Sorry.... but why would Nintendo side be talking about HD DVD. Nintendo only has a DVD player with 480p at max currently. Shouldn't it be the MS side talking about HD DVD?

sieanr said: I hit around 1mb from usenet, with really good torrents also reaching that speed. And with a bit of work, you can get untouched bluray and HDDVD rips, as well as very high quality broadcast grabs.

 That's still 7 hours to download a 25gb file... if you can average 1mb/second. Add the features that will exist in 2 years, and the average disc will be 40gb. Let's just go with your lowball numbers to make it look more lucrative.

7hours... for a 1.5 hour video. Ok, let's see... I decide I want to buy it at 6:00pm. I start downloading. I am then ready to watch it at 1AM. So my movie time would be over at 2:30AM.

Shave that time down to 2 hours and you got a deal for me. However the only problem is, you need 30mbps connection. The only way to get that is to get a optical connection shelling out in the ballpark of 2000$/month.

I dunno about you, but that sounds a bit steep for my internet... Shit, that sounds a bit steep for all my bills... x2.

maybe in 4 years the average internet will be 10mbps like you. Maybe in 6 years the average internet connection would be 20mbps. Hey, while were throwing figures out, maybe 30 in 8 years. But hey, the 10mbps cable connection has been around for around 8 years, and hey, it's still not average. Actually not even 5mbps is average. 3mbps is average. Maybe in another 8 years 5 or possibly 10 will be average. I just dont see the internet bandwidth increasing by that much... there's really no point to it, unless it comes to streaming HD content. And well, that's a questionable market for a multi-billion dollar INFRASTRUCTRE rebuild... just of the cable network. That's not looking at the multi-billion dollar backbone, and then likely 5-10billion dollar servers that it would take to host a monolith like that. I seriously dont see HD video content anywhere... anytime soon.

A great example of HD video download speeds...

 1080p trailer

Download that, and tell me how it feels to download a 3 minute 185mb file. Think that's pain? Try going with the full 168min movie. (56x longer) Add about 3 hours of special features. (that's about 180 minutes, or about 60x longer than the trailer on it's own)

So add all that together, and your looking at around 116x longer download time than that trailer... for a SINGLE movie. 

All of this yapping is pointless when both HD & BR sales combined cant even put a dent in normal DVD sales. Normal folks are not going to buy BR or HD players nor will they care about the improvement... hell most people on the planet dont even know there is difference between DVD, HD & BR.

Havent we learned anything from Wii & DS sales? The majority of normal folks dont care about graphics and resolutions and high definition. They just want to see a movie for as little money as possible. This so called "format war" is nothing more than wishful thinking imho.

Silver_Z said: Sorry.... but why would Nintendo side be talking about HD DVD. Nintendo only has a DVD player with 480p at max currently. Shouldn't it be the MS side talking about HD DVD?

 The Microsoft guys are saying Digital Distribution, OR HD-DVD has lost.

The Nintendo guys are saying Digital Distribution, OR BluRay sucks and has lost.

Some of the microsoft guys agree that Digital Distribution is too many years out to matter.

My point is, why do the nintendo guys think HD-DVD has a chance in hell for beating BluRay? 

Kwaad said: Silver_Z said: Sorry.... but why would Nintendo side be talking about HD DVD. Nintendo only has a DVD player with 480p at max currently. Shouldn't it be the MS side talking about HD DVD?  The Microsoft guys are saying Digital Distribution, OR HD-DVD has lost. The Nintendo guys are saying Digital Distribution, OR BluRay sucks and has lost. Some of the microsoft guys agree that Digital Distribution is too many years out to matter. My point is, why do the nintendo guys think HD-DVD has a chance in hell for beating BluRay?Â

I do think that they will eventually peacefully co-exist. This format war.....won't even be a war.

Escherichia said:   I do think that they will eventually peacefully co-exist. This format war.....won't even be a war.

heh... That would be so bad for the industry. One or the other. I'd rather BluRay fail, and vanish, and HD-DVD wins... or BluRay win, and HD-DVD gone.

Both would confuse the... average shopper. 

Kwaad said: Escherichia said:   I do think that they will eventually peacefully co-exist. This format war.....won't even be a war. heh... That would be so bad for the industry. One or the other. I'd rather BluRay fail, and vanish, and HD-DVD wins... or BluRay win, and HD-DVD gone. Both would confuse the... average shopper.

 hddvd is already dead in one market, Europe is coming along nicely.

gball said something and I just thought of this, and this relates my opinion on alot of stuff.

HD movies mean nothing more than a SD video. They both tell the same story? Right?

Well, if you wanna go the cheap way, you can normally buy a book of the movie. Alot of the time the book has the better story, and it's more detailed... who would ever wanna watch a movie when you could read the book?

Who cares about sound. Sound isnt very imporant. 8bit sound is just as good as 256bit sound. Some of the best game soundtracks were on the SNES, and you can get those on a wind-up music jukebox for quite a few of them.

So now that we have that done.

 

Let's take a 1700's printing press, with a windup music box... and read a story! It's better than watching a movie!

 

Ok that was alot of scarcasm, but that's what it feels like those of you who say quality dont matter.

I like to read.  

Kwaad said: gball said something and I just thought of this, and this relates my opinion on alot of stuff. HD movies mean nothing more than a SD video. They both tell the same story? Right? Well, if you wanna go the cheap way, you can normally buy a book of the movie. Alot of the time the book has the better story, and it's more detailed... who would ever wanna watch a movie when you could read the book? Who cares about sound. Sound isnt very imporant. 8bit sound is just as good as 256bit sound. Some of the best game soundtracks were on the SNES, and you can get those on a wind-up music jukebox for quite a few of them. So now that we have that done.   Let's take a 1700's printing press, with a windup music box... and read a story! It's better than watching a movie!   Ok that was alot of scarcasm, but that's what it feels like those of you who say quality dont matter. I like to read.

What a stupid argument

Ever wondered why we moved so quickly from 2 bit colour to 24 bit colour, yet since then we haven't actually added any more colours to our displays? Where are the 64 bit colour displays?

Ever wonder why we moved from 8 bit sound to 256 bit sound quickly, yet still (apart from real audiophiles) haven't really progressed from there?

There is an amount of quality where if you go past it the return is not worth the investment. This amount depends on the application and the human watching it. Of course, we will see a difference between 480p and 1080p. Just like you can hear a difference between 256 bit sound and whatever is the highest you can get (I'm no audiophile). But likening this transition to the one from 8 bit sound to 256 is just completely ridiculous.

But then again, I should expect this kind of stupid argument from the person who tried to argue that the PS2 was more powerul than the GC because it had a 128 bit processor.

"There's no way the iPod will ever catch on after all a full DVD-A is 8.5GB which would take hours to download and you'd need a 1 Terabyte iPod just to hold enough music to keep the average user happy."

This is (essentially) the exact same argument that people are making against the possibility of downloadable movies. There are a lot of similarities between the SACD vs DVD-A (2 formats, no added convenience, quality beyond what most people care about, hardware upgrades needed to take advantage of improvement); MP3 won inspite of the fact that people initially spent hours downloading albums (56k isn't particularly fast), the quality is lower than CD (let alone DVD-A or SACD) and no extras came with the albums (no art or liner-notes).