Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] Warner Backs Blu-ray, Tilting DVD Battle

["Jonathan King" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Jan 6, 2008 12:18 PM, Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:
> On Sun, 6 Jan 2008, Vern Green wrote:
>
> > A radio program I was listening to the other day was saying that the
> > decision between Blu Ray and HD DVD is likely to be a moot decision
> > anyway. They were saying that more and more people are going to be able
> > to have HD movies on demand and people will be able to download the
> > titles they want.
> >
> > Certainly there is already movement in this area though it will likely
> > be some time before it replaces the drive formats.
>
> One HD movie takes up something like 20 GB.  I wouldn't want to have to
> download that.  Even at 1 MB/s, which is unrealistically fast for an
> internet connection, it would take about 5.5 hours to download one movie.

I think a bigger issue is that people really like to have the shiny
ownership token they can plonk into their player at any time. Also,
the box that will allow the on-demand download will not likely be
free.

But Mike is being very pessimistic abount internet bandwidth. Our $35
per month internet service here (Verizon FIOS) is 5 Mb (bits!) per
second, but we could get 15 Mb (bits!) per second for $50. That would
be almost 2 MB (bytes!) per second. I don't know everything about
their infrastructure, but I do know they support HD cable on the same
fiber, suggesting to me that bandwidth per se is not the issue for
them.

> Maybe they have faster ways of moving data using satellite dishes or
> somesuch.

I think the big problem for an optical fiber-based system (like we
have) is not, ironically enough, the last mile, but the infrastructure
to do what they would have to do, which is to offer as many titles as
Netflix at a competitive price. We're not the heaviest netflix users
by a long shot, but our (I think $10) per month gets as probably 8-10
movies per month, which is an awesome price compared to pay per view
deals I have seen.

jking

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