I just don't understand some people here..

So first, everybody gets foam on their mouth as soon as you mention streaming and all that stuff..and now a player is immediately dismissed when it doesn't have it?

$199 is a solid price for a full BD-Live 2.0 player from reputable brand.

Instead of spitting on this player people should maybe first review and see what the quality is like and how it works. It's quite possible that it's going to be the cheapest higher quality brand name BD-Live player on the market and the quality of video/audio might just surprise us.

Actually White Collar show was pretty entertaining.. I liked it

15-20mbps 1080p video looks the same as 30+mbps video. You don't need absurd bitrate to get the same quality.

15mbps and above internet speed is needed for quality that would match Blu-ray, but only if you are picky and it really bugs you that you are not watching higher bitrate movie. 90% of people don't care about that and it's not like HD on Netflix or Xbox 360 HD looks bad to majority of people. This is just a natural progression to bring in 1080p streaming. If this happened in a year, you can imagine where it will be by the end of next year.

There's a reason why quite a few people that are relevant to industry say that in 2 years it will be come a primary distribution method.

Considering the percentage of people who actually have Blu-ray is still super small I don't see a reason why Microsoft would need to introduce Blu-ray at this point, especially when you consider how far they've come with streaming quality and digital downloads.

Even Blu-ray manufacturers are integrating HD streaming sources in TVs and players.

The future there is unavoidable. Sure you can still use Blu-ray but mainstream will most likely just jump directly onto streaming because they won't see a difference between DDL/Streaming and Blu-ray and it's so much more convenient that there's no real competition.

It's quite understandable why MS doesn't want Blu-ray.

Excuse me for being doubtful about Apple and "play anywhere" concept. They've never been open with anything they've done. The company is built on proprietary hardware and software.

edge, it would make sense if you could see differences. I'm not saying you shouldn't buy or have high bitrate movies. It's totally up to you, if you are fine paying for things you can't see and that occupies space that's fine. Nothing wrong with that, but I have issues when people start imagining that anything that's not pumped up bitrate looks like crap. Thats' simply not true and it's basically done out of bias.

And I compared to HD DVD cause those are the 2 highest quality versions of the same movie with same codec with different bitrates. It was just a point.

As far as audio, again, in the example of Transformers as well, lossy DD+ still holds excellent against TrueHD track on Blu-ray version. Reviewers only noted that on a specific sound system the audio was just a tad louder with TrueHD. So this tells you that even with TrueHD and DTS-MA or LPCM the audio difference is negliable and it's mostly hype. Sure the bitrate is much higher but in real life on excellent system with blind tests even people who are audiophiles couldn't distuingish DTS 1.5 and DD+ vs DTS-MA or TrueHD.

It all comes down to source and in the case of audio it's the mix and in the case of video it's the original transfer. Bitrate is absolutely less relevant. Sure, you can't expect to have

That just looks like that to you .. Considering that Blockbuster, not to mention Hollywood video had like 100 titles when they started obviously that might skew your view. They are offering slightly better selection of Blu-ray's but it's still pathetic when they are missing a ton of TVs shows, movies and so on. Sometimes movies that come out on DVD don't show up on Blu-ray at blockbuster or hollywood video and the movie is in fact available on Blu-ray as well.

Go figure.

Vudu HDX is certainly not average quality service. On TVs up to 50" it matches Blu-ray quality and watching it on 100"+ it's just slightly softer (many people won't even notice - I do because I'm picky) but still retains superb details in 1080p with no artifacts.

The quality of streaming services have been improving every few months and I bet by next year it will match Blu-ray on several platforms.

People need to understand that a 1080p video and a lower bitrate can look identical as 40mbps video. I know, A SHOCKER.

And here's the proof:

Xylon is recognized enthusiast especially on AVS Forums who takes screenshots and have been doing comparisons with DVD/HD DVD/Blu-ray for some time now.

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/blu-ray-software-general-discussion/65214-transformers-comparison-pix.html

Transformers HD DVD version was 50% lower bitrate and the quality is IDENTICAL to Blu-ray version.

Transfomers HD DVD File size: 25 GB Total Bitrate (includes audio): 25.03 mbps - Video bitrate alone: 20.54mbps

Transformers BD - File size: 41.40 GB Total Bitrate (includes audio): 41.34 Mbps - Video bitrate alone: 31.43mbps

Both movies are encoded with AVC (h.264)

Reviews from High Def Digest and other renowned sites have given them identical marks in PQ as well.

Considering that HDX peaks at 20mbps, it's not hard to see how the quality might be virtually identical on TVs around 50" and below.

Anyone who claims otherwise is deluding themselves as you won't see the difference guaranteed. The fact that you want to see some difference just tells about the state of one's mind. But I guess people can believe whatever they want and if you MUST know that you have bitrate through the roof that's fine, but don't go dissing things out of bias.

And I will challenge people to recognize on "blind" PQ tests on footage with various bitrates just to prove a point that you can't see the difference.

I say this because I have movies from my Blu-ray discs encoded at around 20mbps and they look identical to originals after many tests with different personal encode settings.

GO HD DVD!! The return of the King ha ha ;)

I need faster BD-ROMs so I can rip BD movies faster for my NAS. So any improvement in reading speed is welcome since there's no point for recording and it's too expensive for what you get.

At least we are seeing some admission of digital downloads into our homes. What happened to all those research studies that said Blu-ray will indeed be the new mainstream format.

As aaron pointed out, Blu-ray has been definitely the worst format to exist. It was half baked and it took a while, still has some work left to actaully be a truly nice working format.

I personally don't mind 1080p HDX movies or 1080p instant HD coming from Microsoft. Broadband speeds are increasing at super fast pace. I just got 60mbps DOCSIS 3.0 connection with Cox in AZ and it's like $80.. Cheaper alternatives at $50-$70 are 15-20mbps that are still enough to give you excellent HD downloads/streaming.

Somewhere along the bickering about bit-rates where nobody even mentioned this until Sony and BDA started flaunting it around as some measurement of quality (when in fact you can have HORRIBLE transfers at high bitrates as well) people seem to have forgotten that what counts first is the EXPERIENCE and the content, not whether or not I can see hairs inside the nose of an actor.

Considering that Walmart is drastically lowering the DVD and Blu-ray shelf space, and rentals are becoming more dominant among consumers instead of owning it's not hard to see how this would mean even faster rise of downloads and streaming.

@minimalist

I think that we need to get rid of optical media completely. It's not us vs them at all, it's just that optical discs are pollutant, expensive and ineffective and especially unable to grow as fast as any other technology including digital downloads.. So if it means that I'll have to watch 1080p footage at a slightly lower bitrate that still looks terrific and DD+ sound instead of 50mbps 1080p video and uncompressed audio that only like few percent of people can even experience but limit the technological advancements on account of profits, I'm all for it. Especially if we know we are saving the earth as well.