Is Blu-Ray here for the duration??

[Uppsala BildTeknik]

Y'all in Europe and Japan can get speeds like 100mbs.

I know one guy who actually has 100Mbps (he lives in the middle of the city and is one of the few in this city who has that speed). I think it will take long before us who live a few miles outside the city can get those speeds.

But the interesting question is the connection speed for the movie provider. How many constant 25Mbps streams can they easily supply before their up-connection will choke? Lets say 1000 guys are streaming a movie, and lets say they stream it at 25Mbps. That would require a upload speed at 25000Mbps from the movieprovider. Is that speed easily available?

How about when 100000 people want to stream a film? I think their upload will choke long before hitting 2500000Mbps... What do you think?

Furthermore, the 100Mbps download is actually more of a "theoretical speed", he never once recorded the connection having that speed, and it depends on the users. If everyone would stream a Bluray film the connection would choke. They calculate that only a few of the users are using the connection at any given time, and they calculate the usage to normal surfing, wich is very far from 100Mbps.

What they could feed is every user would maximize their connection is anyones guess, I think it is far less than 25Mbps.

So, I really don't see why you need disk media when you can download or stream.

But you cannot do that, wake up and smell the coffee Nigel. You cannot even stream a movie in normal SD resolution in full quality today, at least not anywhere in europe.

If you cannot stream SD today, how are yo planning to stream HD, and from where?

Not only that but I can find anything I want on torrent sites...

Again, you cannot throw illegal media in the mix. If you are arguing that Blu-ray "is dead" since you can download the movie illegally in HD please explain to me what the guys ripping movies will rip.

What will they rip in HD if Blu-ray is not around to be ripped?
How will you get the egg (illegal version) if the chicken (Blu-ray) is no longer around?

[super8man]

Kent, you need to acknowledge the fact that many significant technological advancements have centered on either serving video games or porn. Everything else is just along for the ride. Call it the porn dividend (in the USA, it used to be called the space dividend).

Nigel is correct from what I see going on out there. One guy in Asia acquires a digital copy, the rest, shall we say, is history.

[S8 Booster]

some of yoy may not have noticed the technology pressure is on and accelerating....?

http://nextbigfuture.com/2007/04/100-mb ... sting.html

April 23, 2007
100 mbps internet speed over existing copper lines

A european research project, Eureka 3051 virtual fiber , has successfully trialed 10 Mbps symmetrical internet speed for 28000 people over existing copper cable lines. Local businesses in the trial were able to obtain 50 MB/s symmetrical data connectivity. The technology has subsequently been developed to provide 100 MB/s connectivity and has already been sold to South Korea, demonstrating the global market for such an approach.

shoot....

[S8 Booster]

http://nextbigfuture.com/2007_05_01_archive.html

Broadband speed in different countries

Here is a post on a survey of average broadband speed in different countries Japan and Canada have significantly higher broadband download speeds—61Mbps and 7.6Mbps. Hong Kong is not on the chart but is also a lot faster.

shot....

[Uppsala BildTeknik]

Kent, you need to acknowledge the fact that many significant technological advancements have centered on either serving video games or porn.

OK. But I don´t see where I might have protested against this?
All I am saying is that Blu-ray is not dead yet, and that the internet connection we have today cannot even deliver a movie in full SD quality.

And that the movie providers uploadconnection probably would choke if they tried to feed hundreds of thousands of movies at full HD quality.

Nigel is correct from what I see going on out there. One guy in Asia acquires a digital copy, the rest, shall we say, is history.

Oh, I know how it works. But can you explain to me how that guy in Asia will acquire his digital copy in HD (he cannot get his hands on a Blu-ray disc, since they are now obsolete due to piracy).

[avortex]

There's an issue we're not taking into account: When I (like many people) purchase a movie I like to physically OWN it. It's not just a matter of film collectionism: most of the consumers likes to go to the shopping mall, look for the available movies and buy them. Nothing compares to that. You have the film on the shelf, the disc is far more durable than any hard drive, packaging is cool, and usually there's lots of extra content too.

The alternative is waiting a lot of years for better connection speeds and download the movies on big hard drives. And for security reasons you have to duplicate them on another big hard drive or... well... on blu-ray discs.

[MovieStuff]

... But can you explain to me how that guy in Asia will acquire his digital copy in HD (he cannot get his hands on a Blu-ray disc, since they are now obsolete due to piracy).

Exactly.

The circular reasoning in this argument is like the Mac-elite telling everyone that they should get a Mac because Macs are not prone to virus problems like PCs. But the reason that viruses are written for PCs is because PCs have the largest share of the market place. If everyone started using Macs, then this "immunity" against viruses in Macs would be a thing of the past because Macs would have the market share instead of PCs. So the Mac-elite would be better off just enjoying their unique position in the marketplace and stop telling others to join the Mac brigade or they may un-do everything that makes Macs worth bragging about.

Likewise, the argument here, if I understand it, is that BluRay will die because everything will be free from "the cloud". But if everything is free, then where is the market for selling pirated HD copies? I mean, it isn't like BluRay disks are that expensive and their prices are dropping like crazy. And if "the cloud" is going to make buying or renting any kind of disk media obsolete, then why hasn't that already happened to regular DVD, which requires much less bandwidth or download time than HD? At what point do the thieves throw up their hands and say, "There isn't enough of a profit in this." and walk away? Well, that's what happened with regular DVDs. The studios finally figured out that they could just lower their price down to $10 or so and make it unprofitable for the DVD pirates to continue doing business. While it didn't shut them down completely, it took a huge bite out of their pirating efforts because the buying public found they could just get the real deal without breaking the law.

Like Kent says, you can't really make a unique argument that BluRay will die because of piracy. If that were really true, then there should theoretically be no market for anything because one could just either steal it or buy it at a discount from someone else that has already stolen it. Why this is more likely to happen in the future with no effective history of it so far I don't understand. I see BluRay becoming so common and cheap that piracy will be a non-issue. It just won't be profitable enough to justify the risk.

And, as avortex notes, we are not even addressing the whole issue that people like to buy "stuff" and not just a non-tangible file. While it is true that I-tunes is successful, that's because most albums have only one or two songs that people like and so I-tunes let's customers buy only the song or songs they want without the cost of an entire album. But movies are not the same thing. People don't just "buy a scene" from a movie. They are purchasing the whole thing and the idea that they can just pop it into a viewer anywhere at any time only enhances its perceived value.

Roger

[aj]

Y'all in Europe and Japan can get speeds like 100mbs.

I know one guy who actually has 100Mbps (he lives in the middle of the city and is one of the few in this city who has that speed). I think it will take long before us who live a few miles outside the city can get those speeds.

But the interesting question is the connection speed for the movie provider. How many constant 25Mbps streams can they easily supply before their up-connection will choke? Lets say 1000 guys are streaming a movie, and lets say they stream it at 25Mbps. That would require a upload speed at 25000Mbps from the movieprovider. Is that speed easily available?
?

There are already plenty streaming video services for regular TV quality. Should one have missed a tv-broadcast you can watch it after the fact using a Missed-programme-service. 8mbps is sufficient bandwith for that.

Urban areas here are now all planning and working on fibre-to-the-home. I'll get my connection 'wired' this january and hope the signal will be fed soon after that. We can then choose 30/60/90mbps service.

It is a misunderstanding to think all video of one source must be serviced by one machine. You either will run out of TCP/IP connections, the aggregated connected bandwidth demand or the HTTP session blocks could consume all memory in the server. So you get portals which spread over a set of machines or you use a service like these: http://www.jet-stream.nl/
Who replicate a stream-source to all their servers who are stationed within the network of practically all connection providers. Thus reducing the traffic from the source machine and network. Also the replicating server is network-wise much closer to the customers and requires less TCP/IP hops.

[Uppsala BildTeknik]

There are already plenty streaming video services for regular TV quality.

Regular TV quality, yes. But I was talking about regular SD quality, like "DVD quality". I haven´t found anyone who can deliver SD movies at full DVD quality. Have you?

[super8man]

While it may sound circular, it's not quite...a good write up in the New York Times yesterday was about books. Basically, if you want the newest book, you will pay. However, if you can wait anywhere from a month or longer, the book becomes essentially free. Someone will read it and then sell it for a penny plus shipping(as a book lover, I know this feeling, you want others to use it, etc).

Same too with movies, there will always be SOMEONE who pays the man for being able to see it FIRST...but after that, it's in the cloud available to anyone.

Oh, and youtube is proof that even sitting and watching a 2 hour movie may eventually go the way of the dodo...scene clips may become defacto movies in the future.

And this whole "I need to own something tangible" concept is something that is foreign with the current generation (not those in power, those just getting their driver's license).

Don't worry, I also found it sad noone was marketing to me now that I am no longer the current generation of interest to marketers. But yeah, the "own it" concept went out with wanting to own a PHYSICAL copy of Windows 98....

[aj]

There are already plenty streaming video services for regular TV quality.

Regular TV quality, yes. But I was talking about regular SD quality, like "DVD quality". I haven´t found anyone who can deliver SD movies at full DVD quality. Have you?

Embed them anywhere.
Embed DVD-quality videos in forums, blogs and web pages using our beautiful Flash player.

SmugMug uses the fabulous H.264 format so you can also view your SmugMug videos on iTunes, iPhones, iPods, AppleTV, Zunes, and more.

Read here : http://www.smugmug.com/photos/best-video-sharing
Free testing for two weeks. I can supply a two-way discount key

And vimeo has a HD channel too.

Paid services, of course.

[Uppsala BildTeknik]

SmugMug...

I can´t find any movies there. I tlooks more like a "share your photos and make some Youtubing-clips"-kinda thing. Can I see real proper Bigscreen-titles there?

If not, I am not interested at all, sorry.

And regarding the bitrate I googled and found "Got priceless HD videos? SmugMug does a great job making them viewable in HD on the Web, but has to lower the bitrate in order to do it."

And vimeo has a HD channel too.

I checked the Youtube HD thing and I could see the compression on the tiny image on my computer (the grass on some clips was very blurry). I guss Vimeo is about the same, far from full HD quality.

I can´t imagine how much the compression would come through on a big 46" TV, but I guess it is OK for computer monitors and surfing on the web.

And Vimeo cannot provide any real movies either.

[aj]

The HD demo on smugmug plays just excellent.

Vimeo is also very good on all it advertises.

If it doesn't work it is your connection and not theirs.

Nor vimeo nor smugsmug are ordinary free youtube/flickr like advertisement ridden traps.

Plenty of professionals actually pay real money to have their images and videos hosted on smugmug. If you think you can judge commercial services by clipping some googled anonymous posting from when and whom you are as mistaken as on this server calculation earlier.

You have unrealistic expectations. And if you know so well just search for yourself and post the result here please.

[Uppsala BildTeknik]

If it doesn't work it is your connection and not theirs.

I haven´t said that it doesen´t work. I just say it isn´t full HD quality, adn not a service that is in any way an alternative to Blu-ray. I thought that was what we were discussing here?

You have unrealistic expectations. And if you know so well just search for yourself and post the result here please.

Oh, I don´t expect to find anyone providing full quality HD streaming. If I can´t even find anyone offering streaming SD movies at full quality I can´t really expect to find HD streaming, now can I?

The only SD streaming service we have in Sweden (for real films, not hiomemade clips) has way lower bitrate than a DVD. I´m the one saying this service doesen´t exist, so why should I search for it?

Nigel or someone who is saying that streaming is an option can search for it.

[woods01]

Downloading HD may not seem so likely now but there are always breakthroughs in file compression and streaming just around the corner. And most people really don't care about the quality just as long as its good enough.

The kids these days don't have the same connection to physical media as previous ones. They all know how to download free stuff. It will be interesting to see how media companies respond to this.