with regards to online distribution, i was thinking primarily with the US in mind, since it is clearly the market to start things off.  by the time the distribution model and system matures, bandwidth would have caught up elsewhere.

more important, i don't think direct streaming is essential.  certainly no need to stream movies in HD, and i was in fact thinking of streaming in DVD quality, and whether you even need to stream movies real-time anyway.  i can think of a multitude of creative solutions and possibilities.

people will accept distribution even at lower (DVD) quality because it will bring great convenience and new opportunities.  the opportunities are so vast that it is almost a sure bet entrepeuneurs will figure something out that is much more friendly to consumers by this time next year.  the netflixes, the walmarts, the apples... the list is endless.  right now it's downloading to your PC, but once there's a convenient way to play content on the TV, the service will take off.  

ps3 and 360 are positioning themselves to be exactly these kind of machines... but i don't know enough about them to really know how that's shaping up.  in general though, all-in-ones tend to weaknesses that are difficult to overcome, so i'm not too optimistic on them.

 Exactly.. LOL is the correct term for this blurb. In many research labs, multilayer DVD discs have already been produced and tested for years.. and guess what, dual layer discs is all that we have, so there must be a reason for it.

I particularly like the  "manufacturing a Blu-ray drive costs ten times as much as manufacturing a DVD or HD VMD drive" bit. If you think that constructing a pickup system that can reliably read 10 layers costs less than any existing pickup system (DVD, HD-DVD,-Blu-ray, pick your choice, all costing about $20 to produce) then you are in serious need of some engineering lectures. At this time, people still have problems with yields on dual-layer HD formats, now you can figure out the problems with mass producing 4-8 layer discs needed for HD content on HD-VMD. Hmmmm, I wonder why those few films shown at IFA on VMD were less than spectacular as was reported by some observers.. could it be that those were actually lower bitrate movies on 2layer discs because the 4 layer VMD reqired for real HD content are still "in experimental studies"?

For those worried about movie support, here is a list of available titles:




* Hostage
* We Were Soldiers
* Apocalypto
* Lucky Number Slevin
* Valiant
* Saw II
* Saw III
* Lord of War
* Fireplace & Aquarium
* The Ark
* Help I'm A Fish
* El Cid
* Mid Summer Dream
* Passion of The Christ
* Angeles Ashes
* Babel
* 16 Blocks
* Set up
* Hoodwinked
* Oliver Twist
* Princesse
* La Planete Blanche
* Pulp Fiction
* Sahara
* Demande A La Poussiere
* Gosford Park
* The Descent
* Miss Potter
* The Queen
* Butterfly Effect 1
* Butterfly Effect 2
* Hitcher
* Black Sheep
* Lord of the Rings
* Diario De Um Novo Mundo
* Inside Out
* Avion
* Welcome to LazyTown
* Dr. Rottenstein
* Hero for a Day
* Defeated
* Rottenbeard
* Cry Dinosaur
* Secret Agent Zero
* Sleepless in LazyTown
* Happy Brush Day
* Pixelspix
* LazyTown’s New Super Hero
* Sports Day
* Crystal Caper
* Lazy Scouts
* My Treehouse
* Swiped Sweets
* Sportafake
* The Laziest Town
* Soccer Sucker
* Dear Diary
* Miss Roberta
* Sports Candy Festival
* Remote Control
* Sportacus Who?
* Zap it
* Records Day
* Ziggy’s Alien
* Play Day
* Prince Stingy
* Robbie’s Greatest Misses
* Dancing Duel
* LazyTown’s Greatest Hits
* Sportacus on the Move!
* LazyTown’s Surprise Santa
* Sailor et lula
* Scorpion
* Le caïman
* Spy kids
* Scarie movie 2
* Les chansons d'amour
* Khakar Khakar
* Alaipayuthey
* Pammal K Sambantham
* Panchathanthiram
* Ghilli
* Boys
* Kandukondain Kandukondain
* Water
* Bheja Fry
* Bridge to Tarabitha
* Hanuman
* Malamal Weekly
* Constant Gardner
* Jo Jeeta Wohli Sikander
* Page 3
* Parzania
* Iqbal
* China Town
* Sholay
* Andaz Apana Apna
* Hum Aapke Hai Kaun
* Padosan
* Maine Pyaar Kiya
* Kashmir Ki Kali
* Pyaasa
* Sapoot
* International only
* Khanna & Iyer
* Inquilab
* Namak Haram
* Dil Ek Mandir



Kinda reads like a Bit Torrent list instead of a film catalog.

LOl 40mbps does not require 28x. its megabits not megabytes

Hmm.

Honestly, since BRD and HD-DVD are such an expensive technology and not that much different from DVD, in the end, it sounds like HD-VMD would be the better way to go until something drastically different comes along. Because, honestly, people are splitting hairs over the "superiority" of these new formats. They're really not THAT fantastic in comparison. As a result, it's not really worth paying so much extra money for it. I'd say that most of the people who've bought either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD have it to show off. The vast majority of the market out there won't want to spend that much money for something if it's not an enormous difference in quality.

Basically, what this comes down to is this. Thinking in the general public's mindset, I'm going to want to compare the ability of DVD vs. New Format in my home usage. The general public has an ordinary SD TV in the 20-30-inch range. Granted, HD is gaining a great foothold, but it'll be years before HD is the standard. I wouldn't expect HD to have a majority foothold until at LEAST 2015, because the majority of the public is happy with SD.

Thus said, people won't be wanting anything all that expensive to replace their DVD players. They'll want something that can perform, and they MAY see themselves getting an HD TV in the future, but they won't want to shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars to get a nice HD TV + media player combo.

HD-VMD sounds like a nobrainer. Expect it to have majority support about a year or year and a half from launch.

"The ML775S adds USB ports and a media-card reader for displaying photos and playing video content from devices such as thumb drives and external hard drives."

This was the part that really caught my attention. I have alot of anime fansubs that I would love to watch on TV (instead of my 15" laptop LCD screen). It isn't too expensive and when I get an HD TV somewhere down the road the player is already HD ready.

I'm sold!

Both Sony and MS will do whatever they need to stop this taking over , and I mean there will be huge ammount of money payed for exclusive rights :) I still bet on the BD to win the war ;)

Apparently no-one paid attention to the previous post in this thread and is ignoring this little gem:

"The format uses MPEG-2 and VC1 video formats to encode at 1080p resolution for the time being, and will possibly move to the H.264 format in the future."

They really need to support H.264 and VC1 right out of the gate. That's going to be a huge issue for the hardcore videophile and will ensure they look to HD DVD and/or Blue-ray to get it.

When HD were approaching 20 MB I said this. I also said there was no way to fill all of that. Than I saw 40 MB HDs and said  "Who the hell needs that?" Than I got used to Hd's being around the 100 MB mark. When Hard Drives hit 650 MBs I was like "Woaahhh this is willl take me years to fill and I never will have to delete again. When HD's hit a gig I was like this more than any single person will ever need. When they hit 8 gigs I was kind of used to rapidly expanding HDs but I was still thinking no one would ever need more than 20.

When 120 gigs came out I got one right after their intro thinking it will take me forever to fill but I was wrong because no I have managed to fill 1 terrabyte worth of HDs  just doing video projects and wishing I had more space.

With this on the way you may want to rethink your storage thoughts

Super Hi-Vision's main specifications:

Resolution: 7,680 × 4,320 pixels (16:9) (approximately 33 megapixels)

Frame rate: 60 frame/s.

Audio: 22.2 channels

Bandwidth: 21 GHz frequency band

600 MHz, 500~6600 Mbit/s bandwidth

 

2006 demo was published in a Broadcast Engineering e-newsletter.[2] In November 2005 NHK demonstrated a live relay of Super Hi-Vision (UHDV) program over a distance of 260 km by a fiber optic network. Using dense wavelength division multiplex (DWDM), 24 gigabit speed was achieved with a total of 16 different wavelength signals. 

That is roughly 3 GBs or 10.8 terrabytes per 2 hour movie that was for a relay or broadcasting. For the actual film itself

In test, an 18-minute UHDV video gobbled up 3.5 terabytes of storage (equivalent to about 750 DVD's) 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/03/technology/circuits/03next.html?ex=1401595200&en=935183cee9a4bd49&ei=5007

We will always find a way to  fill space even if it is some brain dead AOL'er downloanding pictures of Sarah Michelle Gellar

"Me too" 

 the format war has just been decided