Posted by Gaz on 01/05/08 19:36

Fry wrote:
>> I take it you've not seen Hi-Def then? I'm still nursing a semi over
>> the 5 disc Blade Runner blu-ray, and I've had it for a couple of
>> weeks now.
>
> Hi-Def is nice, but it offers few significant leaps over DVD... You
> get higher picture quality and sound, but that's about it. Most are
> perfectly happy with DVD, whereas people weren't satisfied with VHS.
> With downloads, you'll get better than DVD picture quality, and
> something that's much more convenient than having to go to shops and
> buy discs and then store them all at home.
>
>> Fibre won't do it in my life-time, same way as I'll still buy a CD,
>> since I'll never download anything from iTunes in my life, spend
>> money and have nothing to show for it? What if my hard disc fails???
>
> In the case of iTunes, if your hard disk fails, you load up iTunes, go
> Store -> Check for Puchases... and then it looks at what you've bought
> and what you have on your disk, and re-downloads anything that's
> missing.
>
>> Also, why am I paying almost as much for something less than half the
>> quality?
>
> Two reasons: Apple don't have any competition, and most people aren't
> bothered.
>> No if you want streamed media with all the MPEG blockyness, that's
>> up to you, I'll stick to my blu-ray discs that I can watch whenever
>> I want without having to pay again.
>
> H.264 at a decent bitrate is more than sufficient to deliver a decent
> picture. I guess it comes down to how often you watch films...


Mainstream (the ones on the shelves at PCWorld for under �499) PCs and
laptops are not up to handling h.264 yet.... I come across machines less
then three years old that arent able capable of running DVDs without jumping
more times then an olympic gymnast.

Gaz

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