So where's my online HD download service?

[Steve]

Now that HD-DVD has 'lost', I've decided Blue-ray should lose too.

I want an online HD download service for films, etc.

I've heard there's a bay somewhere, but apparently there's lots of pirates there and I don't want that.

So where's the Linux-friendly legal online option?

I'm fear this might be a rhetorical post.

[Funkstar]

Originally Posted by Steve

So where's the Linux-friendly legal online option?

It's all in your mind Steve

[Deadlight]

Yeah, BD is dead. Sony are flogging a dead horse, etc. etc.

[Stoo]

Hence why Blu-Ray is pretty much the only option for the next 5 years or so at least.

I'm barely able to get 150KB/sec out of my "Up to 8Meg" "broadband"... ~8-10GB per HD tv ep = 15 hours or so, double or more than that for a film and you're looking at least 2 days downloading and nothing else..

Even Apple tv's "HD" downloads... aren't really - and aren't even an option over here yet anyway.

Ah well, at least it gives most of the people on this site some more time to rabidly bash Sony

[SiM]

Once there is 100mbit everywhere this will be possible... Until then you will be known as the last standing HD-DVD fanboi

[nichomach]

Exactly so; and in a world of FUPs and traffic management, where our standard "broadband" is provided by increasingly wonky ADSL connections with great headline rates and abysmal rates in reality, even if it arrived, you might get to watch a movie a month...

[Stoo]

100Mbit everywhere...

Maybe Steve's Great-Grand-Children will get to enjoy it then

[SiM]

Originally Posted by Stoo

100Mbit everywhere...

Maybe Steve's Great-Grand-Children will get to enjoy it then

Its not that far off, look at Japan/Sweden/Other_countries_with_100mbit...

[Stoo]

...and look how long they've had it, and how far forward we've moved in the meantime

A friend of mine had residential 20+MBit net access 6 years ago in Holland, Japan had 100MBit nigh on 10 years ago (they're onto 1GBit+ connections now)

[Howard]

Not gonna happen. Not yet. Nothing that can get anywhere near the audio/video quality of proper HDDVD/Blu-ray anyway

[SiM]

We have moved quite far! 6 years ago we had 512kbit now we have 24mbit (I get about 13 at home)... I reckon it will take 3-4 years, of course who actually knows how long it will take it depends on so many things... but iirc there was news about fiber infrastructure being put installed in some areas

[Stoo]

Yes, we have 24Mbit - very sporadically in only a few places.

Most of the time nobody gets anywhere close to that unless you're camping outside the exchange, even then you're subjected to fair use up the yin-yang, and oops, you're now on dial-up speeds..

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that here, in the UK, we won't see the vast majority of homes on connections of 100Mbit+ for at least another 10 years, possibly 15.

Without a nationwide roll-out of FTTC or FTTP, the current infrastructure simply can't support anything more than the best we're currently on, even with VDSL2, as the bandwidth will vanish much over 1.6km from the exchange.

[SiM]

Well they are testing in 10,000 homes this year...
Kent, UK to Get 100Mbit Fiber to the Home | Gadget Lab from Wired.com
It may take 10/15 years to get 90% UK coverage, but I think that it will be in London in less than 4

[Stoo]

They've been doing limited FTTP tests for the last 3 or 4 years at 100Mbit, but without major investment by both BT and the Government, the chances of it actually getting done at pretty remote, in fact I believe that BT is on record saying that it won't happen unless it gets government funding

[SiM]

Fair enough... you seem to know a lot more about it than me so you are probably correct...

Well back on topic: Your 2 choices are the infamous bay or blu-ray... or you could buy blu-ray and rip them to hd-dvdr, but thats pointless (and does hd-dvdr even exits?)

[Steve]

Who says 8-10GB for ~1hour of HD content?

You can get reasonably good quality for a lot less, which over-the-wire might be acceptable along as the price reflects this.

As for ISPs... well if a service like the one I suggest starts to grow, people will soon start switching to find the better usage policy.

If this doesn't happen (which I expect it won't) and I still find myself unable to put a Blue-ray disc in my Linux PC and play it, I'll be buying a Blue-ray drive for my Windows box and ripping them, circumventing the copy protection in the process.

If you make me dick around - dear film companies - in order to play back films how I want, don't expect me to adhere to your copy protection rules.