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Was having a chat with a mate this morning about the downloading of ripped dvd movies (don't worry I'm not going to discuss this) and got around to Blueray movies and the High Defination format. As I understand it a Blueray movie at 1080p is going to work out about 14gb in size, which is a huge size to download.

So this got me thinking about the whole concept of 'video on demand'. As people move over to large screens running at 1080p are you going to be happy with a 'video on demand' service, that drops the quality of the movie so that it can be downloaded in a reasonable time?

As I understand it:

8Mbps = 1MBps (which means Virgins service is 6.25MBps)

I rounded this down to 6MBps, which equals 2333 secs. If I've worked that out correctly that equals 38 minutes. Obviously this this is based on no loss of data. Given that dsl bandwidth is never 100% you can look at this time increasing and if you are on a normal dsl service you could be there for hours if not days.

It could be the 'video on demand' service is going to be left behind, just as it starts to get going. I think there will still be a demand for it, but could it of missed the chance to be really huge?

Or Blue ray goes the way of Beta...

British internet is way behind america atm which is both cheaper and faster, and that's where this download centred media hype is coming from.

It is the licensing problems that will kill VoD.

Every major studio will want to control its own service and make you subscribe to each of them.

I can't see how that's true. I know they would rather cut out as much of the middle man as possible but I mean it hasn't happened with music downloads and what ondemand services which already do exist as of now.

Well, Sony has already cut out all movies from it's motion picture subsidiary from the "on demand" format of Netflix, thanks to Netflix premiering on X-Box live. Since Netflix is perhaps the biggest promoter of the VOD format, and I'm pretty sure that Sony owns Colombia Tristar pictures (though I could be wrong), then that's a HUGE hit to the entire service.

Though I honestly don't care wether or not a movie is displayed in 1080p. If the movie's not good enough to be watched in low resolution, then it's not good enough to be watched at all.

Having a Blu-Ray player, an Xbox360 with the Netflix package and a 1080p 50" DLP, I feel that I can weigh in on the topic. Also, I'm on 15 Mbit cable broadband.

When I first signed up for the Netflix VoD deal a month and a half ago, I was initially disappointed by the selection. There are a great deal of movies and TV shows that are not available for the "watch instantly" option, and for those that are, I do occasionally get hit by network congestion (which really drops the picture quality down).

After I got used to the limitations, it's been fantastic. I go through and just add a whole bunch of stuff I missed out on before and watch it when the mood strikes me. I've now seen all four seasons of The Office (American version) and watched Saturn 3 and Mission to Mars yesterday. There are some good nature shows, sitcoms, and other things that you might normally miss as well.

In general I see it as a supplement to my normal cable TV viewing, and I don't feel that I've lost anything if I only watch the first 30 minutes of a movie and then remove it from the queue (I'm looking at you, Saturn 3). It does have its place, but I'm still buying/renting DVDs.

Chrysaor686 wrote:Well, Sony has already cut out all movies from it's motion picture subsidiary from the "on demand" format of Netflix, thanks to Netflix premiering on X-Box live. Since Netflix is perhaps the biggest promoter of the VOD format, and I'm pretty sure that Sony owns Colombia Tristar pictures (though I could be wrong), then that's a HUGE hit to the entire service.

Though I honestly don't care wether or not a movie is displayed in 1080p. If the movie's not good enough to be watched in low resolution, then it's not good enough to be watched at all.

Sony owns Columbia Tristar including the back catalogue. It also owns Sony Music, including the back catalogue. These are two of the largest entertainment media archives in the world.

Frazzled wrote:Or Blue ray goes the way of Beta...

I doubt it, the wars already over and it was HD-DVD that went the way of Beta. Blu-Ray is getting a very solid grip, in fact I'd say Blue is currently about as popular as DVD was in about 1999-2000. When the prices of the Disc and Players start to drop to about the same cost as the DVD equivalent (about 18-24 months) I think they'll take off like a rocket.

Anyhow back on topic. I agree that this is a doomed enterprise as far as films go. When DVD's are being sold for only about twice the price of a downloadable rental there's just no comparison. By the time most films reach "Movies on Demand" they've more than likely been in a 3 for £20 promo in HMV.

In addition services like lovefilm make renting of DVD's even cheaper than 'Movies on Demand' without the worry of getting back on time or a trip in the rain to get it. And when you consider your getting a DVD that you can watch at your convenience as opposed to a download that you can only watch a certain number of times or which will delete itself after a certain time frame there really no choice. I honestly thing Blockbuster, as a retail rental outlet, only has a couple of years left before it goes on-line only. I honest cant remember the last time I rented a DVD from a store.

LuciusAR wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Or Blue ray goes the way of Beta...

I doubt it, the wars already over and it was HD-DVD that went the way of Beta. Blu-Ray is getting a very solid grip, in fact I'd say Blue is currently about as popular as DVD was in about 1999-2000. When the prices of the Disc and Players start to drop to about the same cost as the DVD equivalent (about 18-24 months) I think they'll take off like a rocket.

Anyhow back on topic. I agree that this is a doomed enterprise as far as films go. When DVD's are being sold for only about twice the price of a downloadable rental there's just no comparison. By the time most films reach "Movies on Demand" they've more than likely been in a 3 for £20 promo in HMV.

In addition services like lovefilm make renting of DVD's even cheaper than 'Movies on Demand' without the worry of getting back on time or a trip in the rain to get it. And when you consider your getting a DVD that you can watch at your convenience as opposed to a download that you can only watch a certain number of times or which will delete itself after a certain time frame there really no choice. I honestly thing Blockbuster, as a retail rental outlet, only has a couple of years left before it goes on-line only. I honest cant remember the last time I rented a DVD from a store.

I agree with you however I do think blue ray faces a big threat from download purchases in the future rather than on demand services. Its the way music has gone I cant see films being any different. In the least I cant see blue ray having as long a run as dvds have.

LuciusAR wrote:[I doubt it, the wars already over and it was HD-DVD that went the way of Beta. Blu-Ray is getting a very solid grip, in fact I'd say Blue is currently about as popular as DVD was in about 1999-2000. When the prices of the Disc and Players start to drop to about the same cost as the DVD equivalent (about 18-24 months) I think they'll take off like a rocket.

I’m not sure if they’ll come to dominate the market but they certainly seem to have a place in the market sewn up. Since they beat out HDD the risk wasn’t that they’d become another beta, but that they’d become another Laserdisc, too expensive and fiddly for not enough improvement. But it seems with more people moving to HD tellies every year the market is only going to grow.

Anyhow back on topic. I agree that this is a doomed enterprise as far as films go. When DVD's are being sold for only about twice the price of a downloadable rental there's just no comparison. By the time most films reach "Movies on Demand" they've more than likely been in a 3 for £20 promo in HMV.

Maybe, but there are advantages to downloadable movies. The selection, at least potentially, could be a lot better than bulk entertainment stores. Instead of ringing around between stores trying to find a copy of some cult movie, you can see it there on-line in the index. There are also no warehouse or shelf space concerns, so there’s nothing in the technology stopping on-line companies setting massive libraries. It’s also a big hassle for a lot of people to get to a store to rent or buy the movie. I’ve been on crutches after doing my knee recently and for the first week or so I would have loved to have. Other folk live an hour from town, or work strange hours, or countless other things that make going to the shops to buy or rent movies less than appealing.

The other issue is downloadable movies can co-exist with other forms of content. Unlike HDD and Bluray, where ultimately only one of the two formats could ever survive,

I suspect the biggest issue to movies on demand is probably piracy. If you’re happy with an electronic version and are keen enough to set yourself up with a really good internet connection, you likely fit into the demographic most likely to pirate their media.

In addition services like lovefilm make renting of DVD's even cheaper than 'Movies on Demand' without the worry of getting back on time or a trip in the rain to get it. And when you consider your getting a DVD that you can watch at your convenience as opposed to a download that you can only watch a certain number of times or which will delete itself after a certain time frame there really no choice. I honestly thing Blockbuster, as a retail rental outlet, only has a couple of years left before it goes on-line only. I honest cant remember the last time I rented a DVD from a store.

Yeah, fair point. I can see a pretty direct contest between mailing out rental DVDs and downloading, and I can see that contest depending on the race between increasing broadband speed (and capacity) and the increasing size of media files. With the increase to Bluray sized files that race swings back towards mail.

whatwhat wrote:

LuciusAR wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Or Blue ray goes the way of Beta...

I doubt it, the wars already over and it was HD-DVD that went the way of Beta. Blu-Ray is getting a very solid grip, in fact I'd say Blue is currently about as popular as DVD was in about 1999-2000. When the prices of the Disc and Players start to drop to about the same cost as the DVD equivalent (about 18-24 months) I think they'll take off like a rocket.

Anyhow back on topic. I agree that this is a doomed enterprise as far as films go. When DVD's are being sold for only about twice the price of a downloadable rental there's just no comparison. By the time most films reach "Movies on Demand" they've more than likely been in a 3 for £20 promo in HMV.

In addition services like lovefilm make renting of DVD's even cheaper than 'Movies on Demand' without the worry of getting back on time or a trip in the rain to get it. And when you consider your getting a DVD that you can watch at your convenience as opposed to a download that you can only watch a certain number of times or which will delete itself after a certain time frame there really no choice. I honestly thing Blockbuster, as a retail rental outlet, only has a couple of years left before it goes on-line only. I honest cant remember the last time I rented a DVD from a store.

I agree with you however I do think blue ray faces a big threat from download purchases in the future rather than on demand services. Its the way music has gone I cant see films being any different. In the least I cant see blue ray having as long a run as dvds have.

On Radio 4 business news this morning, UK CD sales were up 30% in 2008 compared to 2007.

Films are much bigger files than music. An entire CD is about 700MB. That is only seven minutes of 720p30, MP4 20Mbps video file.

The browse online, rent by mail system offers the best compromise for VoD until bandwidth increases massively.

Thing is, how long are you prepared to wait for a film to download? VoD, if used for getting a movie to watch on a Saturday night takes some forethought, it's not instant. If you did decide you wanted to download a film on the spur of the moment, how long would you be prepared to wait? Also if the download speed was ok with you, would the quality be ok for what you paid and how long you had to wait? Ok so it cost you £3 for a movie and it downloaded in 30 minutes, but is the quality of it going to be distracting it you are watching it on you nice new large screen?

My girlfriend just got a 60" plasma tv (!) and she has kinda bad eyesight but even she can tell the difference when the video quality is standard definition over HD and she doesn't like watching old stuff on her new TV. I think a lot of people out there buying these new HDTVs will really be complaining a lot if their broadcast stuff looks good but their on demand looks bad.

they gotta come up with a way to have good quality video and audio and it has to be instant, no downloading ahead of time. The average guy just won't want to do that. DVRs will be the norm, not downloading on demand.

Blue ray is here to stay now. But, I don't see it killing DVDs. Normal DVDs still look good on most HDTVs especially if you have a good player. Blue ray will be more of an elitist kind of format for people who love home theater and stuff like that. Compared to 20 years ago I think DVD will be like VHS and Blueray will be like Laserdisc

There is also streaming video -- this means the file starts playing as soon as you start downloading and you don't have to wait for it to finish.

You still need high bandwidth and a reliable connection to avoid dropouts.

MP4, the standard encoding for Blu-ray can be done to various bitrates. The maximum on BD is about 50Mbps. At work, we use 20Mbps for our quality stuff and 6Mbps for the stuff we put out on the network. It looks OK, for 720, but the 1080 stuff looks pretty bad at 8Mbps.

A 8Mbps stream obviously needs over 8 Megabits of bandwidth to stream in real time.

The typical UK broadband is nominal 8Mbps but actually runs much slower. Some European countries do better, and others do worse. Japanese broadband is 100Mbps.