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Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

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    #16
    Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

    Originally posted by RonV View Post
    Does DirectTV or Comcast disclose there bitrates or quality? They are trade secrets just as VUDU's/
    If you go to Biztalk.com you can find technoids that know (or claim to know) bitrates and resolutions transmitted by Directv on a channel by channel basis, which satelitte is transmitting it, and which encoding method is used. How they know this is beyond me.

    Don't have Comcast, so don't anything about them.

    Comment

      #17
      Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

      Originally posted by RobertHodge View Post
      The problem is that I don't understand it well enough to know what I really want. I only have my audio codec ripping experience to fall back on.

      Thanks for replying though. I really do apprecate it.

      Regards
      Well, you should be able to find out information on H.264 here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264

      That should be titled "Everything you ever wanted to know about H.264 but were afraid to ask."

      And knowing the file size and the download rate, you can calculate all sorts of things!


      FYI: I saw lots of compression artifacts while watching the SuperBowl in HD on Fox last night...

      Comment

        #18
        Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

        Originally posted by RonV View Post
        Does DirectTV or Comcast disclose there bitrates or quality? They are trade secrets just as VUDU's/
        I don't really need to know all the nitty-gritty details, just enough to respond to those people who ask how can Vudu deliver good 1080p HD quality at 4 megs/second bit rate. People know/hear that Blu-Ray/HD-DVD offer 25-50 megs/second and with much the same codecs, so many tend to assume that Vudu is much inferior.

        It's hard to argue with these know-it-alls without good ammunition, so it'd be helpful if someone from Vudu (VolkerS ?) stepped-in and gave us a brief overview of why/how Vudu maintain good quality. It'd then go into FAQ/be stickied.

        P.S. To NA9D, I know about H.264 but people know that it's one of the high-def media codecs. So then people begin to question how Vudu can do 1080p with bitrates 5-10 less than BR/HD-DVD. I don't want to refer them to Wikipedia, I would like to have a good summary specifically for Vudu that we could refer people to.

        P.P.S. This is one example of what I've come across and would like to know how to refute:
        I download TV shows in HD from Xbox Live all the time. They are far better in HD than they are in SD.
        Could it possibly be that Vudu's encoding techniques and bitrates stink, since they're trying to do HD streaming over 4Mb/s?
        Xbox Live HD video content is around 6-10Mb/s, IIRC.
        Last edited by Rusdude; 02-04-2008, 04:03 PM. Reason: Added P.S. & P.P.S.

        Comment

          #19
          Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

          Well, look at it this way:

          1080p/24 = 1920 x 1080 pixels x 24 frames per second.

          If each pixel is a bit, we have 2,073,600 pixels per 1080p frame. So this is 2.0736 Mb per frame.

          This equates then to a raw bit rate of 49.7664 Mb/sec raw bit rate for the image.

          I think you can figure the compression ratio from there pretty easily!

          Now, look at iTunes. It's a 720p/60 format:

          720p/60 = 1280 x 720 x 60

          This equates to 55.296 Mb/sec raw data rate.

          So Vudu compresses less than iTunes. That we know...

          Comment

            #20
            Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

            Originally posted by Rusdude View Post
            P.S. To NA9D, I know about H.264 but people know that it's one of the high-def media codecs. So then people begin to question how Vudu can do 1080p with bitrates 5-10 less than BR/HD-DVD. I don't want to refer them to Wikipedia, I would like to have a good summary specifically for Vudu that we could refer people to.

            P.P.S. This is one example of what I've come across and would like to know how to refute:
            Because HD is defined by resolution (ie: NUMBER OF PIXELS) and not by bitrates...

            Comment

              #21
              Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

              Originally posted by Rusdude View Post
              I don't really need to know all the nitty-gritty details, just enough to respond to those people who ask how can Vudu deliver good 1080p HD quality at 4 megs/second bit rate. People know/hear that Blu-Ray/HD-DVD offer 25-50 megs/second and with much the same codecs, so many tend to assume that Vudu is much inferior.

              It's hard to argue with these know-it-alls without good ammunition, so it'd be helpful if someone from Vudu (VolkerS ?) stepped-in and gave us a brief overview of why/how Vudu maintaining good quality.
              I agree, probably a good benchmark system would be way better and more productive than knowing the actual nuts and bolts of how it's done.

              BTW, Believe me I'm really happy with Vudu, but there's always room for improvement as time and technology allows. I'm no basher, just looking for a spirited discussion.

              Comment

                #22
                Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

                Originally posted by NA9D View Post
                Because HD is defined by resolution (ie: NUMBER OF PIXELS) and not by bitrates...
                But we all know that bitrate makes a lot difference. Good 720p is better than low-bitrate 1080p. Even with DVDs, I believe Superbit line was made specifically to focus on higher bitrate.
                Last edited by Rusdude; 02-04-2008, 04:10 PM. Reason: Edited wording

                Comment

                  #23
                  Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

                  Originally posted by NA9D View Post
                  FYI: I saw lots of compression artifacts while watching the SuperBowl in HD on Fox last night...
                  Thanks for the reply.

                  We had a mini Super Bowl party at our home. It was a really great game, but I think I was too plastered to notice the artifacts. Hic

                  Comment

                    #24
                    Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

                    Originally posted by NA9D View Post
                    1080p/24 = 1920 x 1080 pixels x 24 frames per second.

                    If each pixel is a bit, we have 2,073,600 pixels per 1080p frame. So this is 2.0736 Mb per frame.
                    I would suspect that each pixel is more than a bit. After all a bit will just specify on or off but a pixel has color, intensity, etc.

                    Comment

                      #25
                      Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

                      I must say, I am very happy with vudu, but the HD is not where it should be. I still prefer HD DVD and Blu Ray. The way I see it though is, for movies that I don't want to buy, vudu is a great alternative. If it came down to a higher bit rate download instead with an external hard drive for better quality, I may go to buying movies only on vudu, but at this moment it is just not there yet. This is not to say that vudu is bad or lacking anything, it is just not exactly what I am looking for right now on the purchase front. Rental works great, not big on purchase yet.

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                        #26
                        Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

                        Originally posted by RobertHodge View Post
                        Thanks for the reply.

                        We had a mini Super Bowl party at our home. It was a really great game, but I think I was too plastered to notice the artifacts. Hic
                        At least you were better off than those folks which lost Fox's feed in some local markets until 3rd quarter. My OTA feed (Houston) looked decent, but I have seen a LOT of macroblocking on our local NBC station (at least when I was flipping through channels and watched a few minutes of American Gladiators).

                        Comment

                          #27
                          Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

                          Originally posted by Rusdude View Post
                          At least you were better off than those folks which lost Fox's feed in some local markets until 3rd quarter. My OTA feed (Houston) looked decent, but I have seen a LOT of macroblocking on our local NBC station (at least when I was flipping through channels and watched a few minutes of American Gladiators).
                          I watched Fox on Directv via their HD national feed from L. A. and (fortunately) had no problems.

                          I did hear about outages from some local markets, and feel for them. If you get it, NFL HD channel is replaying the game with commentary this week.

                          Comment

                            #28
                            Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

                            Originally posted by gazzie4 View Post
                            I must say, I am very happy with vudu, but the HD is not where it should be. I still prefer HD DVD and Blu Ray. The way I see it though is, for movies that I don't want to buy, vudu is a great alternative. If it came down to a higher bit rate download instead with an external hard drive for better quality, I may go to buying movies only on vudu, but at this moment it is just not there yet. This is not to say that vudu is bad or lacking anything, it is just not exactly what I am looking for right now on the purchase front. Rental works great, not big on purchase yet.

                            I don't expect VUDU HD quality to equal HD DVD or BD. But you also can't compare the bitrates on a disc with streaming video. They are not the same. You can get the same quality with streaming as the quality on disc at lower bitrates on the streamed video.. It's not 4mbs but it will be less than what is on the disc. The titles I've compared, Bourne Ultimatium and Transformers look very good. The VUDU HD quality is better than broadcast HD. I place it between broadcast and HD DVD/BD.(I currently have over 355 HD DVD titles and over 185 BD titles so I have the content to make comparisons) The quality is there where I will be perfectly happy renting the HD titles from VUDU over waiting for a title at Netflix. Now of course this won't be true of all titles since of course there will be HD DVD/BD titles I want to purchase. But for the majority of movies I don't want to purchase VUDU is my number one choice for watching now. Follwed by Xbox Live, then Netflix and then FIOS VOD.

                            And back to the Gizmodo review. There has to be something wrong with his setup. The difference between the SD DVD and the VUDU HD of Transformers is glaringly obvious.
                            Either he is partially blind or his components were not setup correctly.

                            Comment

                              #29
                              Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

                              I just rented the VUDU Sd and HD version. I have no idea what the person at Gizmodo watched. IN the opening scene when they are in the OSPREY(good closeups and also the desert backdrop) and right before when showing the desert as the backdrop, it is very, obvious which is the SD version and which is the HD version. The HD version has much more detail than the SD version. You cannot mistake the two. It's not possible. Now the HD DVD has even more detail, but as I said earlier the VUDU movies are going to be below the HD DVD/BD versions and that is expected.
                              I'll watch some more later tonight but I still don't know how anyone can say the HD version is close to the Sd version. The detail is not there in the SD version which is always the case with any SD DVD or SD content I've seen. The extra detail in the VUDU HD version is there to see.

                              Comment

                                #30
                                Re: Gizmodo's Take on Vudu's HD Quality

                                Well, may be he set up his box to 480p output? Then the difference might be less visible?

                                Comment

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