Nick Clark & Tukom,

Agree with your points. Inserting a disc to browse an online library is a pain-in-the-ass.

I'm guessing they decided to use bd-live (thus forcing you to use a blu-ray disc) either because (A) they needed to use bd-live to get around the exclusive console streaming deal that Netflix offered Microsoft or (B) Sony was desperate to justify bd-live with an application people would actually use.

My thinking for (A) is that PS3 won't be streaming via the consoles interface -- but a bd-live interface on the disc which makes it the equivalent of "bonus content". Such that Sony is exploiting a loop hole in the exclusivity deal.

But I have a PS3 to play blu-rays. Failing that, I have DirecTV HD DVR's and PPV.

I ain't gonna be streaming any compressed crap on my US 8mb cable line anyway. Not till they invent Mpeg-5 or something that can get me blu-ray quality at well below blu-ray bandwidth. Or if I lived in Japan with 100mb downloads and Netflix streamed blu-ray there without compression.

Hmm. Pay monthly for an X-Box Live Gold subscription (in addition to the monthly Netflix subscription), or insert a physical disc for no added costs. Point to Sony.

*noN-writing hand.

Max,

Interesting comments. I'll take your word for it that the brain interprets horizontal movement differently than vertical movement, as I have no knowledge one way or the other. But being pretty familiar with vertical movement myself, I've never noticed any difficulty resolving whatever cloud, cliff face or antenna I happened to be plummeting past. At least, any more so than I'd have resolving roadside objects whizzing past the side windows of my car.

There are some pretty common languages written vertically - so I'm not sure that what you say about language is necessarily true. Chinese, for example, is written and read vertically most probably because it was the most practical and comfortable way to write while simultaneously rolling / unrolling the scroll with the now-writing hand. It is becoming more common to see languages like Chinese written horizontally these days, but that's probably due more to the globalization of western influence and computers than the way our peepers work.

Speaking of peepers, it is my understanding that movement is detected most easily in the peripheral. When we actually look at a moving object, it doesn't really move much anymore because our eyes (in their sockets) and heads (on it's remarkably flexible stalk of a neck) tend to track it and keep it centered in our vision. Detail is seen in the center, movement in the peripheral. At least my layman's understanding.

But all of this is pretty Off-Topic. The reason it is cool to watch movies in widescreen is because "widescreen" is how we see the world. If we developed with eyes one above the other instead, we'd prefer "tallscreen". I don't think movement has anything to do with it at all.

Even all five of those combined will never make up for the abomination of "PEARL HARBOR".

Why? You don't burn them back to disc, do you? Not very cost effective to do that.

$1900 for the changer? For about that you can build a decent HTPC with a very large array of of 1.5TB (or 2TB for a bit more cash) drives and have a much better UI and instant playback (though admittedly only after investing a good bit of time ripping). Additional benefits to the HTPC option are you can add storage as you need it -- investing in only the space you need now and buying more later when it is inevitably cheaper; and you won't be out of luck when your collection surpasses the capacity of the changer.

In reply to Max;

Nice and arrogant. And wrong. Most films were presented in the "Academy Ratio" of about 4:3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_ratio) all the way through 1953; when 'widescreen' formats like the "Flat Ratio" were introduced by the film industry to combat the threat from that new-fangled television gadget.

Also, our eyes see just as well vertically as they do horizontally. Each eye sees pretty much a circle. Only since (most of us) have two of them placed apart from each other horizontally on our faces, do we see the world in "wide" mode.

How about some Love for Le Tour de France on Versus? It's in HD this year! And Lance will be in Yellow again today!

Still trying to figure out how 100's of channels of HDTV video and audio can make it 22,000 miles out into space and back ... completely without wires ... get gathered in by my 18" dish and then make it -- just fine, thank you -- through a couple hundred feet of cheap coaxial cable to my Satellite tuner box ... where a tiny fraction of the original bandwidth is extracted (just one program) and prepared for the perilous journey all the way to ....

... all three feet, that is ...

... to my TV.

And only the last three feet require a cable that Monster says should cost at LEAST $100??

How the hell did the signal get there to begin with??