What is Digg?100 Comments
- ZBrannigan, on 02/05/2008, -8/+46Got HD Download worries? Come live in the beautiful sweden where the nice countryside is accomodated by cheap 100/100Mbit connections and exclusive invite-only torrent trackers with the latest high quality releases
- badqat, on 02/05/2008, -1/+36Allow me to speak for everyone when I say "DUH!"
- inactive, on 02/05/2008, -1/+28The problem here is the lack of high bandwidth options available to American consumers.
I've been at the same speed on my cable modem for 9 years, while computers have gotten 64 times faster. Once more people are connecting at higher speeds, this will not be a problem. - Zodzilla, on 02/05/2008, -3/+24Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?
See the løveli lakes
The wøndërful telephøne system
And mäni interesting furry animals
Including the majestik møøse
A Møøse once bit my sister...
sorry. You mentioned visiting Sweden, I had to. - Tex, on 07/28/2008, -7/+2821 diggs when it made the frontpage; just making a note, not dissing it.
- Chandon, on 02/05/2008, -0/+15Yea. Just contact the local bureau of piracy.
- Getintothegame, on 02/05/2008, -4/+17Compression!
- fkr3, on 02/05/2008, -1/+12I don't know how but Gizmodo somehow neglected to link to Vudu at all in their review of Vudu.... oh wait, they're about ad impressions not users or usability.
http://vudu.com/ - culbeda, on 02/05/2008, -1/+11Really? I thought they were about high-quality conten... *busts out laughing*
- CrimsonBlur, on 02/05/2008, -0/+8No, High Definition (HD) is all about the resolution, period. HD resolution is 720p, 1080i, 1080p (all HD content is 16:9). The difference between sources (Blu-ray vs Cable) is that some use more compression than others, even between TV networks, but a compressed 1080i signal is still HD, even if it doesn't look as good as a Blu-ray disc.
- dagamer34, on 02/05/2008, -3/+11720p or 1080i/p don't matter. Bitrate matters. Bitrate is everything. Bitrate is what distinguishes a 1080p .avi file that's just the color black all the way through from a DVD movie. Compressed bits can only hold so much.
- badqat, on 02/05/2008, -0/+7"HD" from iTunes won't be close to an HD-DVD or blu-ray disc. It also won't be close to broadcast HD. Keep dreaming...
- LMControl, on 02/05/2008, -1/+8Well, this is disappointing. I had a few hopes for Vudu. I would easily trade off the instantaneous viewing for a better format and image quality. Even if you had to wait an hour to start watching I would do it or at least have it waiting for me when I want to finally watch it. I get the feeling Apple's HD won't be much better, but I can dream....
- VCAT, on 02/05/2008, -0/+5SD movies should be instant playable and compete with DVD - Vudu & AppleTV have/will accomplish this from what I have read. For HD, a decent bitrate file competitive with HDDVD/Bluray should be offered to "overnight" download. The market's patience for this has already been tested with the netflix model where in fact the wait time is up to 3 days - it works pretty well. Seem like an elegant compromise. I agree that offering barely better HD is a total waste and doomed to failure. Whats the point if you can't even tell the difference?
- Emorocker, on 02/05/2008, -1/+6I have no problem with this review but could they have honestly picked a worst screen shot of the movie. I don't know I felt like they should have picked a scene where I could recognize what was going on in the HD-DVD version. Nothing wrong with the review just saying
- johanrocks, on 02/05/2008, -0/+5I wish more companies would go for Fiber like Verizon (and I believe that they'll be pressured into it, as more people go for a $50/month 10-15mbit line, rather than the same price for a 3mbit from Comcast or another provider). Then, we wouldn't even have this problem, as we'd have relatively affordable 50 or so mbit lines which would have no problem downloading a rented, full 20+GB movie, rather than dealing with sub-par HD downloads which barely differ from their SD versions.
- countingthedays, on 02/05/2008, -0/+5It has in my area. (New York)
- RAT-Man, on 02/05/2008, -2/+7Buy Blu-ray.
Problem solved. - EtherGnat, on 02/05/2008, -0/+5They both matter. A heavily compressed 1080p file may look worse than pristine 720p, but even an uncompressed 720p file will never live up to a good 1080p file (although it might be at a higher bit rate).
- AntBing, on 02/05/2008, -0/+5Find out if Verizon runs Fios to your area. I have a 20/5 connection and am never going to anything less.
- skellener, on 02/05/2008, -0/+5HD disc formats deliver much higher bit rates than any other HD format including broadcast. They probably always will until real honest to God HD files come to the net for downloads. So if you want pure quality, Netflix rentals are still king of the crop right now with HD-DVD & BluRay.
- ferrariman60, on 02/05/2008, -1/+5So, if you did any looking into this, you'd know something: MPEG4 is what Vudu uses. Oh! That's what Apple uses! H.264 is just the video codec that is used in MPEG4. So you obviously don't know what you're talking about. Vudu uses P2P to distribute movies, which is not how Apple TV works, so they work very differently in the background. The difference here is Bitrate. I think that the big problem right now i how consumers look at Downloaded movie rentals.
If you could just be patient, you could, you know, wait overnight for an HD movie to download to local storage, and then watch it. Would it be on demand? No. Would it be faster than waiting for Netflix or Blockbuster online? Yes. Would it be faster than going to your local store? No. That's the sacrifice. You can't have it all- yet. We need more bandwidth.
That said: Why didn't this guy include more, and more useful screens? That was an awful picture. And also, he had a damn 360. Why in gods name didn't he compare the HD rental on the 360 while he was at it? Come on. That's the one I'm interested in anyways, since I have a 360 (as do many others), whereas about 5 people have Vudu boxes. - therightclique, on 02/05/2008, -0/+4You've never actually seen a movie in 1080p on a 52" screen have you? that's sad.
- aaronwt, on 02/05/2008, -0/+4And also tonight I said "what the heck" and I also rented the Transformers movie in HD from Xbox Live too.. From what I've compared so far I would definitely rank the VUDU quality above Xbox Live.
On the one Radar scene, the text at the bottom of the radar screen is readable on Xbox Live but it's not as easy to read as it is with VUDU HD version. The VUDU HD version is crisp and clear while the XBL version is clear but not as crisp.
Also in the scence where the Helecopter Transformer attacks. Right after it first attacks there are a lot of bright flashes from the lights exploding. I was surprised to see a bunch of macroblocking from the XBL version. The VUDU version didn't have this macroblocking. SO the VUDU version, at least from what I've seen so far, is better than the XBL version too.
And of course both those versions are easily better than the SD DVD or the VUDU SD version.
So the order should be
1. HD DVD/BD
2. VUDU HD
3. Xbox Live HD - b0rg, on 02/05/2008, -1/+5Welcome to digg. Remember: Microsoft is evil, bandwidth should be free, and the very *concept* of paying for something you'd like to watch, is grounds for some thumbs down.
Did I miss anything there? - Fire4Effect, on 02/05/2008, -1/+5The "I wanna felate Steve Jobs" application is on page 2......
- a1532b, on 02/05/2008, -1/+4Shame on whoever dugg him down! That was Monty Python!
- countingthedays, on 02/05/2008, -0/+3Its even better then that. $50 gets you a 20/5 mbps line on verizon, and for $65 you can get 20/20. (Yeah, I sell it. I'm on long island if you want some :P)
- aaronwt, on 02/05/2008, -0/+3I had a 5mbs down/1 mbs up connection in 1997.
Now I have a 30mbs down/5mbs up connection with FIOS. - badqat, on 02/05/2008, -0/+2They ain't no HD-DVD or blu-ray good...
- therightclique, on 02/05/2008, -1/+3yeah, because the users from some unknown site called jisto.com are at all a reliable source of information.
- Tazmaster, on 02/05/2008, -1/+3I see what you did there...
- javaroast, on 02/05/2008, -0/+2Attached is the screen shot from Transformers on Blu-ray
... - one80two, on 02/05/2008, -0/+2There are tons of titles on both formats at the $15 range now.
- macslut, on 02/05/2008, -1/+3MPEG-4 is both a container and a codec. Both VUDU and Apple use MPEG-4 as a container. H.264 gives much better quality at the same bitrate as the generic MPEG-4 codec...or depending how you want to look at it, a much lower bitrate at the same quality.
There are other codecs available for MPEG-4 with varying degrees of quality:bitrate ratios, but offer other compromises or advantages, for example Divx taxes the cpu less than H.264.
There could be a few reasons why VUDU would choose not to use H.264, but on their site, I don't see any mention of it, or any other codec. I only see MPEG-4 as the "video format".
I'd be very interested in knowing specifically what codec is being used within MPEG-4 for VUDU. Does anybody know? - Koski, on 02/05/2008, -2/+4Stop ***** praising Sweden! I live in Sweden and NO everyone doesn't have 100/100Mbit broadband and NO we are not a sanctuary for piracy! The cowards in the government are caving under for the anti-piracy organizations as we speak.
Also, we have really ***** weather all year except for June, July and august and we pay extreme high amounts of tax that goes straight down to the pockets of the people who are exploiting the system and other completely useless stuff. Finding an apartment to rent is practically impossible in Stockholm. You gotta take a a loan of at least 100,000$ to afford to buy an apartment instead.
Although we don't have many religious people, which is nice.
But please, stop praising Sweden like it would be heaven or earth or something. It is not as good as you think. - Balk2K, on 02/05/2008, -0/+2I agree with people who would wait. I live in Australia and I have ADSL 2+ which boasts 25 Mbit but is typically around 6 apparently due to the distance I live from the phone exchange. HD Downloads from Apple Trailers come in at about half the playing speed from the American servers and look great. I'm happy to wait 1 hour to watch a 2 hour movie. I'd imagine that it would be even quicker if there were servers for this sort of thing were in Australia too.
- cptshamrock, on 02/05/2008, -2/+4Apple will be using the same files provided by the studios. There will be no difference.
- aaronwt, on 02/05/2008, -1/+3I just rented the VUDU Sd and HD version. I have no idea what the person at Gizmodo watched. IN the opening scene when they are in the OSPREY(good closeups and also the desert backdrop) and right before when showing the desert as the backdrop, it is very, obvious which is the SD version and which is the HD version. The HD version has much more detail than the SD version. You cannot mistake the two. It's not possible. Now the HD DVD has even more detail, but the VUDU movies are going to be below the HD DVD/BD versions and that is expected. I'll watch some more later tonight but I still don't know how anyone can say the HD version is close to the Sd version. The detail is not there in the SD version which is always the case with any SD DVD or SD content I've seen. The extra detail in the VUDU HD version is there to see.
- dm33, on 02/05/2008, -4/+6Article criticizes Apple because Vudu HD sucks? WTF. Wait until Apple provides HD rentals, then see how it stacks up.
- skellener, on 02/05/2008, -0/+2I agree with badgat. HD downloads from XBOX are "pretty good" but they are NOT even close to the quality disc media delivers. Netflix HD-DVD and BluRay disc rentals are the best quality movies you are gonna get for a long time.
- feacesface, on 02/05/2008, -0/+2Isn't this article in violation of the Microsoft/Digg advertising alliance? Shouldn't it be on page 2 or 3 at least?
- CCB0x45, on 02/05/2008, -0/+2I want some in San Jose... badly, but im locked into a contract because of my building with SBC. And to think this is silicon valley... PLEASE LET ME PAY FOR FASTER INTERNET!!
- Keloran, on 02/05/2008, -1/+3is it just me or does the image of the "HD" version look worse than the SD version, whats with the wierd colors
- Emorocker, on 02/05/2008, -1/+3Im kinda confused how someone can be dugg down for saying that had a good experience with a product. There is nothing objectionable in that statement. Not even anything saying something else sucks
- Dimensio, on 02/05/2008, -0/+1I'm aware that you were addressing the video, however I suspect that the ENTIRETY of the Transformers HD movie was buggered up. The audo was clearly not the correct HD audio source, and others on the XBox Live forum have suggested that the video itself was just a SD video that was upscaled to 720p.
I didn't bother getting the SD version, so I couldn't do an A->B comparison, but it wouldn't surprise me as other HD videos that I've downloaded over XBox Live looked much better. - ferrariman60, on 02/07/2008, -0/+1Ah, interesting. I didn't know that MPEG4 was also its own codec- thanks for letting me know. I have looked for the codec Vudu uses but have found nothing so far.
- zetsurin, on 02/05/2008, -3/+4Where are those idiots who keep saying that HD downloads are gonna kill blu-ray? You know, the ones who said HD pr0n would. Where are you idiots now? Oh that's right, you're out buying a blu-ray player!
- yabos, on 02/05/2008, -0/+1Says who, your ass? No one has said where they get the files from and most likely they encode them themselves. People speculate they get them from the same source but no one knows for sure.
- aduzik, on 02/05/2008, -0/+1Buried for making me jealous.
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