The percentage of sales people that recommend Samsung HDTVs.
Salespeople are also becoming less likely to recommend LCD sets over plasma sets, which goes against the industry trend.
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I think those claiming 8.8Gb for 1080p24 "would look like crap" are almost certainly wrong, I've seen some extraordinary results for files much smaller than that.
But that said, there are two major dings against this service, leaving aside the high cost of BD media (though one wonders if a tiny bit more compression could be used to allow users to create BD9s instead?)
1. It appears that the audio sucks. Stereo? Seriously? What is it with download services and stereo? Two hours of full rate DTS takes up 1Gb, and 99% of the population LIKES full rate DTS, even if some claim that they cannot abide anything less than lossless 9.1. 1Gb. Seriously. You're sending at least four anyway, even if you're Apple and doing 720p, what's 1Gb between friends?
2. It's 1080i60 not 1080p24. W. T. F. Why? 1080i60 is less efficient than 1080p24, and because it's not an efficient encoding of a 24fps source, it's inherently going to introduce more artifacts. I found it bizarre that DVD never standardized upon 24p as an available framerate, but at least back then it was assumed that the DVD content would be send, decoded, almost raw to CRT TVs and need to match the CRT's expectations), but 1080i60? Geez.
Every time I hear someone's come up with a download system, they manage to introduce at least one unnecessary gotcha, on top of the issues with the lack of standardization resulting from the death of HD DVD, that was supposed to standardize all of this and make everything "just work":
1. Netflix is stereo, and doesn't allow you to buffer something allowing you to watch it in high quality regardless of Internet connection rate.
2. BB is rental only, and appears to be stereo only too.
3. AppleTV is expensive, and rental only
4. Amazon is streaming only, and STB support seems to be limited to TiVo.
5. Vudu is expensive and only allows rentals or "purchases" that end up with everything tied to the security of a single hard disk.
What's needed is for the industry to take a step back, look at what's already available for them to use, and standardize on it. HD DVD without the HD disc drive would be a start, that's a complete framework for online downloads, streaming, burning, and everything else right there.
Meh. Current online HD services suck. The only hard media format providing HD that's left sucks. It's a bad time to like HD.