Someone should really explain computer connection data transfers in this thread.

This service needs 5 Megabits.

5 Megabits = 625K download

1 MB (megaByte) = 8 Megabits

therefore 0.8 MB  = 640 K or 5.12 Megabits

So you are good for full 1080P.

Highly stuttered for me - dropped to 0 fps every 2 seconds or so on lowest settings.

Guess I'll have to wait for better inet first.

Until then, I guess its optical disk or full download for me.

crappy internet pisses me off.

This looks cool and works pretty well. But I personally like to own movies so I'll stick to hard media. But I can definitely see this being an advantage to some people. Although my connection speed is 20MB, and it never drops below 15MB, so I wonder how well it will work with the 512KB and 1MB connections as being the norm in the US. I know they say it will scale it back but that comes at a cost, whether that is buffering time or image quality.

The quality degrades dynamically.  It is actually quite impressive that they are doing this in real time.  To me at least.

My connection is only 2 mbs and the picture was great.

Mine stuttered for the first 30 seconds or so then settled down and was clean, crisp, and smooth as silk. Quite impressive but what will an action film look like that won't compress as easily?

Generally the internet connection standard in US is pretty crap.

Living in a big city like NYC with the fastest option is a 3mb/sec DSL is pure crap.
Verizon has been marketing FIOS for over 2 years and only a small portion of the city is covered.

Nice to see the technology advancing but the infrastructure is just not there yet ATM for the mass.

In 15 years after your local internet company guts the copper wiring in your hood and replaces it with fiber then you can begin to dream about getting bluray quality over your internet connection. Till then it's bluray baby. I thought we were over this.

Really? it's that bad? I'm surprised. I live a couple miles outside of boston, and cable/FIOS offers 20-50mb/s pretty much everywhere. And most areas can get solid numbers, first time I ever clocked my connection I actually got the full 20mb/s.

I mean, I wouldn't expect the same speed out in the boonies, and yeah, we're a long way before most people have access to that... I'm just surprised you have to settle for that in NYC.

Amazon.uk shows it different, with new movies coming out at 17.99-19.99 on DVD and 24.99-27.99 on BD before discounts. After discounts it's something around 11-12 for DVD and 16-17 for BD (I checked ten or so newish movies).

As I said what's really absent at the moment is the budget tier. Btw, "Hard Rain" came out in DVD in 2001. It's hardly a good example. Try anything that hasn't been out forever and the price gap will be much smaller.

And again, you speak of the future: "by the time Live has implemented this" and obviously "by the time everybody interested in movies has a good enough internet connection". But BluRay is not something that will happen in the future. It's here and has been for years and is slowly going to be the natural evolutionary upgrade of DVDs. It's not like people will have to "bother" with it: in a few years you won't be able to actually buy a mid-range DVD player in major stores, it will be relegated to dirt-cheap tier.

Today and for the last eight months BluRay provided an excellent way for me and my friends to watch our favourite movies in HD, with multiple audiotracks and subtitles and commentaries and extras, every time we wanted. For a price difference from the DVD that was less than the chips and beers we were having while watching them.

Today, digital distribution is not nearly there for cases like mine, and for a reason or another it will take years to get there for the majority of the world.

Meanwhile, what should we do?