@Con Seannery: Haha, HD-DVDs are like $2.99 - $7.99 each at my local Fry's.

[x7productions]

@Nintenboy01: Freaking COD4 says like 1080i/p on the back of the box, then everytime i play it, it only goes at 720p, even though i have a 1080p tv, and the boxes are checked in the display... ah, stupid native 720p :(

[x7productions]

But I'll wager it can't compare to HD-DVD on quality for the price...

Con Seannery

@lilaliendog: Poor quality sources. At least it still looks better than cable in HD.

Rususeruru

@wazups2x: Some also render at odd resolutions like 960 x 1080 (Transformers, for example) then scaled horizontally.

Nintenboy01

@Erwos: Very very few are native 1080p. Mostly just downloadable games and a handful of retail releases.
With the next generation I expect all games to render at 1080p.

Nintenboy01

@TheMurderer: I have Dish Network, and I love it! :D I don't know how to get the good premium 1080p content though. Anybody know how?

VoidingWarranties

@TheMurderer: Whatever you do, DON'T get on board with Charter Cable, if that's who the provider in your area is. Terrible quality HD, terrible quality everything for that matter, and grossly overpriced.

MURPHtheSURF5

The Playstation 3 games are Native 720p also

wazups2x

@yashichi8bit: so explain why their normal 1080p content sucks ass and explain why they simply can't multicast in 480p/1080p on every single channel they have?

lilaliendog

@oxweeblexo: Some games are like that. Others are native 1080p.

Erwos

I've got Dish HD content and it generally looks pretty great. No complaints here!@TheMurderer:

davidfbecker

the 360 games are based on 720p and then upconverted. dont hold me against this but its what i heard. and no im not hating i own one as well

oxweeblexo

@lilaliendog: Uh, this is satellite...not a network.

Bandwidth is broadcasted, just like a radio station. Everyone on earth could be "tuned in" and the signal would not be degraded.

yashichi8bit

I just got an HDTV a few months ago, and currently all I've got that can put out an HD signal is a 360 and an upconverting DVD player. Maybe Dish Network would be a good investment...

TheMurderer

So was this one person watching this one video at this one time? What happens when more people subscribe to the same video at roughly the same time in different areas across the US?

lilaliendog

@[x7productions]: You think you have it bad, in my country we're lucky to even get 384Kbps.

Nintenboy01

@TheMurderer: If you do, get the HD-DVR, it's great! Soon you'll be able to program your DVR from internet just like TIVO.

os_2

@VoidingWarranties: You need to have a Dish VIP622 or 722 HD-DVR. The box basically records the VOD shows over the satellite bitstream in the early morning hours and it's ready to go to buy whenever you want. They have a couple different movies usually and they're all on channel 501.

drdroo

I only have a 768kbps (bit) line at home... this would take years to download. i need to upgrade. lol.

[x7productions]

You know, not too long ago people were saying they couldn't tell the difference between standard def and 720p, and that there was no discernible difference between 1080p and 720p....

EnricoPlautus

Bullshit. There is alot more to Blu-ray then looking good. PCM audio, the durability, does Dish give me those?

illegalprelude

this type of stuff is taking forever since every provider uses different codecs and compression to meet their bandwith, they are just now getting used to dealing with the crazy filesizes of true high def content.

it costs money to telecine stuff into true hd, and i dont see tv providers ready to fork the cash.

ford4life

I'm kinda surprised that the major difference that could be told were during slow, steady scenes. I actually made the mistake of watching Speed Racer... well, both in general and on HD OnDemand through a cable company, and the most noticable compression artifacts came up when there was a ton of motion (which meant that Speed Racer was unwatchable for more than one reason).

I know that's apples to barracudas, but, still color me skeptical.

Evil J

One thing I can say for sure is that Dish HD destoys Comcast HD. It's really unbelievable how Comcast can get away with such poor quality and call it HD.

FishyJoe

Also, you don't need to pay each time you watch a BRD.

That said, it's cool to see the sat providers getting back to the quality game.

In the early days DirecTV touted "laser-disc quality" video. Then they added the locals and started touting "digital-quality" video. The location of that hyphen is important: their video certainly has a digital nature to it. Love that mosquito noise and macro-blocks.

But, nothing can change the fact that satellite is very bandwidth limited compared to a provider like Verizon FiOS or even regular copper cable. The entire nation shares a handful of DBS sats, whereas the terrestrial providers can dedicate tons of bandwidth on a per market basis with local head-ends and are not burdened with pushing bits into every market for services that market cannot use (IE: up-linking every local affiliate).

Where I am we get first generation HD, not re-compressed stuff, via cable. The provider merely re-muxes and puts it on the wire. That cannot be said for Dish or DirecTV, and that is why only their in-house premium stuff looks good. The rest is, at best, a second generation signal.

commentotron

@Quatre707:
Time Warner popped up in my area to replace Comcast, but still using their network. Everything about it sucks. I don't know if the grass is greener (or going to get better due to the digital switch) or what, but either way, I can't understand people blowing all their money on top-of-the-line 1080p sets when there are very very few quality sources for content... yet.

I guess my point is that it's pretty cyclical in that we're not going to see companies really working on delivering true HD until more people demand it, and people like me are willing to settle for 720p because there are more reliable sources for it than there is for 1080p and it costs less.

Evil J

@FishyJoe: The Comcast network will get a significant boost in available bandwidth once the digital transition date arrives, because Comcast will no longer have to deliver analog channels. The change will keep Comcast services competetive longer, but the truth still holds that satellite and fiber in-house are the "better" technologies. Cable, and AT&Ts uverse (fiber to node-copper to home) are more limited technologies.

Quatre707

@robinandtami: I hate it when I don't end my html commands properly, and I hate it more when Gawker won't let me go back and fix it.

robinandtami

@EnricoPlautus: I've always been able to see a difference between SD & 720P. It is however true that there is no discernable difference between 720P & 1080P on smaller screens.

robinandtami

@FishyJoe:

Where I am Comcast HD looks outstanding. I think it depends on the network and the market.

The locals are indistinguishable from broadcast, and the cable offerings are quite high bit rate. I've seen Discovery HD go well over 20mbps. Palladia looks stunning. I'm watching on a 65" Panny 1080p plasma, it is very unforgiving.

commentotron

I have found the uncompressed audio on blu-ray to be a huge step up from DD 5.1.

While I understand that a lot of folks don't have even mid-level audio equipment in their home theater setup, for those that do, the quality improvements in the audio area going to True-HD, DTS-MA or uncompressed PCM are impressive.

And, as others have pointed out, you pay a bit more to buy the BD but at least you have a tangible copy of the movie you own, can lend out, watch anywhere you have a BD player and eventually sell or trade.

When you start walking down the DRM road with these high def downloads you are giving up all of that for a bit of cost savings and some convenience.

canyoncarver

Good post, My only concern is providers being able to carry the bandwidth. I guess if it's only a handful of new releases it won't be too big of a deal, good to know that it's pretty good quality. Adam [www.hdupdate.com]

alohrey

I'll take the lossless audio of blu-ray please and thank you. I didn't invest thousands in stereo equipment to listen to compressed lossy audio.

robinandtami

@lilaliendog:

They can't multicast everything because they are bandwidth limited...just like regular FM radio can only have a few hundred channels on it.

RedwoodFlyer

@robinandtami:
That's true to an extent but if you put a 1080p screen and a 720p screen of the same size side by side people can generally pick out the 1080p. But I'm sure that has to do with a lot more than just the amount of pixels.

DreDog

Yeah, that's great and all, but my Blu Ray stb won't go fuzzy when it rains or snows.

Kiamat

Yeah, what happens when they have hundreds of channel in HD?

Usama

I stream HD rips from my computer to my xbox360. But i have also recompressed them down from 4-8Gbs to as little as 2.5 gbs and i'll tell you. The average person watching it always comments about how good it looks. I now keep each movie at about 3.5 to 4gbs but my point is most people i think are pretty happy as long as it doesn't start looking all pixelly like my crappy comcast "HD" olympic coverage was.

diamonddnice

pics or it didn't happem

Four20

@diamonddnice:

what file type do you convert them to? i used connect360 since i use a mac and its sketchy sometimes.

zachyzissou

Dish/DirecTV Doesn't have any reception where I live We Tried it but we ended up with a very Pixly (if that is a word) Picture and a Reacquiring Signal Screen every 10 minutes. and yes it was set up right, so don't say was it pointing toward the South Western Sky did it have a clear view of the sky did it... YES to all.

I want to Know what the Bitrate of the Broadcast was, and What TV the Tester was using because BluRay looks way Better than ANY other HD signal Ive ever seen, and I worked at Best Buy Selling TV's BluRay and HD-DVD.

Assassin_Kensei

@Con Seannery: @[x7productions]: ROFL, True I have seen them in the clearance Isle at Target for dirt cheap.

Assassin_Kensei

@wazups2x: Ummm... No well kind of Some PS3 games are native 720p but the newer ones are not. Metal Gear Solid 4 is 1080p native and so is *cough*LAIR*cough* yes Lair was bad but it was 1080p native, LittleBigPlanet supposedly is but we will see once released.

So keep you mouth shut bout shit you don't know your new name should be FagBalls.

I am not saying PS3 is better than 360 I have both and Love them equally but I hate people who try to talk about things they don't know especially when they are wrong.

Assassin_Kensei

@Evil J:
It's true that artifacting is more likely to happen during rapidly-changing shots, but slow and steady stuff makes it more obvious when the image quality is crap in general.

Purple Dave

@yashichi8bit:
It's also "VOD", which stands for Video On Demand. That means that if I'm dumb enough to watch Speed Racer, I could decide to watch it at 8pm exactly. You, on the other hand, feeling rather masochistic, might decide to watch Speed Racer at 8:05pm. Since I'm already watching it, and you weren't watching it when I started, VOD requires that they start up a new feed _just_for_you_. If every subscriber feels like joining in on some mutual mental self-flagellation, but everyone starts up at slightly different times, it could very easily overload their bandwidth capacity.

Purple Dave

VOD through satellite simply doesn't have the bandwidth to look as good as Blu except for select titles. It has a finite amount of bandwidth to stream multiple titles to each receiver. The more bits per title, the less titles they can stream and the less titles they can store on the receiver. I expect a handful of titles might get the premium treatment and the rest will be pretty lousy. Even for premium it's probably still a lower bitrate and missing the advanced audio and other features found on the physical disk.

Still, for a rental its probably more than acceptable.

DrXym

@DreDog: Usually a 1080P set will have other features that will improve picture quality. They may notice a better picture quality, but it is highly unlikely that they are seeing a true difference in actual picture resolution.

robinandtami

@wazups2x: Not true. There are quite a few native 1080p PS3 games. Please don't spread lies, or don't comment about something if you don't know facts.

avconsumer2

@FishyJoe:
I totally agree. I switch from Comcast already 3 month ago to DishNetwork and i am no going back! Its much better channels selections, better DVR's without limitation like its has on Comcast. and very friendly customer support.

bigusiak

@[x7productions]:
Dish Network is not goes over land - its satellite!
Its goes over air to your receiver. Its has nothing to do with internet.

bigusiak

@Purple Dave:
That why you have there a bottom "record". You pay for it and you do record and store forever! (because on Dish Network you can hookup with your own external HDD)

bigusiak

@Purple Dave: Dish VOD is actually pre-loaded onto the receiver (downloaded overnight). You can then chose to watch from a list of VOD items already loaded onto your receiver.

pitpawten

Dish kinda sucks, I tried to get it but they said there were too many trees blocking the way in my back yard so the reception wouldn't be good enough. I'm 100% serious =\

Jitty

@[x7productions]: its a freaking trick sony and its gay ass publishers are doing to scam you into thinking that it supports true 1080p, even tho it says 480p, 720p, 1080p/i, it just means that if your monitor can support that resolution the game will be able to be played "while your console is displaying at that resolution".

its like if you have a 1080 resolution monitor but are gona play some 480 video its still gona play on your 1080 monitor.

but newer games like soulcalibur only display the highest resolution the game will display

naosednax

@Assassin_Kensei: um mgs4 is not 1080 its just 720 i know because my monitor gives me the current resolution and what its doing to it, ie: 1:1, zoom, scale, and give me the current resolution.

most games on ps3 and 360 are 720 or less and by most i mean every game that is not a sports game.

naosednax