New satellite service claims to provide 1080P movies with 7.1 DTS-HD Master audio

[HDTV1080P]

This new satellite service claims to provide 1080P movies with 7.1 DTS-HD Master audio sound. The big question is if the video bit rate will match BLU-RAY's quality.
http://www.xstreamhd.com/index.php?dest=support#q12

Under how it works area of the website it claims the following:

"Delivers perfect copies of the studio masters"

Now DTS-HD Master Audio is identical to the studio master but even on BLU-RAY the video is lossy and is not identical to the studio master. I really doubt the satellite service called X-StreamHD will be able to offer studio master lossless video quality.

http://www.xstreamhd.com/index.php?dest=explore

[liquidice]

their website loads kind of slow. Always makes me cautious of any company who's website loads slow. Can't explain it, just feels cheap to me to actually have to look at the load bar to see what is going on. If the website isn't up immediately, then forget about it. Talk about OCD I guess...

[dobyblue]

They would need to have 100 times more bandwidth than current satellite signals have...and where would they be getting these studio masters from anyway?

[neos_peace]

Well I didn't have a problem it loaded very fast and clean for me. I don't know. Personally I don't care about it. Like 99% of us here I still prefer to have the disc in hand. I think this was though of for HD-DVD. Manily I say this becasue the lady on the video that explain exactly what it is NEVER mentioned Blu-ray. If I can recall correctly she says no more TV, DVD, or even HD-DVD. Blu-ray was never mentioned. So....... yea I will admit the price per month is nice though. at $10.00 a month thats realy not bad at all if they TRULLY can provided what they say they can provide.

[groove93]

Originally Posted by dobyblue

They would need to have 100 times more bandwidth than current satellite signals have...and where would they be getting these studio masters from anyway?

I believe this is one of the reasons why the company delayed the release of their new products. Contract issues with regards to acquiring the masters from studios which resulted in cancelled presentations at CES in 2009 I believe. I've read somewhere that the subscription would be about 10 dollars a month which is a steal for what they are providing. The upfront costs for the devices are steep but if they are going to provide content on a level of Blu Ray quality including HD Audio, then for some it may be a worthwhile investment.

[davcole]

Any streaming service that can offer lossless audio is one i'd be interested in.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by dobyblue

They would need to have 100 times more bandwidth than current satellite signals have...

maybe I read it differently but I don't think so, the way I read it, it should not be much more and possibly could be less, let me explain.

There is little on "TV" regular sat, so my guess in the end TV will be TV, we also know that "TV" will be limited with what is distributed so there won't be any real DTS master 7.1, it might be packaged that way but it will still be lossy 5.1 or stereo depending on what comes from content distributor "broadcast"

so we are really talking about just movies


Now they are constantly talking of " Pre-Fetched Entertainment" (and I have not seen them talk about anything else) so I see this as glorified PPV on steroids. Let me explain.

When PPV started, you had your cable/sat box and that same movie played several times a day for a few days and if you wanted to see it you paid for that viewing and watched it when it played.

Then PVR boxes and sat/cable with PVR boxes came out and if the PPV played at 6:00 you could PVR it and watch it when you wanted like at 7:00 instead of being limited to the exact time it played, you could also pause and stuff (and then some started adding limits because you paid for a single rental and not a purchase you can do with as you please).

I see this as taking this concept a step further. Assume everyone will PVR the PPV and that everyone wants to watch it. So instead of a normal broadcast where you watch it it is "broadcasted" to everyone and "recorded" on every PVR (silently in the background) before it is supposed to come out (i.e. pre-fetched), then through the internet connection it shows up on your PVR where you can pay and watch it or pay and buy it. So let's say that a normal PPV movie is shown 6x in a day, now those 6 time slices and their BWcan be used for that one DL, so even though the BW needed on the Satellite’s end is the same , on playback you have 6x the BW since what took 12h to DL will now play back in 2h (these are just examples). It is also the reason that the basic model starts off with 1TB (to fit a few films since you don’t have a choice)

I think it is a smart way to make it work. But this is my issues (if that is the way it works). Let's assume you don't buy (so your HDD does not fill up with permanent content), 1TB for BD quality movies will be 20-30 movies depending on length and quality of the content. If we assume 2 movies a day are PFE, then that is 14 movies a week and 28 movies in two weeks. So if you go with the min HDD and there is not a lot of new content (I think 10/20 movies a week is a min since you tend to have that many movies that come out on BD or DVD plus they will need to have some catalogue because not everyone is interested in the latest movie all the time) then movies will be kept (with a 1TB drive) for a around two weeks. So if you go on vacation, a long business trip, just had a busy week or two you can miss out on a movie you wanted to see because it got over written by the newest one being DLed. And even if you go with the largest config 4TB then if you are a buyer you could easily fill it up fast (which is my main issue with any DL service). And What about glitches like some of the movie is recorded to a bad sector on HDD, there is a power/sat reception glitch so you are missing a few bytes of data, the movie DL happened completely or partially before you got the box home and installed it)


I think the tech side is interesting but I think the real issues would be more on the business side, like you said will the studios go for it (it better have sick DRM on it, since every movie will be on everyone’s HDD before they buy/rent it), it is a start-up in a very well defined field so it will be hard to get people to switch to it, Sat is a highly regulated field, the technical inconvenience mentioned above to the end user (i.e. if he continues buying/renting BDs for the movies he missed what does it add), is PPV that interesting (let's face it, PPV is a small share of the "rental market" and not growing), will this be that much different to get people to jump on it?....




PS why is this in the Blu-ray Technology and News section? shouldn't it be in the general section? it is not BD related.

[blu2]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

(let's face it, PPV is a small share of the "rental market" and not growing)

Actually it appears to be growing, in part due to broader day-and-date title availability:

http://www.degonline.org/pressreleas...FINAL_Q409.pdf

An increase in digital homes and the broader availability of day-and-date video-on-demand (VOD) stimulated the growth of digital distribution in 2009, with consumer spending on electronic sell-through (EST) and VOD up a combined 32 percent to $2.1 billion. Further, VOD growth accelerated 63 percent in the fourth quarter versus 20 percent in each of the previous three quarters.

[...]

The top three VOD titles in 2009 were “Twilight,” “Gran Torino” (Warner Home Video) and “He’s Just Not That Into You” (Warner Home Video), all of which were available day-and-date with DVD and Blu-ray Disc.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by blu2

Actually it appears to be growing, in part due to broader day-and-date title availability:

http://www.degonline.org/pressreleas...FINAL_Q409.pdf

you consider that growing?up 32% and then you need to also consider that it includes a few new DL services and BD digital copies?

[blu2]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

you consider that growing?up 32% and then you need to also consider that it includes a few new DL services and BD digital copies?

The DEG press release breaks out VOD and says "VOD growth accelerated 63 percent" in the last quarter on top of earlier quarter by quarter growth of 20%. So yes, that sounds like growth to me. They specifically call out policy of some studios to go with day-and-date VOD releases as a factor increasing the growth.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by blu2

The DEG press release breaks out VOD and says "VOD growth accelerated 63 percent" in the last quarter on top of earlier quarter by quarter growth of 20%. So yes, that sounds like growth to me. They specifically call out policy of some studios to go with day-and-date VOD releases as a factor increasing the growth.

1) 63% is barely growing you need to be at around 100% to be real growth
2)why is 1 quarter important? the year was 32%, it could be fluke that one quarter increased "a lot" 63% instead of 20% like the rest. For example if someone was stuck at home because of bad weather maybe they decided to use PPV instead of going out to the rental place, it would not necessarily mean that he would prefer it to normal renting and be a PPV convert.

3) if you read all the paragraphs in the VOD section you will realize VOD is not just PPV which I used. and if you want an example of something that could have added to POV in Q4 while not making any difference to PPV (which was what I said), in Q4 2009 Netflix added their "on-demand" (i.e. digital DL) to the PS3. http://www.rentedspaces.com/2009/10/...lix-on-demand/

4) growth is not evaluated in one year, growth needs to be looked at over time that is when you can look at the rate of growth which is the slope of the line of sales. and not just the change in sales. If you have 10% of the market (easy example to start with) and you have 10% growth every year to market share (which is not what we are talking about here) it is 10% then 11%, 12.1% and reaches 13.31% 4 years later if it is 20% growth then 10 ,12 ,14.4 ,17.28 market share 4 years later , 30% gives 10, 13, 16.9, 21.97, and 60% gives 10, 16, 25.6, 40.96 and 100% 10, 20, 40, 80.

The question is not as much is it "growing", but maybe if I explain why it is important to the discussion you will understand what I meant by not growing. I hope no one understood it as PPV is going away, that is not what I meant, LD was not growing but it was around for a long time after that, DVD peeked at some time….

The issue is PPV is nothing new, and this is a new BDU with 0 market share. And it's big claim to fame is the new PPV service, do we agree on that? This is the issue, if someone is using PPV, then chances are they are happy with it (or they would just rent DVDs/BDs or DDL since they have options) so it could be difficult to convince them to change and it will be extremely hard to get some of that market. The people happy with DVD/BD rental or DDL won't change either, they are happy with it. Now it is impossible to know how many are not using or not using much PPV but that are not fully happy with the alternative either. This is the real market for these guys and “easily” attainable for the first few years. Even though this is unknown, a good way to guess is how fast PPV is growing since it is not something new. If it is fast then a % of that be it 90% because we are insanely optimistic and assume this PPV is so much better so people will pick this one or 10% because most will pick what they know and maybe this won’t be in as many distribution channels, could be interesting (i.e. if there is 100% growth then even 10% will make 10% of the market today available to them, if there is 10% growth (and remember this is PPV and not VOD) then even a crazy 50% of new users brings it down to 5% of the current market. That is why growth is important and insignificant growth becomes even more insignificant to how fast they can grow.