encodes accepteable with an improperly adjusted TV.


----------



## Adam1115 (Dec 15, 2003)

jmpage2 said:


> A DVD is 7-9GB. It would take hours to download which is why they cut the bitrate and get the filesize down to 1GB.
> 
> Personally I find such downloads look awful but some people say "good enuff!".


I think it could be compressed to 4-5 gigabytes and still maintain a good 540p picture with DD 5.1

On a 7 megabit connection, it would only take an hour and a half.

Even 7 Gig would take only 2 1/2 hours or so...


----------



## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

Adam1115 said:


> I think it could be compressed to 4-5 gigabytes and still maintain a good 540p picture with DD 5.1
> 
> On a 7 megabit connection, it would only take an hour and a half.
> 
> Even 7 Gig would take only 2 1/2 hours or so...


I doubt Apple has the bandwidth on their servers, or the ISPs have the bandwidth for thousands of users in an area to pull down 7mbps for movie downloads.


----------



## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

jmpage2 said:


> A DVD is 7-9GB. It would take hours to download which is why they cut the bitrate and get the filesize down to 1GB.
> 
> Personally I find such downloads look awful but some people say "good enuff!".


A full DVD is 7+ GB. Most films (no extras, no menus) are around 4-5 GB. Sure there are the big exceptions like LOTR but most movies fit on a 7+GB DVD along with two or three making of documentaries, commentary tracks, menus, outtakes and a game or two.

Besides, DirecTV is doing HD films over the internet. Why can't Unbox do DVD quality? I think DirecTV is capping at 2Mbps per user. I downloaded Evan Almighty (HD) pretty much in regular time. Of course, it was probably MPEG4.


----------



## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

ilh said:


> Are Unbox SD movies really 1GB MPEG2? That sounds terrible.
> 
> (1GB MPEG4 looks good at iPhone/iPod-sized resolution.)


Amazon Unbox movies are usually encoded at a bit rate of 2800 kbps (about 1.26 GB/hour). For example the Simpsons Movie is 2 GB and is 87 minutes long.

The video quality seems to be hit or miss on Unbox movies. I've had a number that look pretty bad, but I rented "Live Free or Die Hard" last month and it looked pretty good and that was after zooming in on the letterbox version so I could view it full screen on my HDTV. That movie was also encoded at 2800 kbps with a file size of 2.9 GB (129 minutes long).

For a comparison the maximum bitrate for a DVD movie is the DVD 1X read speed which is 10800 kbps. Most DVD bitrates average at around 5000 kbps which is a little under twice the bitrate of Amazon movies.


----------



## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

TonyD79 said:


> A full DVD is 7+ GB. Most films (no extras, no menus) are around 4-5 GB. Sure there are the big exceptions like LOTR but most movies fit on a 7+GB DVD along with two or three making of documentaries, commentary tracks, menus, outtakes and a game or two.
> 
> Besides, DirecTV is doing HD films over the internet. Why can't Unbox do DVD quality? I think DirecTV is capping at 2Mbps per user. I downloaded Evan Almighty (HD) pretty much in regular time. Of course, it was probably MPEG4.


I don't know anything about the DirecTV system but I do know that video downloads are straining many ISPs already today, with Time Warner rolling out a pilot program to start charging people based on their useage patterns.

In the Time Warner test area, 5% of users account over 70% of all bandwidth consumption and the biggest culprit are video downloads (probably torrents, etc, but who knows).

I'm a network engineer by trade so I guess you'll just have to take my word for the fact that as video downloading through the internet becomes more common, so will the delays, etc, due to the many bottlenecks encountered.


----------



## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

TonyD79 said:


> Besides, DirecTV is doing HD films over the internet. Why can't Unbox do DVD quality? I think DirecTV is capping at 2Mbps per user. I downloaded Evan Almighty (HD) pretty much in regular time. Of course, it was probably MPEG4.


HDTV bitrates for MPEG-2 are about 20 Mbps. This causes a few problems. One, I don't know many people who have a connection speed greater than 20 Mbps, meaning movies could not be watched in real time. Two, a 2 hour movie would weight in at around 18 GB. This would take about 6 2/3 hours to download over a 6 Mbps connection running full speed.

For comparison VC-1 HD (similar in size to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC) is about 8 Mbps. The same 2 hour movie could download in 2 2/3 hours over a 6 Mbps connection. Less if a lower bitrate was used.


----------



## bizzy (Jan 20, 2004)

jmpage2 said:


> I'm a network engineer by trade so I guess you'll just have to take my word for the fact that as video downloading through the internet becomes more common, so will the delays, etc, due to the many bottlenecks encountered.


So you agree with Bob Metcalfe that the Internet will clog up and stop working in 2002?

If you are a network engineer then I hope you are familar with capacity planning through usage modeling based on existing trend data.

ISPs are in the business of delivering bits to customers. If they run out of bits, it doesnt make much financial sense for them to sit there and go "whoops, we are out of bits!". They add capacity and deliver the bits.

If the opex and capex of delivering those bits exceed the parameters for their revenue model, then they change it. This is why we will see more usage-sensitive billing in the future.


----------



## TexasGrillChef (Sep 15, 2006)

jmpage2 said:


> I don't know anything about the DirecTV system but I do know that video downloads are straining many ISPs already today, with Time Warner rolling out a pilot program to start charging people based on their useage patterns.
> 
> In the Time Warner test area, 5% of users account over 70% of all bandwidth consumption and the biggest culprit are video downloads (probably torrents, etc, but who knows).
> 
> I'm a network engineer by trade so I guess you'll just have to take my word for the fact that as video downloading through the internet becomes more common, so will the delays, etc, due to the many bottlenecks encountered.


You make a very good point...

However... What do you have to say about the *COMCAST* anouncement at CES that they will have *160MBPS* speed in select markets by the end of the year,* AND *to *ALL* comcast markets by the end of 2009. They are claiming at those speeds that you will be able to download a *2 hour HD* Movie in *4 Min*?

Now *EVEN* if they don't make their own deadlines... It is still coming... Wonder what affect it will have on the rest of us in the USA?

TGC

P.S. I love the idea of haveing that kind of speed on the internet. I just wonder how many of our *HOME* computers/Routers/Switches &/or TiVo's could actually honestly handle that speed.

*Example:* I ripped "Good Luck Chuck" from a Blu-Ray disk for my wife. Left it in its native 1080p MPG2 file & it was 18gb. It is only about an 1hr & 45 min movie. I have a complete gigabit network. (Nic, Switch, Router, NAS) and it took it an Hour and 10 min for it transfer from my computer that I ripped it on to my Gigabit 3TB NAS.


----------



## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

bizzy said:


> So you agree with Bob Metcalfe that the Internet will clog up and stop working in 2002?
> 
> If you are a network engineer then I hope you are familar with capacity planning through usage modeling based on existing trend data.
> 
> ...


No, of course not. There are many mechanisms in place to ensure the smooth flow of information, or the "almost" smooth flow of bits as you put it. However, this casual attitude that the backbone will magically increase in speed is ridiculous. Speeds over fiber CAN be increased with upgrades to the optical transmitters and recievers, etc. However, you also need to upgrade the million dollar layer 3 switches, etc, that actually have to process, route and switch the traffic. It is extremely expensive to increase the speed on a link from say 1gbps to 2gbps... which doesn't even get into what needs to happen at the ISP end where thousands of consumer homes terminate into a single location that needs to share bandwidth for all of them.

QoS (DSCP flags), etc, to prioritize voice traffic over low priority traffic, etc, are also ways of handling traffic overflow. Additionally some protocols are able to compensate for a certain amount of data loss.

Additionally the server head end is going to throttle the throughput of the downloads. Think about how sustainable it is that thousands of movie watchers on a Friday night all expect to pull down 100mbps HD movie downloads from Apple and you can start to get an appreciation of the scope of the operation.

So, no, I'm not saying the Internet is going to run out of gas, or that it won't get faster making these downloads possible.

What I *am saying* is that it's extremely expensive to do an end to end upgrade to make such things possible in a large scale and consumers might be expected to share that expense.

Most importantly there will be compromises, as can already be seen in that we can't get the 20-40GB super high quality Blu-Ray and HD DVD quality encodes over download services and are expected to settle for 5-7mbps 720P downloads that still take hours to get.

For some consumers (like myself), it is simply unaccepteable to make such a big tradeoff in video and audio quality for the conveniance of getting a movie in this fashion. For other consumers it will be fine. Hopefully Blu-Ray will set the benchmark that download services will shoot for, but it will be quite a number of years before a Blu-Ray quality movie (40mb/s) can be streamed to millions of homes.


----------



## Pictor Guy (Apr 6, 2003)

jmpage2 said:


> I'm a network engineer by trade so I guess you'll just have to take my word for the fact that as video downloading through the internet becomes more common, so will the delays, etc, due to the many bottlenecks encountered.


You assume that there is no growth in network development. The problem is not people using the bandwidth but rather companies not deploying enough capacity in lock step with usage demands. Granted this is a little like building roads (I dislike the analogy but it works). Build the road and more people will come requiring another road expansion where more people will inevitably come. Companies are constantly seeking more subscribers and if you apply Metcalf's Law you end up with exponential growth. There will always be users that consumer more bandwidth than the majority. This happens in residential and commercial networks. There area also going to be peak usage periods and low usage periods. This also drives ISPs to seek ways to take advantage of the low usage anyway they can. For example, an ISP who serves residential customers may have peak times in the late afternoon until about midnight. This often leads to these ISPs wanting to branch into Commercial customers who have peak usage in the morning and early afternoon periods.

Attacking the customers by laying the blame on the 5% is a poor business practice and often a sign of an unhealthy ISP looking to avoid investment in infrastructure. If cable providers move to a metered rate for bandwidth we will see a shift in the industry and I would expect other services to move in the same direction. Can you imagine metered SDV cable service? If POTS phones are any indication it seems the public doesn't like paying metered services but they do accept it for things like a Utility (Power/Water). These Utilities are often heavily regulated in many areas for a reason. Cable services may end up getting legislation that forces them to line share or otherwise treat them as a utility.


----------



## Pictor Guy (Apr 6, 2003)

jmpage2 said:


> Additionally the server head end is going to throttle the throughput of the downloads. Think about how sustainable it is that thousands of movie watchers on a Friday night all expect to pull down 100mbps HD movie downloads from Apple and you can start to get an appreciation of the scope of the operation.


Are you making the assumption that all this video has the same source/destination? Surely you've seen technology that scales such tasks? I'm thinking of Akamai or on a smaller personal scale Bittorent.


----------



## Pictor Guy (Apr 6, 2003)

morac said:


> HDTV bitrates for MPEG-2 are about 20 Mbps. This causes a few problems. One, I don't know many people who have a connection speed greater than 20 Mbps, meaning movies could not be watched in real time. Two, a 2 hour movie would weight in at around 18 GB. This would take about 6 2/3 hours to download over a 6 Mbps connection running full speed.
> 
> For comparison VC-1 HD (similar in size to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC) is about 8 Mbps. The same 2 hour movie could download in 2 2/3 hours over a 6 Mbps connection. Less if a lower bitrate was used.


I don't think anyone is proposing streaming an HD MPEG2 feed. Most seem to be using either VC1 (Unbox I think) or H.264/MPEG4 (Apple and others).


----------



## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

Pictor Guy said:


> Are you making the assumption that all this video has the same source/destination? Surely you've seen technology that scales such tasks? I'm thinking of Akamai or on a smaller personal scale Bittorent.


Multicasting is the most likely mechanism to make this possible, where users latch onto a UDP packet "feed" that is feeding the movie out from any one of a number of places.

However, multicast isn't really doing anything right now.

Otherwise what you are looking it is server farms in various locations that will have to meet the needs of individual users looking for movie XYZ. These server farms will have very quick interfaces and will have massive connections to the backbone. And yes, you could have multiple locations with idle bandwidth sending out pieces of the file. It still is not going to allow for the types of speeds people would like to see to get these movies playing in a very short amount of time. At least not for a while until we see much faster residential service, which could be as little as a year away for some people and as long as a decade away for others.

However, even with above, it will still require major compromises in streaming speed and media quality.

Personally I don't want to make that tradeoff but it's evident that there are people who do.


----------



## Luke M (Nov 5, 2002)

bizzy said:


> So you agree with Bob Metcalfe that the Internet will clog up and stop working in 2002?
> 
> If you are a network engineer then I hope you are familar with capacity planning through usage modeling based on existing trend data.
> 
> ISPs are in the business of delivering bits to customers. If they run out of bits, it doesnt make much financial sense for them to sit there and go "whoops, we are out of bits!". They add capacity and deliver the bits.


This is a lot more general than computer networks. You can make the same observation about any product or service in a capitalist economy.


----------



## Luke M (Nov 5, 2002)

jmpage2 said:


> It still is not going to allow for the types of speeds people would like to see to get these movies playing in a very short amount of time. At least not for a while until we see much faster residential service, which could be as little as a year away for some people and as long as a decade away for others.


You are way behind the times. Most people with cable get at least 6mb/s, and DSL has been catching up. This is enough for one real-time HD download.


----------



## bizzy (Jan 20, 2004)

Luke M said:


> This is a lot more general than computer networks. You can make the same observation about any product or service in a capitalist economy.


I resisted the urge to use the term 'invisible hand' in my reply


----------



## TexasGrillChef (Sep 15, 2006)

morac said:


> HDTV bitrates for MPEG-2 are about 20 Mbps. This causes a few problems. One, I don't know many people who have a connection speed greater than 20 Mbps, meaning movies could not be watched in real time. Two, a 2 hour movie would weight in at around 18 GB. This would take about 6 2/3 hours to download over a 6 Mbps connection running full speed.
> 
> For comparison VC-1 HD (similar in size to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC) is about 8 Mbps. The same 2 hour movie could download in 2 2/3 hours over a 6 Mbps connection. Less if a lower bitrate was used.


Well how does VUDU do it?

I have a freind who has the same cable modem service I have. He has VUDU and downloads movies to the VUDU unit in true HD. 1080p. He can WATCH the movie as it is streaming. The Movie starts playing within 30 seconds of him initiating the download.

IT has a built in Hard drive. Each move is averaging about 10 to 15gb

This is all on Vudu.

TGC


----------



## TexasGrillChef (Sep 15, 2006)

You all are talking and bikering about speeds.

It will all be a moot point soon. Since Comcast will be offereing 160MBPS speed by the end or the year to some markets and to all comcast markets by the end of 2009.

TGC


----------



## juggler314 (Dec 28, 2007)

jmpage2 said:


> Multicasting is the most likely mechanism to make this possible, where users latch onto a UDP packet "feed" that is feeding the movie out from any one of a number of places.
> 
> However, multicast isn't really doing anything right now.
> 
> ...


Multicasting will never help with OD downloads. That technology only assists in saving bandwidth on a live stream. There's no point in "sharing" a stream unless everyone is reqesting it at the same time. Great for live events.


----------



## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

juggler314 said:


> Multicasting will never help with OD downloads. That technology only assists in saving bandwidth on a live stream. There's no point in "sharing" a stream unless everyone is reqesting it at the same time. Great for live events.


There's an interesting discussion around use of Multicast for on-demand type viewing at AVS that might be worth your time to read up on.


----------



## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

Luke M said:


> You are way behind the times. Most people with cable get at least 6mb/s, and DSL has been catching up. This is enough for one real-time HD download.


While I'm sure you know a lot more about residential data network than I do, let me point something out to you;

Your local cable and DSL network are designed with a "share" design. While you might have a 6mbps link in your home and it might test at 6mbps from dslreports it doesn't mean that everyone on your cable or dsl node can simultaneously run a sustained 6mbps connection.

In fact, many DSLAMs and Cable nodes that service hundreds of homes are supported by a link as small as 20-30mbps.

It works well because typically no more than x% of users are doing any real data transfer at a time so on the whole the performance for a given user is pretty good. Obviously this performance will change if all of a sudden a much larger number of users start requesting extremely high speed sustained transfers for extended periods of times, such as downloading streaming HD content.

Your argument is akin to saying that because I have 1000 megabit connections to the PCs at my local office, that all of those people could pull down 1000 megabit data transfers from our fileservers on the same network.

I assure you that this is not the case.


----------



## Luke M (Nov 5, 2002)

TexasGrillChef said:


> It will all be a moot point soon. Since Comcast will be offereing 160MBPS speed by the end or the year to some markets and to all comcast markets by the end of 2009.


This is a rather big misunderstanding. The "160" comes from 4x40, the four channels that DOCSIS 3.0 modems will support (as opposed to one 40mb/s channel currently). It doesn't refer to the speed experienced by the customer.


----------



## Luke M (Nov 5, 2002)

jmpage2 said:


> It works well because typically no more than x% of users are doing any real data transfer at a time so on the whole the performance for a given user is pretty good. Obviously this performance will change if all of a sudden a much larger number of users start requesting extremely high speed sustained transfers for extended periods of times, such as downloading streaming HD content.


What's your point? This is nothing new. Internet traffic has been explosively growing since the 1990s.

It would only be a shock to the system if demand did NOT grow explosively.


----------



## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

Luke M said:


> What's your point? This is nothing new. Internet traffic has been explosively growing since the 1990s.
> 
> It would only be a shock to the system if demand did NOT grow explosively.


My point is that the internet is not ready for millions of subscribers to download high quality video.

It will be, eventually, but in the short term two things will happen;

1. Bottlenecks

2. Compromises in the quality of the content

The current internet was not designed for 5mbps streams going to thousands (or millions) of homes simultaneously. So, yes, if tomorrow hundreds of thousands of people all maxxed their internet connections out downloading movies, the internet would suffer some serious problems.


----------



## bizzy (Jan 20, 2004)

but your entire scenario is specious, because no consumer group is suddenly mobilizing overnight. so your clogged tubes nightmare really is just a fear born from ignorance.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

It will take a while to sell millions of Apple TVs and VUDUs, etc (though there are many millions of Xbox 360s and PS3s already out there, with large files being downloaded to them. Even when millions of video-by-download devices _are_ in the field, only a certain small percentage of them will be downloading new content at any given time.


----------



## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

bizzy said:


> but your entire scenario is specious, because no consumer group is suddenly mobilizing overnight. so your clogged tubes nightmare really is just a fear born from ignorance.


Yes, I'm a certified network engineer and I'm ignorant.

Thanks for that.

I'm not saying it *won't work* what I am saying is that a download that theoretically should take you a few hours could take a lot longer than that.

Additionally there will not be enough capacity in the near future to allow for improvements in the video quality.

Anyways, I'm out of here, good job running someone who actually knows something about this stuff out of this discussion.


----------



## yunlin12 (Mar 15, 2003)

jmpage2 said:


> My point is that the internet is not ready for millions of subscribers to download high quality video.
> 
> It will be, eventually, but in the short term two things will happen;
> 
> ...


If 10 people in your neighborhood are simultaneously downloading HD movies, yeah you would run into this problem. But the reality is not that grim.

If I do a dslreport speed test 10 times, and only 1 time does my download speed drop, presumably because someone else in my neighborhood is also downloding. This only cause a problem in 10% of my download time. This is my personal experience. I can average 8mbps on my cable HSI when doing multiple testings.

I assume that I should be able to expect my neighbors' internet usage to remain the same if I'm downloading movies. So I don't really see the scenario of everyone downloading leading to a bottleneck. At least for Unbox type of downloading, which are likely to be spread out in terms of time, between you and anyone else in your neighborhood, I don't think it should be a big problem.


----------



## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

jmpage2 said:


> My point is that the internet is not ready for millions of subscribers to download high quality video.


No, it is not. And that is why it is folly to think that DVDs are going away in the near future. (Which is what some on this and other forums have claimed.) Not only is the infrastructure not there but people like owning hardcopy of their favorite movies (or at least long term copies like with music on iPods but even the "buy" options for movies have time limits, so DVDs or BDs will stay around for a good while).

The folks who will be downloading movies via Unbox or DirecTV or Dish on demand or AppleTV will still be a minority. That doesn't mean that Unbox should shy away from at least DVD quality movies. It doesn't appear that DirecTV is shying away and the delivery works at least on a limited basis.


----------



## bizzy (Jan 20, 2004)

jmpage2 said:


> Yes, I'm a certified network engineer and I'm ignorant.
> 
> Thanks for that.


Dude, I don't know what to tell you. Your hypothetical situation was pretty far from reality. I'm an uncertified know-nothing, but I've designed high-volume distributed services at BBN Planet, Genuity, Electronic Arts, Sony and Register.com.

Both of us know that large changes in user behavior don't happen overnight, especially when we're talking about fundamental shifts away from popular existing delivery methods.


----------



## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

jmpage2 said:


> Additionally there will not be enough capacity in the near future to allow for improvements in the video quality.


I'm sorry. Tell he how DirecTV is offering HD movies over the Internet today and how it was pretty much realtime for my download. The file size was equivalent to what the same movie was in MPEG4 HD PPV, complete with 5.1 Dolby.

They only offer three movies at this point, but they are there. And they work.

While you understand the networking aspect, it appears you are overestimating the demand. A lot of this is still cutting edge stuff.


----------



## Luke M (Nov 5, 2002)

jmpage2 said:


> My point is that the internet is not ready for millions of subscribers to download high quality video.
> 
> It will be, eventually, but in the short term two things will happen;
> 
> ...


You need to forget about the technology for a minute and just think about economics. Everything you need to know about the Internet's readiness to deliver video is encapsulated in the price of video delivery. That's the bottom line, the price.

If, completely hypothetically, there is an unexpected surge of demand, then the infrastructure owners will raise their prices until demand and supply balances out. Just like any other market.


----------



## yunlin12 (Mar 15, 2003)

jmpage2 said:


> Additionally there will not be enough capacity in the near future to allow for improvements in the video quality.


My personal experience says that for now, if the movie downloading adoption stays low as it is today, I don't expect any problem downloading HD content from Unbox. However, it will become a problem if all of my neighbors started downloading, and doing it around the clock, then for sure we will have a problem. I can see that happening down the line, if the network speed does not keep up with usage.


----------



## bizzy (Jan 20, 2004)

If this hasn't happened yet with free downloads of pirated movies on bittorrent, I am not sure how movies with actual cost to them will blow the internet fuses.


----------



## juggler314 (Dec 28, 2007)

jmpage2 said:


> There's an interesting discussion around use of Multicast for on-demand type viewing at AVS that might be worth your time to read up on.


I'll try and find it...but I *suppose* if you had a continous cycle of a multicast stream...at a very high bitrate...that could work - if your bandwidth was higher than the cycle rate you could get it in one cycle, if not it would take 2 or 3...is that what they suggest?


----------



## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

TexasGrillChef said:


> Well how does VUDU do it?
> 
> I have a freind who has the same cable modem service I have. He has VUDU and downloads movies to the VUDU unit in true HD. 1080p. He can WATCH the movie as it is streaming. The Movie starts playing within 30 seconds of him initiating the download.
> 
> IT has a built in Hard drive. Each move is averaging about 10 to 15gb


Well VUDU may 1080p, but I don't know how good it would look since VUDU's product specs and knowledge base state that they only require 2 mbps to view in real-time. This means the maximum bit-rate for the video is also 2 mbps. I highly doubt the video files are 10 to 15 GB because at 2 mbps it would take over 11 hours to download 10 GB which is definitely not real-time. So either VUDU managed to create a box that violates the laws of physics or the numbers you are reporting are off.

I found a thread over at VUDU's forums which states the file sizes are about 4 GB. The videos are also in H.264 format which compresses has a lot better compression than MPEG-2 and requires about 1/2 the bitrate to get the same quality as MPEG-2. This is more realistic since at 2 mbps a 4 GB file can be downloaded in a little under 5 hours, but that's still not real-time for a 2 hour movie.

Apple states that a full HD movie (1920x1080, 24 fps) encoded with H.264 has a data rate of 8 mbps. VUDU's rate is 1/4 that. Apple also states that that 2 mbps is a good rate for SD (640x480, 24 fps).


----------



## bizzy (Jan 20, 2004)

The problem is that support for sparse inter-provider Multicast is difficult to configure and from what I know unsolved. There are just too many scaling issues with keeping group membership state in intermediate nodes and confederating multicast-aware routers across different administrative domains.

For many years multicast was a solution in search of a problem; but now that some solid applications have been identified, the difficulties of widespread deployment have crippled its adoption.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Apparently, VUDU requires a 4 Mbps connection for instant-playback of HD resolution movies, which means that the encodings can't be higher than 4 Mbps. MPEG-4/AVC at 4 Mbps isn't going to support real 1080p24.

The VUDU box is capable of upconverting movies to 1080p--so are the Xbox 360 and my television, for that matter. The question is what the true resolution of the source material is. If it were, say, 720p24, it might look pretty decent encoded at 4 Mbps and upconverted to 1080p by a good scaler.


----------



## TexasGrillChef (Sep 15, 2006)

morac said:


> Well VUDU may 1080p, but I don't know how good it would look since VUDU's product specs and knowledge base state that they only require 2 mbps to view in real-time. This means the maximum bit-rate for the video is also 2 mbps. I highly doubt the video files are 10 to 15 GB because at 2 mbps it would take over 11 hours to download 10 GB which is definitely not real-time. So either VUDU managed to create a box that violates the laws of physics or the numbers you are reporting are off.
> 
> I found a thread over at VUDU's forums which states the file sizes are about 4 GB. The videos are also in H.264 format which compresses has a lot better compression than MPEG-2 and requires about 1/2 the bitrate to get the same quality as MPEG-2. This is more realistic since at 2 mbps a 4 GB file can be downloaded in a little under 5 hours, but that's still not real-time for a 2 hour movie.
> 
> Apple states that a full HD movie (1920x1080, 24 fps) encoded with H.264 has a data rate of 8 mbps. VUDU's rate is 1/4 that. Apple also states that that 2 mbps is a good rate for SD (640x480, 24 fps).


Everything you say sounds very logical.

I could be wrong on my numbers. It isn't my VuDu Box to verify. I do know this. His HDTV is deffinately reading an input signal of 1080i. The picture & sound quality are deffinately much much better then any upconverted DVD.

As a test. He Downloaded "Bourne Ultimatum" from Vudu, We compared that to the HD-DVD version of the movie (Which includes the regular DVD version as well) The HD-DVD version *DID* look *BETTER *then the Vudu download. However, the VUDU download *WAS ALOT* better then then the regualr SD DVD version.

It was *ALMOST* as good as the HD-DVD version. But much much better then the SD DVD version.

TGC


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Apple TV HD movies should have started renting a couple of days back. Has anyone who bought the device tried these yet? If so, could you comment on the experience (PQ, responsiveness of playback control, ease-of-rental, etc)?


----------



## kas25 (Mar 10, 2003)

mikeyts said:


> Apple TV HD movies should have started renting a couple of days back. Has anyone who bought the device tried these yet? If so, could you comment on the experience (PQ, responsiveness of playback control, ease-of-rental, etc)?


The software upgrade got delayed a week or two. I'll let you know when I get it.


----------



## drhankz (Jan 14, 2008)

kas25 said:


> The software upgrade got delayed a week or two. I'll let you know when I get it.


YES the delay was posted on the *Apple Website* on Wednesday.


----------



## larrs (May 2, 2005)

Chevy_Cowboy said:


> It'd be a nice first step if they'd just offer widescreen and 5.1 sound
> 
> As it stands Unbox is pretty silly IMO.


+1

Altough the zoom function of the TivoHD remote does fill the screen and the pic quality is OK on my plasma and LCD sets. On my front PJ screen, it is not acceptable, though.


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

TexasGrillChef said:


> Well how does VUDU do it?
> 
> I have a freind who has the same cable modem service I have. He has VUDU and downloads movies to the VUDU unit in true HD. 1080p. He can WATCH the movie as it is streaming. The Movie starts playing within 30 seconds of him initiating the download.
> 
> ...


VUDU is excellent. 1080P24 movies(they just released around 60 HD titles yesterday with almost 5000 SD titles available) and you can start viewing instantly(if your connection is at least 4mbs for HD and 2mbs for SD).


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

mikeyts said:


> Apparently, VUDU requires a 4 Mbps connection for instant-playback of HD resolution movies, which means that the encodings can't be higher than 4 Mbps. MPEG-4/AVC at 4 Mbps isn't going to support real 1080p24.
> 
> The VUDU box is capable of upconverting movies to 1080p--so are the Xbox 360 and my television, for that matter. The question is what the true resolution of the source material is. If it were, say, 720p24, it might look pretty decent encoded at 4 Mbps and upconverted to 1080p by a good scaler.


All VUDU content is 480P24 for SD and 1080P24 for HD. 
You can't compare bitrates of discs to streaming bitrates. they aren't the same. you can achieve an equivalent quality with a lower streaming bitrate than a higher bitrate from a disc. I'm not saying that bitrate is 4mbs though. The VUDU HD content is better than broadcast but not as good as HD DVD or BD. It falls somewhere in between those two mediums.


----------



## bizzy (Jan 20, 2004)

aaronwt said:


> You can't compare bitrates of discs to streaming bitrates. they aren't the same. you can achieve an equivalent quality with a lower streaming bitrate than a higher bitrate from a disc.



the last time I checked, bits were bits.
are you actually comparing encoding technologies?


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

aaronwt said:


> All VUDU content is 480P24 for SD and 1080P24 for HD.


Where is there an official source specifying this as fact? I know that it can scale anything up to 1920x1080, but it's a lot easier for me to believe 720p24 scaled by the box to 1080p than to believe that any Hollywood studio is allowing the sale of their IP as a 1080p24 encoded download, no matter how degraded by low bit rate encoding.

I don't think that VUDU streams--AFAICT, it's a download-and-playback services which can playback while downloading, like TiVo-To-Come-Back and Unbox. Intuitively, you would need a _higher_ (and sustainable) bit rate in a streaming protocol to get equal PQ. You are _not_ going to stream at 4 Mbps sustained across the public internet.


----------



## bizzy (Jan 20, 2004)

mikeyts said:


> Intuitively, you would need a _higher_ (and sustainable) bit rate in a streaming protocol to get equal PQ.


Again, why? Bits are bits.



mikeyts said:


> You are _not_ going to stream at 4 Mbps sustained across the public internet.


Why not? I push about 300mbps sustained of http traffic at my day job. Much of that is large hunks of software patch. I can't see how making those transactions faster for me is not beneficial.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

bizzy said:


> Again, why? Bits are bits.


It's not going to take much more (possibly only incidentally more, given the volume of data required for video), but a streaming protocol is more elaborate than a file transfer protocol.


> Why not? I push about 300mbps sustained of http traffic at my day job. Much of that is large hunks of software patch. I can't see how making those transactions faster for me is not beneficial.


Well, I guess it depends on your service and how much bandwidth you're paying for. If you got 300 Mbps service, you almost certainly can sustain 4 Mbps. If your service is rated to peak at 7 Mbps, you're likely to see hiccups in a long 4 Mbps stream.


----------



## bizzy (Jan 20, 2004)

mikeyts said:


> It's not going to take much more (possibly only incidentally more, given the volume of data required for video), but a streaming protocol is more elaborate than a file transfer protocol.


Agreed. For Quicktime, the difference is the presence of 'hints' metadata that profiles the content in terms of length and average bitrate. This allows streaming to work better by allowing the client to allocate the correct buffer delay to compensate for loss or delay in the network.



mikeyts said:


> Well, I guess it depends on your service and how much bandwidth you're paying for. If you got 300 Mbps service, you almost certainly can sustain 4 Mbps. If your service is rated to peak at 7 Mbps, you're likely to see hiccups in a long 4 Mbps stream.


Right; I was thinking from the client side more than my side. Both of us have the incentive to move data as fast as possible; I don't like Apache worker threads tied up, and the client doesn't like waiting. 

In any case, streaming really amounts to downloading, but with a delay buffer in the player to cope with variable network performance.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

bizzy said:


> In any case, streaming really amounts to downloading, but with a delay buffer in the player to cope with variable network performance.


A significant difference is the available of commands for random access. In a download-while-playing scheme (ala Amazon Unbox, Xbox Live Video Store, and, I believe, VUDU and Apple TV) to see the final third of the film you'll have to wait until the first two-thirds finish downloading, whereas in a streaming protocol (like Netflix's "Watch Instantly" player) you can skip immediately to any spot in the picture. Download-while-playing requires enough storage to hold the entire film, where streaming only needs buffers, possibly no larger than could be accomodated in memory.


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

mikeyts said:


> Where is there an official source specifying this as fact? I know that it can scale anything up to 1920x1080, but it's a lot easier for me to believe 720p24 scaled by the box to 1080p than to believe that any Hollywood studio is allowing the sale of their IP as a 1080p24 encoded download, no matter how degraded by low bit rate encoding.
> 
> I don't think that VUDU streams--AFAICT, it's a download-and-playback services which can playback while downloading, like TiVo-To-Come-Back and Unbox. Intuitively, you would need a _higher_ (and sustainable) bit rate in a streaming protocol to get equal PQ. You are _not_ going to stream at 4 Mbps sustained across the public internet.


VUDU has a bunch of patents dealing with how the box does it's Peer to Peer downloading. It does stream at 4mbs. My connection drops by 4 mbs when it's streaming an HD title. When I stream two HD titles with both my VUDU boxes my overall bandwidth decreases by 8mbs.(I have a 30mbs FIOS connection)

Here is a link to the main patent with a bunch of helpful illustrations in the pdf format.
http://www.google.com/patents?id=Qz1_AAAAEBAJ&dq=7,191,215


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

aaronwt said:


> VUDU has a bunch of patents dealing with how the box does it's Peer to Peer downloading. It does stream at 4mbs. My connection drops by 4 mbs when it's streaming an HD title. When I stream two HD titles with both my VUDU boxes my overall bandwidth decreases by 8mbs.(I have a 30mbs FIOS connection)
> 
> Here is a link to the main patent with a bunch of helpful illustrations in the pdf format.
> http://www.google.com/patents?id=Qz1_AAAAEBAJ&dq=7,191,215


Interesting--thanks for that pointer. I'm not sure that it does what I term "streaming", but it does use a _very_ sophisticated peer-to-peer sharing scheme. Can you start playing a film with random access to the entire thing from the beginning?

VUDU's extremely interesting, but I don't think that they have a snowball's chance in hell of lasting more than a year or two. We'll see.


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

mikeyts said:


> Interesting--thanks for that pointer. I'm not sure that it does what I term "streaming", but it does use a _very_ sophisticated peer-to-peer sharing scheme. Can you start playing a film with random access to the entire thing from the beginning?
> 
> VUDU's extremely interesting, but I don't think that they have a snowball's chance in hell of lasting more than a year or two. We'll see.


No you don't have access to the entire thing. They have predownloaded the first 30 seconds of each title so it starts instantly then it streams while your watching it. It does seem to stream in faster than real time.
RIght now I think they are the best ones out there, but it is an uphill battle and more players are getting in the game so only time will tell how they do.


----------



## TiivoDog (Feb 14, 2007)

The issue I have been reading in many online articles and forums, is the consumer's apathy toward more STBs for their media needs.... I certainly am not naive to think one box will serve all purposes, but a box should at least provide incremental value over it's core feature. As I understand the Vudu in its current form / version is an "On Demand" video (SD & HD) conent delivery box and does it well, which is vitally important.

However, I was personally drawn to the AppleTV (ATV) about a year ago in order to view Video Podcasts of my choice as Tivo did not support that approach.... However, I was able to leverage other features of my ATV for my benefit; Music, Video purchase/rentals (Movies & TV Shows) and it also allowed me to view video content, which I had MRV'd from my Tivo to my NAS, that I moved to create more space. I was also eager for the anticipated HD content and while that significantly lagged with when I thought it would be available, nontheless it will be here soon. Also, for the record I am not some raving Apple Cult Freak - in fact I have never owned an Apple computer and still think Steve Jobs/et al is selling his company short on several fronts, however that is for another forum....

Also, regarding quality, who knows - VuDu very well will be a technically better product to view, but I didn't buy the unit expecting the ATV would be the best unit to view streamed or downloaded HD content, however I knew it would be good and maybe very good. Also, I did not have delusions the ATV, VuDu or another competing product would have a picture as good as a 50 or 60 GB disc, so I think those discussions are rather pointless....

In closing, I am excited for ATV HD content and will form an opinion at that time and regarding VuDu, I have never seen one, but I am sure it has a good picture/features with video content. But, for the average consumer looking to leverage several features in yet another STV and who own or are planning to purchase an iPod/iPhone, I can't see how they would go wrong with the ATV. Lastly, I am really pleased that viable competitive options currently exist for the consumer regarding streamed/downloadable HD content in order to regularly raise the bar with expectations, quality, features and lastly pricing.

All, carry on.....


----------



## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

I REALLY hope TiVo can get the MPEG-4 decoding working on the S3/THD soon. They have a real chance to compete still on the download side, but here, just like it did a couple of years ago in the HD DVR market, the window of opportunity is closing fast. If enough people get used to using 360, AppleTV or (less likely IMO) Vudu, TiVo will miss the boat on this.

I don't know how much influence they have over the Unbox content or how hard it would be for them to get MPEG-4 decoding working on the TiVos (maybe it's already enabled, who knows), but they need to get something going... soon.

Having less-than-DVD quality on MPEG-2 downloads that require the same bandwidth as 360, AppleTV and Vudus HD quality offerings isn't gonna cut it anymore.

By the way, is anyone else a bit annoyed that Vudu is using P2P for its delivery? I don't have a box, but it just rubs me the wrong way that I would be forced to use my bandwidth... unless you get a discount for if you participate in it, and it can be turned off otherwise, or something. Not sure about the details of how it works.


----------



## bizzy (Jan 20, 2004)

MickeS said:


> By the way, is anyone else a bit annoyed that Vudu is using P2P for its delivery? I don't have a box, but it just rubs me the wrong way that I would be forced to use my bandwidth... unless you get a discount for if you participate in it, and it can be turned off otherwise, or something. Not sure about the details of how it works.


I work at a pc game company and we experimented in beta with distribution via p2p- we actually licensed Bittorrent technology. Your sentiment is not atypical, many of our testers resented it as well.


----------



## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

bizzy said:


> I work at a pc game company and we experimented in beta with distribution via p2p- we actually licensed Bittorrent technology. Your sentiment is not atypical, many of our testers resented it as well.


Many ISPs resent it as well and actually go as far as to actively block p2p and then call it "delaying".


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

MickeS said:


> I REALLY hope TiVo can get the MPEG-4 decoding working on the S3/THD soon. They have a real chance to compete still on the download side, but here, just like it did a couple of years ago in the HD DVR market, the window of opportunity is closing fast. If enough people get used to using 360, AppleTV or (less likely IMO) Vudu, TiVo will miss the boat on this.
> 
> I don't know how much influence they have over the Unbox content or how hard it would be for them to get MPEG-4 decoding working on the TiVos (maybe it's already enabled, who knows), but they need to get something going... soon.
> 
> ...


I have no problem with it. The VUDU box only uses 200Kbs upstream. I have two VUDU boxes so the most it uses on my upstream bandwidth is 400kbs. I have a 5mbs upstream connection so it doesn't bothe rme in the least. I wish they had an option to increase the VUDU upstream usuage. I would have each box use 1.5mbs of my upstream bandwidth if I could since I rarely use much of it.
And since I have FIOS, the interent usage is unlimited. They have no cap on data upstream or downstream.


----------



## bizzy (Jan 20, 2004)

aaronwt said:


> And since I have FIOS, the interent usage is unlimited. They have no cap on data upstream or downstream.


Are you sure about that? If you pushed "line rate" on your network connection for a full billing cycle, VZ wouldn't do anything?

Not being a contrarian, but honestly interested. If so, I can't wait for VZ to roll out service in my area.


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

bizzy said:


> Are you sure about that? If you pushed "line rate" on your network connection for a full billing cycle, VZ wouldn't do anything?
> 
> Not being a contrarian, but honestly interested. If so, I can't wait for VZ to roll out service in my area.


The most I've used is 300GB to 400GB a month. But I've heard of people using many times that amount and not having any issues with FIOS. Plus FIOS has publicly stated that there is no limit, no throttling etc.


----------



## TiivoDog (Feb 14, 2007)

As a follow up to my post a week or so back, I just received my Apple TV update ("Take 2"), which now provides 1080P support, and then downloaded an HD movie (Transformers). After viewing, I have to so that Apple has done a commendable job! The picture quality was better than what I expected and the 5.1 surround is great!!!

Basically, this is now providing me what I wanted, when I originally purchased the unit and now I am only looking from Apple is the ability to 'purchase' HD content, so I can store that on my Network Data Server (HPMMS) OR better yet, they need to provide the ability to download content at any future point free of charge.

I also saw Netflix is now scrambling as the timing of their announcement with MS via xBox 360, however I didn't see any mention of HD???? I am sure if they don't offer it now, HD content would be around the corner.....

http://gizmodo.com/355607/netflix-movie-streaming-coming-to-xbox-360-and-ps3

Anyways, my only question from a Tivo perspective is if Apple can increase their supported resolution from 1080i/720p to 1080P via software only upgrade, why can't Tivo on their HD units......


----------



## drhankz (Jan 14, 2008)

TiivoDog said:


> As a follow up to my post a week or so back, I just received my Apple TV update ("Take 2"), which now provides 1080P support,


You must have a super special download 

There is no 1080p settings in my new download.


----------



## TiivoDog (Feb 14, 2007)

No, you just need a super special TV 

I discovered this as I intially installed the update, when it was connected to my family room TV, which only supports 1080i/720P video resolutions. After the installation, I only received options up for "1080i/720p", which was on the list of video settings I was always presented.

However, after the installation, I downloaded my HD movie rental, which actually took a while for the entire film even with my FIOS service, I moved it to my basement 'cinema' for viewing later tonight with my 3 boys - it is a 1080P Samsung DLP LED. Also, I have two HD 'stations' that are plumbed to quickly move my ATV between them with wired hardware (i.e. ethernet, HDMI, surround sound, etc...). Anyways, after I set it up down there, I was presented an option in the video resolution list, which then included "1080P" - it was not visible/present, when connected to my family room TV.

Also, take a look at the specs at the far right of the Apple link below:

http://www.apple.com/appletv/specs.html

======================
TV compatibility

Compatible with enhanced-definition or high-
definition widescreen TVs capable of
*1080p*/1080i 60/50Hz, 720p 60/50Hz, 576p
50Hz (PAL format), or 480p 60Hz, including
popular models from these manufacturers: HP,
Hitachi, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, NEC, Olevia,
Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer, Polaroid, Samsung,
Sony, Sharp, Toshiba, Vizio, Westinghouse

======================


----------



## dig_duggler (Sep 18, 2002)

Any comparison between Apple TV SD rental vs Unbox SD rental? 5.1 would seem to give apple tv the edge, what about picture quality?


----------



## drhankz (Jan 14, 2008)

TiivoDog said:


> No, you just need a super special TV
> 
> I discovered this as I intially installed the update, when it was connected to my family room TV, which only supports 1080i/720P video resolutions. After the installation, I only received options up for "1080i/720p", which was on the list of video settings I was always presented.


Now I understand.

I don't hook my Apple TV to a display because Apple's
HDMI implementation is HALF broken. It may work 
directly to a TV - but most of us hook it to a Pre/Pro
or AVR. With any device between the Apple TV and
the Display - Apple TV - HDMI is broken.

Therefore I can only use Component to the Pre/Pro
at 1080i but no sense even doing that because Apple
won't really keep any resolution except 720p and my
external scaler to 1080p to my Front-Projector is way
better than the Apple TV.

Thanks for the explanation of your SPECIAL connection :up:


----------



## bizzy (Jan 20, 2004)

dig_duggler said:


> Any comparison between Apple TV SD rental vs Unbox SD rental? 5.1 would seem to give apple tv the edge, what about picture quality?


why would I rent SD with my appletv?!


----------



## bizzy (Jan 20, 2004)

drhankz said:


> Therefore I can only use Component to the Pre/Pro
> at 1080i but no sense even doing that because Apple
> won't really keep any resolution except 720p and my
> external scaler to 1080p to my Front-Projector is way
> better than the Apple TV.


I can't quite decode your secret language there, but my appletv has no problem outputting 1080i via component till the cows come home.


----------



## TiivoDog (Feb 14, 2007)

I have very little good to say about Amazon Unbox from a Tivo perspective - none of their content for Tivo is in Wide Screen format, the quality is 'ok' and only in 2 speaker stereo - no Dolby 5.1!!! Hands down Apple TV is one's best option to augment their Tivo collection at the time being. Hopefully, Tivo will find a way to improve their decoding and partner up with a better company that is truly dedicated to delivering both high quality content (WS, Dolby 5.1 and HD) and a robust selection via broadband to Tivo subscribers.

Amazon Unbox has failed on many fronts in my opinion - I have been on record in this forum from that position shortly after the service was launched. Their Customer Service lied to me the day it was lauched that their engineers were working on both Dolby 5.1 & WS format a year ago and obviously they weren't or are completely inept.....

That's my 2 cents.


----------



## TiivoDog (Feb 14, 2007)

bizzy said:


> I can't quite decode your secret language there, but my appletv has no problem outputting 1080i via component till the cows come home.


Get the Apple TV update and you get 1080P output - no descaler/et al....


----------



## bizzy (Jan 20, 2004)

TiivoDog said:


> Get the Apple TV update and you get 1080P output - no descaler/et al....


I'm going to hold off and see how well the hacks play with the update, letting someone else be the guinea pig


----------



## TiivoDog (Feb 14, 2007)

drhankz said:


> Now I understand.
> 
> I don't hook my Apple TV to a display because Apple's
> HDMI implementation is HALF broken. It may work
> ...


I have my Apple TV connected through an HDMI splitter switch to my Onkyo SR805, which is an AVR, and it is working great!!! I use the splitter as the 2006 model only had 2 HDMI inputs and one is my Tivo and the other is shared with my HD DVD player.


----------



## TiivoDog (Feb 14, 2007)

bizzy said:


> I'm going to hold off and see how well the hacks play with the update, letting someone else be the guinea pig


Well, unless you have some hacks on your Apple TV that you are worried will not be functional with the update, I understand, otherwise it is a blessed/tested update from Apple that includes the ability to download/view HD content in 1080P. If you don't upgrade, you might as well put training wheels on your corvette....


----------



## drhankz (Jan 14, 2008)

TiivoDog said:


> I have my Apple TV connected through an HDMI splitter switch to my Onkyo SR805, which is an AVR, and it is working great!!! I use the splitter as the 2006 model only had 2 HDMI inputs and one is my Tivo and the other is shared with my HD DVD player.


I have not tried it since today's update on HDMI
- But maybe I will.

I have the Apple TV hooked to a Anthem D2. 
There are a lot of us on the Anthem Thread 
with Apple TVs and we all get the same 
result.

I even called Apple Care - since mine is only
10 days old. They agreed the only resolution
over HDMI that is Suppose to work is 720p. 
AGAIN - that is what the tech support said to 
me on the Phone. With the Anthem D2 - via 
HDMI - Apple TV is the only source device I 
have that does not work with the D2.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

bizzy said:


> I can't quite decode your secret language there, but my appletv has no problem outputting 1080i via component till the cows come home.


Actually, I believe that what he was saying was that there's no sense (for him at least) using 1080i component when Apple TV's source material is probably all encoded in 720p and if he sends 720p to his equipment the scaling to 1080p is likely to be better Apple TV's scaler.


----------



## TiivoDog (Feb 14, 2007)

drhankz said:


> I have not tried it since today's update on HDMI
> - But maybe I will.
> 
> I have the Apple TV hooked to a Anthem D2.
> ...


Makes sense now and if you didn't call since the update, I am sure they were 'gagged' and were not allowed to say "well, if you download the update tomorrow/next week' it will work...". It's up to you, but your position makes sense - hopefully the update will correct your technical malady.


----------



## drhankz (Jan 14, 2008)

mikeyts said:


> Actually, I believe that what he was saying was that there's no sense (for him at least) using 1080i component when Apple TV's source material is probably all encoded in 720p and if he sends 720p to his equipment the scaling to 1080p is likely to be better Apple TV's scaler.


Absolutely correct analysis. Thanks.


----------



## drhankz (Jan 14, 2008)

TiivoDog said:


> Makes sense now and if you didn't call since the update, I am sure they were 'gagged' and were not allowed to say "well, if you download the update tomorrow/next week' it will work...". It's up to you, but your position makes sense - hopefully the update will correct your technical malady.


My stuff is all rack mounted - Maybe over the weekend
I'll roll it out so I can get to the back of everything and
try the HDMI connection.

I'd like it to work - not because I expect to see something
better - it is because all 4 of my Component Ports on the
D2 are used up and I have SPARE HDMI ports to burn. I'd
like to get the Component port that I had to steal for the
Apple back 

I'll post over in the AVS Anthem Thread that maybe the
update has fixed the HDMI problem.


----------



## dig_duggler (Sep 18, 2002)

bizzy said:


> why would I rent SD with my appletv?!


Because most of the content is in SD. There are less than 100 HD titles available.


----------



## TiivoDog (Feb 14, 2007)

drhankz said:


> My stuff is all rack mounted - Maybe over the weekend
> I'll roll it out so I can get to the back of everything and
> try the HDMI connection.


Please report back as I would like to hear how you make out with it and if successful, your thoughts on the quality of the video/audio.


----------



## kb7oeb (Jan 18, 2005)

Amazon Unbox doesn't exist to me until it has HD. I wonder what happened to that netflix/tivo deal.


----------



## bizzy (Jan 20, 2004)

AppleTV 2.0 is pretty hot. I'm actually impressed


----------



## drhankz (Jan 14, 2008)

TiivoDog said:


> Please report back as I would like to hear how you make out with it and if successful, your thoughts on the quality of the video/audio.


I didn't try it myself - but two other friends on the
AVS Anthem D2 forum did the Apple TV Update and
tried it. They even have a newer D2 FW than I do
which Anthem says should fix all known HDMI problems.

They reported back that same Apple TV Behavior
with the NEW SW as the OLD SW. I guess we might
be pointing the finger back at Anthem now.

Anthem is GREAT at fixing bugs ASAP - maybe one
of us needs to provide them with an APPLE TV to TEST
with.


----------



## drhankz (Jan 14, 2008)

bizzy said:


> AppleTV 2.0 is pretty hot. I'm actually impressed


I'm happy with even if I can only get it to 
work via Component out.


----------



## slydog75 (Jul 8, 2004)

I've been loving Amazon UnBox. I haven't been using it for movies, just for TV programs (Battelstar Galatica) but the quality for those has been very good for SD programing. Definetely DVD quality. And someone mentioned widescreen, all the TV shows I've downloaded have been in widescreen. I've got a pretty great set up going where I download the shows to my Home Theatre PC and then use my XBOx360 to watch them on my livingroom TV (40" Samsung LCD).


----------



## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

slydog75 said:


> I've been loving Amazon UnBox. I haven't been using it for movies, just for TV programs (Battelstar Galatica) but the quality for those has been very good for SD programing. Definetely DVD quality. And someone mentioned widescreen, all the TV shows I've downloaded have been in widescreen. I've got a pretty great set up going where I download the shows to my Home Theatre PC and then use my XBOx360 to watch them on my livingroom TV (40" Samsung LCD).


The TV shows on Unbox have been great. Some movies have been very good. Unfortunately, some movies have been very bad - but it's impossible to know which, so I've unfortunately stopped renting movies from them.


----------



## TiivoDog (Feb 14, 2007)

slydog75 said:


> I've been loving Amazon UnBox. I haven't been using it for movies, just for TV programs (Battelstar Galatica) but the quality for those has been very good for SD programing. Definetely DVD quality. And someone mentioned widescreen, all the TV shows I've downloaded have been in widescreen. I've got a pretty great set up going where I download the shows to my Home Theatre PC and then use my XBOx360 to watch them on my livingroom TV (40" Samsung LCD).


Per my earlier note in this thread, I am on record as not being a fan of Amazon Unbox (AU) up to this point, so when you said AU now has Wide Screen content for Tivo users, I had to check, so I looked up two Battlestar Galactica TV Shows and looked for WS under Tivo (Video Download Details). The first show below is available in 16:9 (1.78 Aspect Ratio), but for *ONLY* the Computer and Portable device downloads, whereas for Tivo it is only 4:3 (1.33 Aspect Ratio).

http://www.amazon.com/Battlestar-Ga...ie=UTF8&s=digital-video&qid=1202912534&sr=1-2

The second one, which is also a 2007 season, is only Full Screen (4:3 or 1.33 Aspect Ratio) for Computer, Tivo & Portable Device.

http://www.amazon.com/Battlestar-Ga...ie=UTF8&s=digital-video&qid=1202912475&sr=1-5

Furthermore, my other beef with AU is their lousy audio support (No Dolby 5.1) - just 2 speaker stereo.... I'll continue to monitor their lack of progress, however it's been a painful and futile effort on my part for the past year..... Therefore, I've moved on to other avenues a long time ago in this arena (Apple TV) as they have really pooped the bed with their opportunity to capitalize on a 'captive' audience, when they partnered up with Tivo!!


----------



## acvthree (Jan 17, 2004)

It is wide screen within the 4:3. You zoom.


----------



## brettatk (Oct 11, 2002)

I rented I now Pronounce you Chuck and Larry last week and it was in wide screen on my Tivo. And I did not have it on stretch or zoom.

HD sure would be nice though... <sigh>


----------



## dig_duggler (Sep 18, 2002)

brettatk said:


> I rented I now Pronounce you Chuck and Larry last week and it was in wide screen on my Tivo. And I did not have it on stretch or zoom.
> 
> HD sure would be nice though... <sigh>


Actually, I just checked it out and it's 4:3 letterbox (and stereo). Check it out under the Video Download details.


----------



## brettatk (Oct 11, 2002)

dig_duggler said:


> Actually, I just checked it out and it's 4:3 letterbox (and stereo). Check it out under the Video Download details.


Actually, it was widescreen. I even checked the Tivo HD aspect ratio to make sure it was not on stretch or zoom. Not sure what else to tell you.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

brettatk said:


> Actually, it was widescreen. I even checked the Tivo HD aspect ratio to make sure it was not on stretch or zoom. Not sure what else to tell you.


You're getting a unique experience. Everything that I ever downloaded from Unbox onto TiVo was letterboxed in a 4:3 window and that's what they tell you to expect online--1.33:1 with letterboxing for the TiVo version, 1:87:1 for the PC version and 1.84:1 for the PMP version.

Maybe they've made a recent change and haven't updated their "Video Download Detail" section.


----------



## brettatk (Oct 11, 2002)

mikeyts said:


> You're getting a unique experience. Everything that I ever downloaded from Unbox onto TiVo was letterboxed in a 4:3 window and that's what they tell you to expect online--1.33:1 with letterboxing for the TiVo version, 1:87:1 for the PC version and 1.84:1 for the PMP version.
> 
> Maybe they've made a recent change and haven't updated their "Video Download Detail" section.


That is strange. I'm fairly certain the last thing I downloaded from Unbox was widescreen as well but I cant remember what it was. I would say I'd go home and test it but it's really not worth the money. Maybe my TV was changing the mode without me realizing it. If I ever download anything else I'll be sure to pay attention.


----------



## bizzy (Jan 20, 2004)

drhankz said:


> I'm happy with even if I can only get it to
> work via Component out.


Just curious, did you upgrade to 2.0 though the AppleTV interface, or do the 'safe upgrade' process on the AwkwardTV site? The 'safe upgrade' skips the HDMI firmware upgrade, and many HDMI users are (not surprisingly) reporting problems after they upgraded by hand.


----------



## TiivoDog (Feb 14, 2007)

It is a letterboxed picture, but in a 4:3 window - real hokie..... Basically, it is not true 16:9 WS content and I am sure they did this as not everybody, who has a Tivo has a WS, such as those with Series2 that have them connected to an older 'tube' television.

Also, mouse over the Letterbox picture and it advises it is 1:33 aspect ratio.


----------



## acvthree (Jan 17, 2004)

TiivoDog said:


> It is a letterboxed picture, but in a 4:3 window - real hokie..... Basically, it is not true 16:9 WS content and I am sure they did this as not everybody, who has a Tivo has a WS, such as those with Series2 that have them connected to an older 'tube' television.
> 
> Also, mouse over the Letterbox picture and it advises it is 1:33 aspect ratio.


It may be hokie, but there are plentry of widescreen DVDs that are not anamorphic.

Al


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

acvthree said:


> It may be hokie, but there are plentry of widescreen DVDs that are not anamorphic


I'm sorry--I don't understand the point that you're trying to make. Are you saying that DVD players playing non-anamorphic widescreen DVDs on 4:3 screens have to add their own letterboxing (just as the TiVo has to add pillars to play back those 4:3 recordings when connected to widescreen sets). If so, I agree--there's no reason not to provide TiVo copies in widescreen and have TiVo add sidebars on playback. What they're doing wastes resolution.


----------



## drhankz (Jan 14, 2008)

bizzy said:


> Just curious, did you upgrade to 2.0 though the AppleTV interface, or do the 'safe upgrade' process on the AwkwardTV site? The 'safe upgrade' skips the HDMI firmware upgrade, and many HDMI users are (not surprisingly) reporting problems after they upgraded by hand.


I don't know anything about the SAFE UPGRADE path.

I let Apple and the Apple TV do everything.

Some people over in the Anthem forum have found some
new HDMI settings which might allow it to work but none 
of us have tried the NEW HDMI settings.


----------



## vstone (May 11, 2002)

Chevy_Cowboy said:


> It'd be a nice first step if they'd just offer widescreen and 5.1 sound
> 
> As it stands Unbox is pretty silly IMO.


Actually, at least some of the Unbox content is widescreen. I didn't know this until I saw a post somewhere about the widescreen version of "Die Hard or Live Free." I downloaded it via the Tivo interface (ie not from Amazon via the web). I saw nothing to tell me that it was WS, but it was.


----------



## dig_duggler (Sep 18, 2002)

It is odd that all of their marketing says 4:3, but some users here are reporting widescreen. All of my recent rentals have been 4:3, but there seems to be enough knowledgeable people (that would know if they were zoomed or panned) reporting otherwise.


----------



## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

dig_duggler said:


> It is odd that all of their marketing says 4:3, but some users here are reporting widescreen. All of my recent rentals have been 4:3, but there seems to be enough knowledgeable people (that would know if they were zoomed or panned) reporting otherwise.


I downloaded it to my Series 3 TiVo from Unbox, and it was NOT widescreen, it was letterboxed 4:3. Guaranteed. I highly doubt that they have two versions of it.

Other than that it was excellent quality, the best I've seen on Unbox.


----------



## brettatk (Oct 11, 2002)

It's unfortunate Unbox is so far behind. I'm about ready to pull the trigger and buy me an Apple TV for renting HD movies. As soon as I do this it's probable for Unbox to announce HD content.


----------



## Adam1115 (Dec 15, 2003)

brettatk said:


> It's unfortunate Unbox is so far behind. I'm about ready to pull the trigger and buy me an Apple TV for renting HD movies. As soon as I do this it's probable for Unbox to announce HD content.


So far behind WHO? APPLE? Who requires you to by their own dedicated hardware to support it?

That's literally their ONLY competitor and the fact the Unbox works on your TiVo, that has other functions, seems like an advantage that Apple doesn't have.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Apple TV has a ton of other functions, too. In fact, just about everything that TiVo does other than DVR, except with a faster, smoother, _much_ more polished interface. At this time, it does this movie rental thing so much better that it's not even worth comparing the two, if you have an HDTV.


----------



## brettatk (Oct 11, 2002)

Adam1115 said:


> So far behind WHO? APPLE? Who requires you to by their own dedicated hardware to support it?
> 
> That's literally their ONLY competitor and the fact the Unbox works on your TiVo, that has other functions, seems like an advantage that Apple doesn't have.


I didnt buy a nice HDTV to watch movies in SD. If I have to spend $225 for the Apple TV then so be it. Atleast that would be cheaper than splurging for a Blu-ray Player and then having to still rent them.

Being able to provide HD movies might be one of the only advantages Apple TV has over Unbox but it's a BIG one.

I'd be happy to stick with Charter VOD but their selection for HD is limited to about 10 movies and they are all new releases.


----------



## dig_duggler (Sep 18, 2002)

Adam1115 said:


> So far behind WHO? APPLE? Who requires you to by their own dedicated hardware to support it?
> 
> That's literally their ONLY competitor and the fact the Unbox works on your TiVo, that has other functions, seems like an advantage that Apple doesn't have.


A Tivo can do most of what an Apple TV can. But, for some having aac support (remember when Tivo was going to have that?) allows for streaming your entire music library. The Apple TV's functionality is muuuuch faster and snappier (granted it's not constantly recording and doing other things for you). Tivo's home media applications can't even touch it, but you do have to spring $225 (minimum) for it. It's a good complement if you've got the cash and use iTunes.

But they've got under 100 HD titles right now. If that's what's selling you, you may want to see if the content beefs up first.


----------



## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

mikeyts said:


> Apple TV has a ton of other functions, too. In fact, just about everything that TiVo does other than DVR, except with a faster, smoother, _much_ more polished interface. At this time, it does this movie rental thing so much better that it's not even worth comparing the two, if you have an HDTV.


Unbox definitely beats Apple when it comes to content though. Its a shame they haven't updated to better quality videos. If Unbox had better quality, there would be little reason to not use it compared to Apple TV.


----------



## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

Adam1115 said:


> So far behind WHO? APPLE? Who requires you to by their own dedicated hardware to support it?
> 
> That's literally their ONLY competitor and the fact the Unbox works on your TiVo, that has other functions, seems like an advantage that Apple doesn't have.


Yeah, but TiVo needs to compete with those products NOW, if they want to compete at all. And remember, TiVo carries a monthly sub, the others don't.

Of course, to me it's a no-brainer - I will probably never get an AppleTV. But those who don't have TiVo (ie, 99% of the population ) might.

And I happen to believe the new Apple TV interface is a mess. TiVo has no worries there... only when it comes to content and quality. But TiVo needs to come up with their own interface for Unbox and similar - what they have today doesn't cut it by a long shot. It needs to be "in your face", nut buried under several sub menus.


----------



## drhankz (Jan 14, 2008)

brettatk said:


> It's unfortunate Unbox is so far behind. I'm about ready to pull the trigger and buy me an Apple TV for renting HD movies. As soon as I do this it's probable for Unbox to announce HD content.


I agree with you. 200 bucks was not a big outlay
for an experiement. What was my tipping point
was when Apple Announced it - they had support
for every studio. It is all about content and choices.

Regardless of ubox's PQ - good or bad - not delivering
at least DD sound is broken in my book.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

The difference between Apple and TiVo in this "competition" is that TiVo is not a content provider nor do I think that they want to go in the direction of setting themselves up as one. They wrote some stuff to allow things to be downloaded as purchased from Amazon, but Amazon is in complete control of what gets released and they've shown no indication that they think that HD content is important. This is really a competition between Apple and Amazon (and a few others, like Vudu).

If TiVo cares, they could make sure that their playback mechanism can handle a low bit rate high definition format (like 720p24 MPEG4, which can yield a reasonable file size for a 2 hour movie with noticeably superior-to-DVD quality) and see if some other source is interested in downloading movies to their boxes (like Blockbuster, perhaps).


----------



## kas25 (Mar 10, 2003)

Tivo and Apple are very close to coming up with the perfect solution. Tivo is much closer of the two but it is lacking the quality of its non-dvr function. It would absolutely crush the Apple Tv IF it:

-would get Amazon to provide HD, widescreen movies in DD.
-would get Amazon to allow you to purchase their music through the Tivo
-improve its user interface for both above

Apple TV would crush Tivo if it would it could handle recording the way Tivo does. Of the two scenarios, Tivo has the best shot at getting to the ultimate solution first.


----------



## Cue-Ball (Oct 8, 2002)

Adam1115 said:


> So far behind WHO? APPLE? Who requires you to by their own dedicated hardware to support it?
> 
> That's literally their ONLY competitor and the fact the Unbox works on your TiVo, that has other functions, seems like an advantage that Apple doesn't have.


Don't forget about Microsoft. They offer movies and TV shows in Hi-Def via the Xbox Live Marketplace (Xbox 360). The quality is good and the pricing is on par with Amazon and Apple.

If Microsoft and Apple can offer HD and widescreen DVD quality downloads, surely Amazon/Tivo can too. They won't get a dime of my movie rental movie until they do.


----------



## vstone (May 11, 2002)

MickeS said:


> I downloaded it to my Series 3 TiVo from Unbox, and it was NOT widescreen, it was letterboxed 4:3. Guaranteed. I highly doubt that they have two versions of it.
> 
> Other than that it was excellent quality, the best I've seen on Unbox.


True. I misspoke. It was not HD, it was not widescreen SD, and I did have to zoom to fill the screen. In the absense of HD a decent LB transfer makes me happy. I'm really not surprised that Amazon has not invested in widescreen SD. Could an S2 even handle it?

I don't know a thing about PC codecs. I presume that they can handle widescreen SD, but i don't know it. An LB DVD is sorta widescreen SD.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

When a DVD is letterboxed, it's generally in some wider-than-HDTV format, like 2.35:1; even 1.85:1 will usually appear with tiny letterbox bars. The only way to present it in OAR on a less wide screen is to letterbox it.

PC video players can generally handle whatever arbitrary dimensions the source is encoded as, downscaling or upscaling to fit if desired. They just create a window that shape; if you ask for fullscreen playback and the source doesn't match the shape of your screen, they add black bars on the sides or top/bottom.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Cue-Ball said:


> Don't forget about Microsoft. They offer movies and TV shows in Hi-Def via the Xbox Live Marketplace (Xbox 360). The quality is good and the pricing is on par with Amazon and Apple.
> 
> If Microsoft and Apple can offer HD and widescreen DVD quality downloads, surely Amazon/Tivo can too. They won't get a dime of my movie rental movie until they do.


You know, I had forgotten about MS. Inasmuch as they tout network downloads as the future of home video, I doubt that the XBL Video Store is going anywhere, but they still don't offer that large of a selection. There are generally no more than 300 films or so available and only for rent; like VOD on cable, stuff become available for a limited time. They have most of the big new releases by the studios that are working with them, but they also feature an ample portion of B-movie slasher crap. This may change as the studios loose their reticence about HD downloads. They should create a version for HTPC and Media Center Extender users, but the studios are even more reticent about HD downloads to PCs--I haven't seen a PC movie download service offering anything decent in HD. Playback of video store stuff on the Xbox is fine, but it's annoyingly loud.


----------



## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

vstone said:


> I'm really not surprised that Amazon has not invested in widescreen SD. Could an S2 even handle it?


A few of the S2 models had problems with widescreen videos, but the majority displayed it just fine, mine did - until the last software update, when it suddenly lost the ability to do it, and instead shows the widescreen image in a stretched letterbox format. Bad bug.

There are ways of getting around that when encoding videos though (basically do a "compressed 4:3" video instead of true widescreen), but I doubt Amazon is interested in doing it. I don't see widescreen videos coming for anything else but S3/THD, and they'll probably be HD by then (if ever).


----------



## kupe (Apr 10, 2003)

snathanb said:


> It takes me forever long just to download an SD unbox... 768k connection only.


Don't feel bad- Unbox downloads are slow even on my 6 MB/sec connection.

Kupe


----------



## Saturn_V (Jun 2, 2007)

MickeS said:


> There are ways of getting around that when encoding videos though (basically do a "compressed 4:3" video instead of true widescreen), but I doubt Amazon is interested in doing it. I don't see widescreen videos coming for anything else but S3/THD, and they'll probably be HD by then (if ever).


I freebie rented that Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Video from Unbox last week...and I almost swear that it's "compressed 4:3," which kinda surprised me. Looked tall and thin viewed in "Panel" mode on my THD, but once I went to "Full" it looked tons better.

Or maybe it's the models that are tall and thin...


----------



## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

Saturn_V said:


> I freebie rented that Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Video from Unbox last week...and I almost swear that it's "compressed 4:3," which kinda surprised me. Looked tall and thin viewed in "Panel" mode on my THD, but once I went to "Full" it looked tons better.
> 
> Or maybe it's the models that are tall and thin...


No, you are right! That is indeed a "compressed 4:3" video, that displays in full widescreen when shown in "Full" mode on the TiVo. It's the first Unbox download that I have seen that is in widescreen when selecting "Full"!

Maybe there is some hope.


----------



## riekl (Jan 29, 2001)

MickeS said:


> No, you are right! That is indeed a "compressed 4:3" video, that displays in full widescreen when shown in "Full" mode on the TiVo. It's the first Unbox download that I have seen that is in widescreen when selecting "Full"!
> 
> Maybe there is some hope.


I do NOT want to re-start the Apple vs Tivo flame that I accidently did in another thread but I see some misconceptions here and posters who aren't in the other thread. Things to be aware of:

Is AppleTV a competition for Tivo ? Don't be silly. AppleTV has nothing to do with DVR/Cable and never will.

With that said, comparing AppleTV to Unbox, ATV has many more advantages then listed in this thread.

1) Instant viewing. With Unbox it is anywhere from 20-40 minutes from when you hit order to when you can watch it, and that is WITH a high speed net connection. With ATV it is 30s for SD and 60s for HD (on my 8m pipe, if you have less then 6 you will not get instant HD viewing with any service).
2) Video Quality. Even the SD video quality is noticeably better on ATV compared to Unbox. And of course the HD blows it away.
3) Previews. You can watch a preview of EVERY movie before deciding to buy it. Major +++ here
4) Theater Trailers, not a draw to many but I do enjoy watching them!
5) Interface. Unbox is ungodly ugly, slow, and painful. Unless you know the name of what you want to rent you are just out of luck. ATV gives you many ways to browse content as well as search it.

Unbox has more movie content (today) AppleTV has more TV Show content (today). Unbox has a 1.5 year head start and only has 3500 movies available. Today Apple only has ~400 but has agreements from every studio (Unbox does not).

So bottom line, ATV is never ever going to replace your Tivo, you need both. But Unbox doesn't touch ATV in any category other then content and that will change fast.


----------



## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

riekl said:


> 1) Instant viewing. With Unbox it is anywhere from 20-40 minutes from when you hit order to when you can watch it, and that is WITH a high speed net connection. With ATV it is 30s for SD and 60s for HD (on my 8m pipe, if you have less then 6 you will not get instant HD viewing with any service).


I have never waited 20-40 minutes to start watching a Unbox movie. From what I have read HD rentals on Apple TV take much longer than 60s for most people. 


riekl said:


> 3) Previews. You can watch a preview of EVERY movie before deciding to buy it. Major +++ here


You can watch previews on the Unbox site for most movies.

Btw, I don't know why you are interjecting an Apple TV discussion here. There is already a thread for that (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=381480). This thread is about discussing getting HD downloads for S3/Tivo HDs.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

riekl said:


> 1) Instant viewing. With Unbox it is anywhere from 20-40 minutes from when you hit order to when you can watch it, and that is WITH a high speed net connection. With ATV it is 30s for SD and 60s for HD (on my 8m pipe, if you have less then 6 you will not get instant HD viewing with any service).


VUDU claims that a 4 Mbps pipe is sufficient for instant start HD on their service--do you dispute that?


----------



## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

mikeyts said:


> VUDU claims that a 4 Mbps pipe is sufficient for instant start HD on their service--do you dispute that?


Remember that VUDU downloads the first few minutes of a movie before you even order it, which is why it can instant start.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

rainwater said:


> Btw, I don't know why you are interjecting an Apple TV discussion here. There is already a thread for that (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=381480). This thread is about discussing getting HD downloads for S3/Tivo HDs.


Could it be because he read the 30 or so posts in this thread since mid-January which discuss Apple TV and is commenting, as an ATV user, on some things that he saw as misconceptions expressed in some of them ?

The topic of ATV and VUDU came up because some of us (myself included) don't expect Amazon to ever introduce HD downloads and are interested in exploring alternatives. Amazon Unbox began and probably largely continues as downloads to PCs--the film studios have shown no interest whatsoever in allowing downloads of HD versions of their content to PCs, and I don't think that Amazon will start stocking HD movies which can only be downloaded to TiVos. Of course, I could be wrong .


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

riekl said:


> 5) Interface. Unbox is ungodly ugly, slow, and painful. Unless you know the name of what you want to rent you are just out of luck. ATV gives you many ways to browse content as well as search it.


It's worth pointing out that you cannot browse any significant portion of the full Unbox offering with the TiVo interface (though it's possible that it's all available through the search interface, if you know the name of what you want). You can only browse through 50 or so films in each of a handful of genres. There's also no way to view a list of your purchased items and request that they be downloaded again. Even if you're watching on TiVo, Unbox really wants you to use a PC.


----------



## brettatk (Oct 11, 2002)

Since we all know there is not going to be HD downloads for S3/THD users anytime soon, and since ATV offers it, I would imagine that is why it's been brought up. I just got the ATV but have not watched a HD movie on it. I'm not expecting instant viewing on my 6M pipe but I guarantee it will be faster than Unbox. There is no way you could sit around and suddenly decide to rent a movie from Unbox and expect to watch within a few hours. Usually I would have to plan ahead and order the movie in the afternoon just so it would be ready to watch that night. It's going to be nice to rent a movie, go fix some popcorn, and come back ready to start watching. After seeing and using the ATV interface you cannot realistically compare it to Unbox, it simply blows it away.


----------



## riekl (Jan 29, 2001)

rainwater said:


> I have never waited 20-40 minutes to start watching a Unbox movie. From what I have read HD rentals on Apple TV take much longer than 60s for most people.


Then you never, ever watch Unbox movies on a Tivo. The service that checks for downloads only runs every 15-20 minutes and that is a MININUM lag time before the download even starts. Even then with my 8meg connection I must wait another 5-10 minutes before the video is ready to start. On Apple it is for all intents and purposes instant on both SD and HD.


----------



## kas25 (Mar 10, 2003)

riekl said:


> Then you never, ever watch Unbox movies on a Tivo. The service that checks for downloads only runs every 15-20 minutes and that is a MININUM lag time before the download even starts. Even then with my 8meg connection I must wait another 5-10 minutes before the video is ready to start. On Apple it is for all intents and purposes instant on both SD and HD.


Agree. Apple takes seconds, Unbox about 20 minutes before the blue light comes on.


----------



## acvthree (Jan 17, 2004)

riekl said:


> Then you never, ever watch Unbox movies on a Tivo. The service that checks for downloads only runs every 15-20 minutes and that is a MININUM lag time before the download even starts. Even then with my 8meg connection I must wait another 5-10 minutes before the video is ready to start. On Apple it is for all intents and purposes instant on both SD and HD.


Well, actually, the longest I've ever had to wait for a movie to download after order was 40 minutes. More typically, it's around 30 minutes.

We have two data points.

Al


----------



## gonzotek (Sep 24, 2004)

riekl said:


> Then you never, ever watch Unbox movies on a Tivo. The service that checks for downloads only runs every 15-20 minutes and that is a MININUM lag time before the download even starts. Even then with my 8meg connection I must wait another 5-10 minutes before the video is ready to start. On Apple it is for all intents and purposes instant on both SD and HD.


TiVo S2s do not support virtually instant viewing, but S3/HDs with sufficient bandwidth are claimed to:
http://tivosupport2.instancy.com/LaunchContent.aspx?CID=D428E982-9D01-441A-9798-1F2A9B9BA77C


> Can I watch the video Im currently downloading, while it is downloading to my TiVo DVR?
> 
> TiVo HD and Series3 DVRs now support Progressive Download. If you have one of these DVRs, movies and TV shows will begin downloading and be available for viewing within about 5 minutes of ordering.
> 
> (Viewing availability may vary, depending on internet connection and home networking speeds.)


----------



## riekl (Jan 29, 2001)

gonzotek said:


> TiVo S2s do not support virtually instant viewing, but S3/HDs with sufficient bandwidth are claimed to:
> http://tivosupport2.instancy.com/LaunchContent.aspx?CID=D428E982-9D01-441A-9798-1F2A9B9BA77C


The claim is wrong .. on average 20 minutes before the blue light of starting download even comes on.


----------



## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

riekl said:


> The claim is wrong .. on average 20 minutes before the blue light of starting download even comes on.


I usually rent about one movie a week on my TiVo HD. I can't remember waiting 20 minutes for the light to come out. The range for me is always between 5-15 minutes.


----------



## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

Normally the downloads have started for me when I walk from my computer over to the TV, so just a couple of minutes.
I'm hoping the new system they are using with TiVo Desktop 2.6 will help these downloads start instantly, but don't know for sure.


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

kas25 said:


> Agree. Apple takes seconds, Unbox about 20 minutes before the blue light comes on.


VUDU is instant. It has the first 30 seconds of each title already loaded on the drive. Currently they have 5020 titles including 91 HD titles. As long as you have a 2 mbs connection for SD and a 4mbs connection for HD, the title will continue to stream so there are no interruptions while watching. VUDU has become my first choice for rentals.

With the TiVo, you can get the download started right away if you have the box connect to the TiVo service. This is what I've always done for any UNbox downloads so they start ASAP.
But the TiVo is my last second to last choice for downloads. VUDU is first, Xbox Live is second, and FIOS is fourth.


----------



## acvthree (Jan 17, 2004)

riekl said:


> The claim is wrong .. on average 20 minutes before the blue light of starting download even comes on.


I wonder why there are such differences. Mine starts within a few minutes and completes, start to finish, in under 40 minutes.

Do you order from the Tivo (I do)?

Do you have Tivo desktop running (I don't know if that makes a difference or not, but I'm set up to run when the PC is up and that is all the time)?

What network service are you using (I'm on Fios)?


----------



## acvthree (Jan 17, 2004)

Not to make this a VUDU thread, but can you store movies you buy on a networked PC or are you limited to the storage on the VUDU?

Al


----------



## Adam1115 (Dec 15, 2003)

Forget amazon in HD, I wish they would just get it up to SD DVD quality.

I'd much rather throw in a DVD than watch Netflix...


----------



## TexasGrillChef (Sep 15, 2006)

As much as I would love HD on Unbox, as well as them offering DD5.1 on their current offerings.... All of this is really a MOOT point for me, as Unbox is to expensive for a high end renter like me.

I rent 30-40 movies a month from Blockbuster.com. I am able to get my Blu-Ray/HD-DVD disks from when a movie releases in BD/HD. At 30-40 discs per month it only costs me with tax, less then $40 a month.

No way in the world can I download 30-40 movies &/or TV shows (Since several episodes of a TV Show come on a single disc) for Under $40 a month.

One other problem.... No extras. While on some movies I could care less about the "Extras". I do care about the extras for more of the more interesting movies.

Amazon unbox has a *LONG* way to go before they get my business. So does ATV. ATV is much better then Unbox. But still *NOT* the perfect solution for* high volume *renters.

TGC


----------



## TexasGrillChef (Sep 15, 2006)

acvthree said:


> Not to make this a VUDU thread, but can you store movies you buy on a networked PC or are you limited to the storage on the VUDU?
> 
> Al


Vudu has a USB port that they will have enabled by Q3 to allow you to plug in a USB Hard drive for additional storage.

I talked with a R&D person at VuDu & they said even a 4TB DROBO USB drive would work with their VUDU once they enable the capability in a future software/firmware update that they will have later this year.

I just wish they would offer a subscription based service. Because non-subscription based services are way to expensive for me when I rent 30-40 discs worth of movies/TV Shows a month.

TGC


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

TexasGrillChef said:


> Amazon unbox has a *LONG* way to go before they get my business. So does ATV. ATV is much better then Unbox. But still *NOT* the perfect solution for* high volume *renters.


I gotta wonder how much the industry cares about high volume renters like you. If you use Netflix or Blockbuster online and rent that many films, the profits they realize on your rentals has got to be approaching nil, even if you use the 8-out-a-time plan.


----------



## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

I think there are a number of factors that determine when an Unbox video starts downloading:

1. The TiVo checks for downloads every 15 minutes (when you delete an old download or another download finishes - See this TiVoStephen post). If you happen to order a minute or two before the TiVo box checks it should give the TiVo servers enough time to update so that when your box checks the download will start. Unless you are timing your purchases based off of network traffic, the results here aren't predictable.

2. Ordering from the box appears to result in faster downloads than ordering from the Amazon web site. Usually, but not always.

3. Ordering off a HD/S3 appears to start soon than ordering off a S2.

Presumably once the XMPP implementation is implemented, the 15 polling method will go away which should make downloads start more or less instantly.

Of course that has no effect on the resolution of the video, ie: it won't help with HD.


----------



## acvthree (Jan 17, 2004)

Morac,

Thank you so much. That was exactly the information I was looking for.

This may explain something. When I order an unbox it is usually because there is nothing in the NP that I wasnted to see at the moment. I'll bet I'm almost always going to TivoCast after I've ordered the movie to get something in the mean time. I must have been triggering Tivo to check.

So, one way to speed this up is, after ordering unbox, get a Tivocast. A bit of a cludge, but...

Al


----------



## kupe (Apr 10, 2003)

TexasGrillChef said:


> One other problem.... No extras. While on some movies I could care less about the "Extras". I do care about the extras for more of the more interesting movies.


And I know it's been discussed, but Unbox needs to add Closed Captioning! I mean how did they get around the ADA in the first place?

I just rented Michael Clayton from Unbox, and while a great flick, let's face it- it's a mumbly movie! My wife and I both had a hard time understanding quite a few dialog scenes, and we both have pretty normal hearing. Closed Captioning would have been very nice.

Kupe


----------



## TexasGrillChef (Sep 15, 2006)

mikeyts said:


> I gotta wonder how much the industry cares about high volume renters like you. If you use Netflix or Blockbuster online and rent that many films, the profits they realize on your rentals has got to be approaching nil, even if you use the 8-out-a-time plan.


Well they should. Because even if you rent 10 to 15 movies a month. Subscription based plans are still less expensive.

Besides that.... My $40 to $50 a month that I would be willing to pay is better then nothing they would get other wise, because without subscription based services at $40-50 a month. I would just opt for doing illegal downloads/copies. The Studios are too greedy anyways. At least this way they are providing some incentive for me to obtain legal copies & not bother with the illegal ones.

TGC


----------



## drhankz (Jan 14, 2008)

kupe said:


> I just rented Michael Clayton from Unbox, and while a great flick, let's face it- it's a mumbly movie! My wife and I both had a hard time understanding quite a few dialog scenes, and we both have pretty normal hearing. Closed Captioning would have been very nice.
> 
> Kupe


I rented Michael Clayton in HD with DD 5.1 on AppleTV.
I experienced NO MUMBLY sound. I easily heard every
single word as one would expect.

I would guess your Mumbly Experience is from Unbox
Quality Audio


----------



## TexasGrillChef (Sep 15, 2006)

kupe said:


> And I know it's been discussed, but Unbox needs to add Closed Captioning! I mean how did they get around the ADA in the first place?
> 
> I just rented Michael Clayton from Unbox, and while a great flick, let's face it- it's a mumbly movie! My wife and I both had a hard time understanding quite a few dialog scenes, and we both have pretty normal hearing. Closed Captioning would have been very nice.
> 
> Kupe


*I am with you 100% on that.*

As sad/bad as it may be. I think it might take awhile. Not all DVD's have CC on them yet. A Majority of Commercials don't have them yet either. You also don't find CC enabled at movie theaters yet either. Although that is coming. There is a bill currently pending in congress to require CC on all movies shown in Movie theaters by the end of 2010. They are looking into a method where the CC would be invisible at the movie theater unless special glasses were worn. Who knows how that will come out.

TGC


----------



## TexasGrillChef (Sep 15, 2006)

drhankz said:


> I rented Michael Clayton in HD with DD 5.1 on AppleTV.
> I experienced NO MUMBLY sound. I easily heard every
> single word as one would expect.
> 
> ...


I rented Michael Clayton on BLU-RAY and used the 7.1 uncompressed audio. I do have a 7.1 speaker system & a high end Pioneer VSX94 receiver.

I don't claim to have perfect hearing, but I also don't need a hearing aid either. Even with that quality of sound, I agree. Michael Clayton WAS a little Mumbly & we DID have to turn on CC.

TGC


----------



## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

TexasGrillChef said:


> They are looking into a method where the CC would be invisible at the movie theater unless special glasses were worn. Who knows how that will come out.


A theater near me offers CC on certain showings of certain movies. They basically use the method you specify, but it only works with digitally projected films. That theater only has 1 digital projector (out of about 24). Digital projectors aren't cheap so don't expect to see this en-mass any time soon.


----------



## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

riekl said:


> The claim is wrong .. on average 20 minutes before the blue light of starting download even comes on.


about the annoying lag:

there's a blog post http://www.tivolovers.com/tag/xmpp/ that there's a new protocol (XMPP) in the works (related to tivo desktop 2.6) whereby they can basically PUSH to the box instead of waiting for that 15 minute pooling thingie.

so the lag should be gone at some point.

I tried to find some snippets from the blog above to summarize but it's not so easy so just head on over to tivolovers and read up. 

the post isn't clear on timing but it says something about amazon unbox getting the protocol.

_EDIT:Sorry see this was postive previously- been away for a while..._


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

I was talking to a friend of mine who works on related development and mentioned that I thinking about buying Apple TV because I didn't expect Unbox for TiVo to ever offer HD video. He momentarily forget his NDA (he's usually religious about them) and said, "Huh. I'm surprised that it hasn't launched yet. In fact, we were testing..." Then he realized that it hadn't been announced and clammed up. So, it may be coming soon .

He also stated that in 9.3 most videos should start playing within a couple of minutes.


----------



## Saturn_V (Jun 2, 2007)

After watching my Unbox version of last week's _Battlestar_ premiere----(still grumbling at letterboxed video) TiVo powers that be...please let it happen!


----------



## riekl (Jan 29, 2001)

If the HD content is the same crappy quality as the SD and requires the same 15-30 min wait to start, whats the point ?


----------



## kas25 (Mar 10, 2003)

HD would be nice but Unbox has to at least give us widescreen format without letterboxes.


----------



## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

riekl said:


> If the HD content is the same crappy quality as the SD and requires the same 15-30 min wait to start, whats the point ?


The HD would obviously be better quality than the SD. And I have never waited more than 10 minutes for a movie to start, usually it's maybe 3 minutes.


----------



## aindik (Jan 23, 2002)

kas25 said:


> HD would be nice but Unbox has to at least give us widescreen format without letterboxes.


Anamorphic widescreen files designed to be viewed on the TivoHD and Series 3 in stretch mode would be nice, if not a bit of a support problem for them ("Why is my picture squished?").

They'd need a duplicate set of files (as they'd need the letterboxed versions for Series 2 Tivos connected to 4:3 TVs), but they'd need that for HD content anyway.


----------



## Globular (Jun 9, 2004)

I'm all over Unbox HD downloads when available. Obviously download times will be hugely increased, but I will almost always initiate a download from work, then watch it later that night (or probably even days later) so it won't be a problem for me.

I'm ready to spend!!

-Matt


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Download times will be increased, but they probably won't be that bad, depending upon the encoding. The download services providing HD (Apple TV, VUDU, Xbox Live Video Store) are providing it as 720p24 encoded as either H.264 or VC-1. The Xbox stuff averages 6.6 Mbps, consuming about 6 billion bytes for a 2 hour movie. Being multi-pass encoded and hand tweaked, this can look really very good despite the low bit rate, essentially artifact free and better than some broadcast HDTV (though not as crisp as the best). That 6 billion bytes should take about an hour and 15 minutes to download if your link can sustain 10 Mbps. If it were broadcast MPEG-2 HDTV, it'd be 15 billion bytes for two hours, which'd take 2.5 times as long to download.


----------



## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

aindik said:


> Anamorphic widescreen files designed to be viewed on the TivoHD and Series 3 in stretch mode would be nice, if not a bit of a support problem for them ("Why is my picture squished?").
> 
> They'd need a duplicate set of files (as they'd need the letterboxed versions for Series 2 Tivos connected to 4:3 TVs), but they'd need that for HD content anyway.


They could just do what Apple does with the AppleTV - say "This product requires a widescreen TV."


----------



## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

aindik said:


> Anamorphic widescreen files designed to be viewed on the TivoHD and Series 3 in stretch mode would be nice, if not a bit of a support problem for them ("Why is my picture squished?").
> 
> They'd need a duplicate set of files (as they'd need the letterboxed versions for Series 2 Tivos connected to 4:3 TVs), but they'd need that for HD content anyway.


ALthough there are some spot problems with certain TiVo models, in general TiVo Series 2 and 3s handle anamorphic perfectly seemlessly.


----------



## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

HDTiVo said:


> ALthough there are some spot problems with certain TiVo models, in general TiVo Series 2 and 3s handle anamorphic perfectly seemlessly.


They used to, before version 9.1 - after that, mine can't show any anamorphic content properly. This was not fixed in 9.3.


----------



## Joe3 (Dec 12, 2006)

You gotta love a rumor round here.


----------



## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

MickeS said:


> They used to, before version 9.1 - after that, mine can't show any anamorphic content properly. This was not fixed in 9.3.


YOu came to mind in the "spot" problem category


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Joe3 said:


> You gotta love a rumor round here.


Well, it's information slipped from the mouth of a TiVo developer who certainly wasn't _trying_ to reveal anything (believe me--this guy is an uber-Christian who takes every agreement he makes, verbal or written, dead seriously, and treats NDAs as sacred). I shared an office with him for two years when we both worked as developers for another CE OEM and he just forgot for a minute that he wasn't talking to a co-worker. It rarely happens .

Still, until Amazon or TiVo announces it, it is rumor. I've stopped considering buying Apple TV for the moment, though.


----------



## Joe3 (Dec 12, 2006)

mikeyts said:


> ...Still, until Amazon or TiVo announces it, it is rumor. I've stopped considering buying Apple TV for the moment, though.


Good move, rumor is a rumor, but lets hope they blow the competition away with 1080i or better.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Joe3 said:


> Good move, rumor is a rumor, but lets hope they blow the competition away with 1080i or better.


I'm guessin' that that's not gonna happen. For one thing they need to keep download size at a minimum to minimize the connection speed needed for practical use; secondly, only about .001% of the target audience could possibly appreciate the difference between a carefully authored 720p24 transfer and 1080i--I personally did a frame-to-frame comparisons of a bunch of scenes in the _300_ HD DVD to the Xbox Live Video Store download and while I could pick out improvements in detail and fine contrast, it wasn't easy; lastly, the content providers will hold the highest resolution version on Blu-ray as something worth the premium price that they charge for it, and won't ever offer it for sale or rental as a download (just my opinion).


----------



## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

I would rather have a high-bitrate 480p anamorphic download than 720p with compromised bitrate for the sake of calling it HD.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

MickeS said:


> I would rather have a high-bitrate 480p anamorphic download than 720p with compromised bitrate for the sake of calling it HD.


I wouldn't. I've watched a number of 6.6 Mbps Xbox Live Video Store HD downloads and they are quite good. (Most recently, I discovered that they had the _BSG: Razor_ webisodes online in HD and watched them again--I'd only seen them on the Sci Fi Channel's web viewer before so they were a few orders of magnitude improved ).

You could get much better results at considerably lower bit rates from HD TV transmission, but most TV transmission are being re-encoded on a best-effort basis in realtime by a machine (typically reducing a 45 Mbps network feed to whatever rate the broadcaster wants to use), not by slow, careful multi-pass process with people reviewing and hand tweaking the results. Most of the XBLVS downloads that I've watched have been more or less flawless, and sharper than all but about the best 10% of broadcast TV that I've seen. As I stated, _300_ compared favorably to the HD DVD transfer (same as the Blu-ray one); watching the SD Unbox transfer is like watching the movie through a thin piece of gauze.

It's more than adequate for download rental and far, far superior to any standard definition DVD encode, no matter how well upscaled for display on a HD display. My main problem with them is that (a) not 100% of them have 5.1 soundtracks and (b) none of them have close captioning, though they're obviously set up to support it.


----------



## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

I don&#180;t think mikeyts bitrates are too low under the right conditions for 720p24. I also think 720p is what XBOX gets already.

p24 sounds fine for movies, but what about TV series (30/60 frame rate source)?


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

mikeyts said:


> Download times will be increased, but they probably won't be that bad, depending upon the encoding. The download services providing HD (Apple TV, VUDU, Xbox Live Video Store) are providing it as 720p24 encoded as either H.264 or VC-1. The Xbox stuff averages 6.6 Mbps, consuming about 6 billion bytes for a 2 hour movie. Being multi-pass encoded and hand tweaked, this can look really very good despite the low bit rate, essentially artifact free and better than some broadcast HDTV (though not as crisp as the best). That 6 billion bytes should take about an hour and 15 minutes to download if your link can sustain 10 Mbps. If it were broadcast MPEG-2 HDTV, it'd be 15 billion bytes for two hours, which'd take 2.5 times as long to download.


VUDU uses 1080P24 for HD not 720P24. Their SD content is 480P24. And so far the VUDU HD encodes have looked better than the Xbox Live encodes, at least for the three titles I made comaprisons with. Suprisingly Xbox Live had alot of macroblocking, which I didn't expect since it was only 720P and a higher bitrate than the 1080P24 from VUDU at 4mbs. While the VUDU encodes had little or no macroblocking and more fine detail in the picture.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

The HD TV series episodes that I've purchased for XBLVS also seem very good. I'm not sure what the source format is--the Xbox Dashboard doesn't have a facility for giving format details (one very cool thing about the PS3's video player is that it does). Whatever it is is going to be scaled to 1080i by the Xbox (or 480p or 720p or 1080p--whatever you have it set to--my Xbox is connected via component and my television can only handle 1080p over HDMI and DVI, though the Xbox can send 1080p component). I've purchased a few episodes of _CSI: Crime Scene Investigation_ and _CSI: Miami_ that I missed recording, an episode of _Lost_, an episode of _Numb3rs_ and a couple of my favorite stand-alone episodes of _Star Trek: Enterprise_ (before it started being broadcast on HDNet). They all look very, very good, particularly _Lost_ and the _CSI_s. Certainly as good as they looked on cable.

It's important to remember that these things are VC-1 encodings, and not MPEG-2. As with H.264, even encoded automatically you should get the same quality as with MPEG-2 at no more than 2/3rds the same bit rate; carefully authored encodings can squeeze it even more.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

aaronwt said:


> VUDU uses 1080P24 for HD not 720P24. Their SD content is 480P24. And so far the VUDU HD encodes have looked better than the Xbox Live encodes, at least for the three titles I made comaprisons with. Suprisingly Xbox Live had alot of macroblocking, which I didn't expect since it was only 720P and a higher bitrate than the 1080P24 from VUDU at 4mbs. While the VUDU encodes had little or no macroblocking and more fine detail in the picture.


VUDU can scale its output to 1080p--so can the Xbox. VUDU's HD encodings are reportedly even lower bit rate than the XBLVS'--they claim that you can get instant playback of HD with a 4 Mbps link. I cannot believe that they're encoding more than twice the number of pixels at that rate (3/4 the average bit rate of an XBLVS encoding), even using H.264/AVC, an encoding of about the same efficiency as the VC-1 being used for XBLVS.

If you know of a statement by VUDU online where they claim to be doing that, I'd love to see it.


----------



## MediaLivingRoom (Dec 10, 2002)

how many people use UnBox??


----------



## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

MediaLivingRoom said:


> how many people use UnBox??


What do you mean by "use?" Tried it once, once a month, once a week? ... ?

Only/mostly free stuff? only/mostly special priced stuff? ....


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

While searching around for some solid information on Vudu HD encoding formats and bit rates, I found "Apple TV vs. Vudu vs. Xbox 360: Video Download Battlemodo. The author's conclusion in this three-way comparison:


> It's a toss-up to me, though I think for content I have to lean towards Vudu and for pure video quality (and most HD content) the Xbox 360 is hard to beat. Meanwhile, Apple TV is cheapest and lives up to its name with the best access to actual TV programming-though NBC is still painfully absent.


Not a very deep or thoroughgoing evaluation of video quality, but offered for what it's worth.

Dave Zatz is also working on such a comparison to be published on zatznotfunny.com soon (see this). Apparently Ben Drawbaugh (known locally on at AVS Forum as just "bdraw") will be collaborating with Dave on this.

I also found a link to this comparison of an XBLVS HD downloads to encodings of the same film on HD DVD, in some total video-encoding freak's blog (Jake Ludington). He had this to say:


> With the current limited selection of movies available in both HD-DVD and the WMV HD format used by Xbox Video Marketplace, I used V for Vendetta as my movie of comparison. Watching each movie independently, I could find no artifacts in either video file, no macro blocks during motion sequences, and a great range of colors in both cases. The Xbox Video Marketplace file looked just slightly brighter than the HD-DVD, but overall I couldn't tell any real difference.
> 
> Since my reasonably well-trained eye couldn't see a difference, I decided to go a step further and compare the videos using software tools. At the moment the HD options on Xbox Video Marketplace are limited, so I choose V for Vendetta as the title available in both HD-DVD and the Video Marketplace for a test. I captured the 20 second segment of V for Vendetta on the rooftop where the explosions happen during the 1812 Overture. You can read more about how to capture HD video from an Xbox here. I captured both versions of the movie at 1280x720 and left the VBI data, which represents 20 pixels at the top of a movie file, as a reference color for true black.
> 
> ...


(Do click through and read this detailed analysis by Brandon Wirtz). Jake Ludington and his buddy Brandon Wirtz are digital media encoding professional and they're both impressed by XBLVS HD encodes. Of course, they've both worked on video compression technology for Microsoft (though they're both independent entrepreneurs, now--there are LinkedIn.com pages for both).


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

MediaLivingRoom said:


> how many people use UnBox??


I mostly use video downloads to catch up on the occasional television show episode that I missed recording; I've bought episodes occasionally at Unbox (apparently I've bought 31 Unbox TV episodes, according to my "Your Media Library" page at Amazon--I think that those include several episodes that I bought with the introductory credit). I have never rented or purchased a film at Unbox, and won't until they offer HD downloads. I've rented several HD downloads from the Xbox Live Video Store, though.


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

mikeyts said:


> VUDU can scale its output to 1080p--so can the Xbox. VUDU's HD encodings are reportedly even lower bit rate than the XBLVS'--they claim that you can get instant playback of HD with a 4 Mbps link. I cannot believe that they're encoding more than twice the number of pixels at that rate (3/4 the average bit rate of an XBLVS encoding), even using H.264/AVC, an encoding of about the same efficiency as the VC-1 being used for XBLVS.
> 
> If you know of a statement by VUDU online where they claim to be doing that, I'd love to see it.


Yes, that was one of the things I asked on the VUDU forums. The VUDU engineers confrimed that HD content is encoded as 1080P24 and SD content is encoded as 480P24. Any other resolution output is scaled from those resolutions and framerates.

http://forum.vudu.com/showthread.php?t=2422&highlight=1080P24
Look at the last couple of posts in that thread with the final post by a VUDU Engineering rep with confirmation.

And yes playback of all titles is instant. That is achieved becasue approximately the first 30 seconds of every title(over 5000 titles) is already downloaded on the hardrive when the new database is initiated every Thursday. Then as long as you have a 2mbs connection for Sd and a 4mbs connnection for HD it will continue to stream as you watch it. I've never had any problems with any of the HD or SD titles I've watched. They always start right away and have never had to stop for buffering. They have several patents on their whole peer to peer process of getting the data.


----------



## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

What does VUDU do if you try to jump ahead of the download point?


----------



## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

HDTiVo said:


> What does VUDU do if you try to jump ahead of the download point?


Then it will just pause at that point. I think there is also a message that pops up, I don't remember what is says though.


----------



## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

aaronwt said:


> Then it will just pause at that point. I think there is also a message that pops up, I don't remember what is says though.


Generally I see streaming implementations allowing skip forward beyond the buffered point, but not download implementations. I´ve never seen a download implementation that allows for the fitting together of segments should the viewer jump around.

I wonder why?


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

HDTiVo said:


> Generally I see streaming implementations allowing skip forward beyond the buffered point, but not download implementations. I´ve never seen a download implementation that allows for the fitting together of segments should the viewer jump around.
> 
> I wonder why?


It's kind of the essential difference between streaming and file downloading. In a streaming protocol, there are messages to tell the server to send video from a certain point in time; in a download, there isn't. If you could skip around, it wouldn't be a file download protocol.

A hybrid between the two methods is imaginable, though I'm unaware of any such existing.


----------



## heisman (Sep 21, 2007)

http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/11/amazon-unbox-content-going-hd-on-tivo/


----------



## larrs (May 2, 2005)

heisman said:


> http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/11/amazon-unbox-content-going-hd-on-tivo/


Yeah, I saw this eariler today. It will be great addition and I will certainly use it a lot.

However, I will save the celebrating until it is officially announced.


----------



## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

larrs said:


> Yeah, I saw this eariler today. It will be great addition and I will certainly use it a lot.
> 
> However, I will save the celebrating until it is officially announced.


Comcast is getting ready to roll out a 250GB monthly cap on broadband useage in certain areas and it could go nation wide by the end of the year. According to Comcast, 1% of users account for 75% of network bandwidth useage and the number one application that is consuming the bandwidth is video.

It will be interesting to see what happens if the size of the Unbox videos in HD are substantially larger than their SD counterparts.... perhaps Amazon Unbox will pull an Apple TV and offer HD versions of the movies that clock in at bitrates not much better than what SD versions of downloads are offered at.


----------



## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

I'm wondering if they are waiting for TiVo to get MPG-4 support. That would significantly cut down on the file sizes and download times.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Engadget was quoting a post at zatznotfunny.com, which adds:


> Megazone suspects a rollout would be tied to TiVos support of H.264 later this year in conjunction with YouTube playback. Though, I agree that an improved aspect ratio might be more meaningful than higher definition content - which presumably comes at a higher price, and with a slower download.


Apparently TiVo is rolling out YouTube video playback at some point, which will require that they implement H.264 support (both the Broadcom chipsets used in TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD have H.264 decoding as well as VC-1).

As I stated in posts above, Xbox Live Video Store high definition offerings are 720p24 video encoded as approximately 6.5 Mpbs VC-1, giving them 5.5 GB files for 120 minute films. They create carefully hand-tweaked encodings and the quality is extremely good. It takes about 1.5 hours to download such a film over my 10 Mbps TWC cable modem service connection; the Xbox allows playback to start when about 80% of the film is down. I'd expect something similar from Unbox.


----------

