ps3 has this too ya know.

Yeah, but it's a 2" or something close to that screen right?  Doesn't it really not matter when it's that small?

-edit-

Note that I don't have a Zune so I can't really say much about it so don't know what all it can do.

No, I mean it can output to your tv at 720p.

The real irony is that I made these exact same arguments less than a decade ago almost word for word. It was not that long ago everyone was using dial up modems for internet access and there were no iPods. There were no online music stores.

People thought I was nuts when I said everyone will switch to digital distributed music. Nearly all those people never touch their cds anymore and some don't even own cds.

I've actually always been a big believer in music downloads because even on dialup a song didn't take more than 10 minutes.  I had actually want to make something like iTunes before there was an iTunes but wanted songs at $0.75.  :-p

I completely agree that one day internet will be fast enough and portable memory will be big enough so that I can easily watch a movie anywhere either by streaming or holding it some sort of device, I just don't think that's going to happen really soon and at least the XBox Marketplace thing isn't the answer at the moment.

Ah ok, that makes more sense (though my extreme hate for fiddling with wires factors in now :-p)

Bonus content

Actually, uncompressed song from a CD would take longer than 10 minutes on dial up. An uncompressed album could take hours.

Just like an uncompressed 1080p show could take hours to download. A compressed 720p compressed program could take considerably less time.

That's why I downloaded MP3's

Seriously though, music downloads were big during dial up because it was free, not because it was convenient.  It became big when portable MP3 players and high speed internet made it simple.  You're right in saying that 1080p movie downloads will eventually be big, that's like predecting that tomorrow will come, just this particular thing isn't what's going to make it big.

.h264 can do it. just people encode real fast because they want to be the first to release something in HD on the net. If they actually setup multi pass and a few filters and let it encode for say 4 days. Instead of 1 pass 1 day job it would turn out way better.

Lets have a look at this all Blue Ray thing a "Mr. Normal Street Guy" perspective by weighing up the benefits of adopting dvd over vhs and adopting BR over DVD eh? Doing it this way I think will at least highlight some glaringly obvious fatcs here.

Mr Normal Street Guy walks into a store in 1998 and is pounced on by the store assistant.

"Hello, Sir how would you like to look at these new players called DVD players, the latest technology.

"What do these have that VHS doesn't?"

"Well you can get far higher picture and sound quality from these DVD's"

"Show me"

Guy is suitably impressed by the obvious difference

"What else is it better at?"

"You can go to any point in a movie by using chapters without having to rewind the whole tape for minutes"

Very impressive

"Not only that the disc will never degrade in quality over the years"

Great

"You can have subtitles displayed at a whim, there are extras built into the disc that can be added over the movie which is impossible with a VHS"

Fantastic

"The DVD's themselves are much smaller with packaging meaning your collection won't take up as much space plus much easier to take around with you"

Wonderful


11 years later Mr Normal Street Guy walks into an electronics store..

"Hello may I interest you in the new Blue Ray players Sir?"

"What do these have that DVD doesn't?"

"Well Sir, they have the ability to boost the picture quality to 1080p"

"What is that?"

"It's the amount of pixels being displayed progressively. 1920x1080p means there are 1920 pixels vertically and 1080 horizontally. 1920x1080p is currently the highest resolution you can get right now. So a Blue Ray player can produce 2073600 pixels on screen, 6 times more detail than DVD"

"Wow it certainly does sound impressive and it will display that on my TV now?"

"If you have an HD ready TV that is capable of display a 1080p image, yes"

"How do I know if it does already?"

"It will generally say HD Ready on the TV or you will have to check if your model is HD Ready and then check if it capable of producing that kind of image"

"I'm sure it isn't HD Ready what kind of price TV is capable of producing this kind of Image?"

"Well they range from £300 to anything around £1000, even more sometimes"

"So this TV will definitely display the image"

"Well that depends if it is 720p or 1080p"

"720p?"

"Yes it is a HD signal but not with as much detail as 1080p but still nearly 3 times higher than DVD and generally the 1080p ones are around £500"

"So what else does Blue Ray have that DVD doesnt that I will use"

"You can have uncompressed 7.1 audio giving you an all cinema feeling"

"This sound will come from my TV?"

"No, you will have to buy a special receiver for 7.1 sound"

"How much is that?"

"Anything from £300 - £1000 again for a decent 7.1 receiver"

"So to play these Blue Ray in all their glory I will need to spend about £200 for this player, $500 for a decent TV capable of it and about £400 on a reciever?"

"Yes to get it in all its true glory"

Mr Normal Street guy walks out of the shop and goes home to play his DVD movie