Announcement

Collapse

Fandango at Home Forum Guidelines

Fandango at Home Forum Guidelines

The Fandango at Home Forums are designed to help viewers get the most out of their Fandango at Home experience. Here, Fandango at Home customers may post information, questions, ideas, etc. on the subject of Fandango at Home and Fandango at Home -related issues (home theater, entertainment, etc). Although the primary purpose of these forums is to help Fandango at Home customers with questions and/or problems with their Fandango at Home service, there are also off-topic areas available within the Fandango at Home Forums for users to chat with like-minded people, subject to the limitations below.

Please post all comments in English. When posting a comment in the Fandango at Home Forums, please conduct yourself in a respectful and civil manner. While we respect that you may feel strongly about an issue, please leave room for discussion.

Fandango at Home Forum Guidelines

The Fandango at Home Forums are designed to help viewers get the most out of their Fandango at Home experience. Here, Fandango at Home customers may post information, questions, ideas, etc. on the subject of Fandango at Home and Fandango at Home -related issues (home theater, entertainment, etc). Although the primary purpose of these forums is to help Fandango at Home customers with questions and/or problems with their Fandango at Home service, there are also off-topic areas available within the Fandango at Home Forums for users to chat with like-minded people, subject to the limitations below.

Please post all comments in English. When posting a comment in the Fandango at Home Forums, please conduct yourself in a respectful and civil manner. While we respect that you may feel strongly about an issue, please leave room for discussion.

Fandango at Home reserves the right to refrain from posting and/or to remove user comments, including comments that contain any of the following:

1. Obscenities, defamatory language, discriminatory language, or other language not suitable for a public forum
2. Email addresses, phone numbers, links to websites, physical addresses or other forms of contact information
3. "Spam" content, references to other products, advertisements, or other offers
4. Spiteful or inflammatory comments about other users or their comments
5. Comments that may potentially violate the DMCA or any other applicable laws
6. Comments that discuss ways to manipulate Fandango at Home products/services, including, but not limited to, reverse engineering, video extraction, and file conversion.

Additionally, please keep in mind that although Fandango at Home retains the right to monitor, edit, and/or remove posts within Fandango at Home Forums, it does not necessarily review every comment. Accordingly, specific questions about Fandango at Home products and services should be directed to Fandango at Home customer service representatives.

Terms of Use - User Comments, Feedback, Reviews, Submissions

For all reviews, comments, feedback, postcards, suggestions, ideas, and other submissions disclosed, submitted or offered to Fandango at Home, on or through this Site, by e-mail or telephone, or otherwise disclosed, submitted or offered in connection you use of this Site (collectively, the "Comments") you grant Fandango at Home a royalty-free, irrevocable, transferable right and license to use the Comments however Fandango at Home desires, including, without limitation, to copy, modify, delete in its entirety, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from and/or sell and /or distribute such Comments and/or incorporate such Comments into any form, medium or technology throughout the world.
Fandango at Home will be entitled to use, reproduce, disclose, modify, adapt, create derivative works from, publish, display and distribute any Comments you submit for any purpose whatsoever, without restriction and without compensating you in any way. Fandango at Home is and shall be under no obligation (1) to maintain any Comments in confidence; (2) to pay to users any compensation for any Comments; or (3) to respond to any user Comments. You agree that any Comments submitted by you to the Site will not violate the terms in this Terms of Use or any right of any third party, including without limitation, copyright, trademark, privacy or other personal or proprietary right(s), and will not cause injury to any person or entity. You further agree that no Comments submitted by you to this Site will be or contain libelous or otherwise unlawful, threatening, abusive or obscene material, or contain software viruses, political campaigning, commercial solicitation, chain letters, mass mailings or any form of "spam."

You grant Fandango at Home the right to use the name that you submit in connection with any Comments. You agree not to use a false email address, impersonate any person or entity, otherwise mislead as to the origin of any Comments you submit. You are, and shall remain, solely responsible for the content of any Comments you make and you agree to indemnify Fandango at Home for all claims resulting from any Comments you submit. Fandango at Home takes no responsibility and assumes no liability for any Comments submitted by you or any third-party reserves the right to refrain from posting and/or to remove user comments, including comments that contain any of the following:

1. Obscenities, defamatory language, discriminatory language, or other language not suitable for a public forum
2. Email addresses, phone numbers, links to websites, physical addresses or other forms of contact information
3. "Spam" content, references to other products, advertisements, or other offers
4. Spiteful or inflammatory comments about other users or their comments
5. Comments that may potentially violate the DMCA or any other applicable laws
6. Comments that discuss ways to manipulate Fandango at Home products/services, including, but not limited to, reverse engineering, video extraction, and file conversion.

Additionally, please keep in mind that although Fandango at Home retains the right to monitor, edit, and/or remove posts within Fandango at Home Forums, it does not necessarily review every comment. Accordingly, specific questions about Fandango at Home products and services should be directed to Fandango at Home customer service representatives.

Terms of Use - User Comments, Feedback, Reviews, Submissions

For all reviews, comments, feedback, postcards, suggestions, ideas, and other submissions disclosed, submitted or offered to Fandango at Home, on or through this Site, by e-mail or telephone, or otherwise disclosed, submitted or offered in connection you use of this Site (collectively, the "Comments") you grant Fandango at Home a royalty-free, irrevocable, transferable right and license to use the Comments however Fandango at Home desires, including, without limitation, to copy, modify, delete in its entirety, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from and/or sell and /or distribute such Comments and/or incorporate such Comments into any form, medium or technology throughout the world.
Fandango at Home will be entitled to use, reproduce, disclose, modify, adapt, create derivative works from, publish, display and distribute any Comments you submit for any purpose whatsoever, without restriction and without compensating you in any way. Fandango at Home is and shall be under no obligation (1) to maintain any Comments in confidence; (2) to pay to users any compensation for any Comments; or (3) to respond to any user Comments. You agree that any Comments submitted by you to the Site will not violate the terms in this Terms of Use or any right of any third party, including without limitation, copyright, trademark, privacy or other personal or proprietary right(s), and will not cause injury to any person or entity. You further agree that no Comments submitted by you to this Site will be or contain libelous or otherwise unlawful, threatening, abusive or obscene material, or contain software viruses, political campaigning, commercial solicitation, chain letters, mass mailings or any form of "spam."

You grant Fandango at Home the right to use the name that you submit in connection with any Comments. You agree not to use a false email address, impersonate any person or entity, otherwise mislead as to the origin of any Comments you submit. You are, and shall remain, solely responsible for the content of any Comments you make and you agree to indemnify Fandango at Home for all claims resulting from any Comments you submit. Fandango at Home takes no responsibility and assumes no liability for any Comments submitted by you or any third-party.
See more
See less

vudu pricing vs Amazon Unbox

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    #31
    Who is to say what is truly HD?

    Originally posted by rstone View Post
    Well it depends on what your telling people... if your saying its 1080p quality, then thats totally misleading if your degrading the quality. Don't get me wrong, I'll take HD in whatever quality format Vudu is willing to give it, and I am happy they are offering it and hope they offer more. I just think if your going to say its true HD quality, then it should be done without degrading the quality through whatever means is being used.
    The challenge here is that there is no HD authority with quality standards that are enforced on a recording that claims to be HD. At the most simplest of levels, High Definition TeleVision (HDTV) means "a TV that displays 1280x720 pixels or better" (see http://hdguru.com/glossary/), while SDTV (standard definition TV) is 480i, which is approximately the resolution of NTSC and DVDs. When Vudu says something is HD, that means the studio has given them a source that they (the studio) claim is High Definition content. Therefore, when Vudu digitizes and compresses this source they shoot for a file size that can be streamed at 4MB, while SD content is is compressed for playback at 2MB. Now many of these sources are originally recorded on film, which can actually contain images at much higher resolution then the limits of even the best 1080p monitor. Of course, not all films are recorded with the same quality of cameras or equipment, so the actual quality of the sources can vary drastically.

    Where does this get us in regards to whether or not something is HD vs whether or not something looks great? For example, if you spend a $1.99 and watch the pilot for Arrested Development, you will see some really great looking images that are Standard Definition content. I was surprised at how much better they looked compared to my recordings of the same episodes from my cable service. The source material was really good, so the output looks really good, even though it is not considered to be HD content. On the other hand, I won't be a bit surprised if we see some titles in the future that have the HD label, but don't look as good as a great SD recording. This is because the company that produced the content did a poor job producing the content.

    To me the bottom line is I don't care if the label says HD or not, I care if it looks good. With that in mind, go back and watch the Bourne HD content and ask yourself if you find it acceptable. Those movies reflect the quality of HD on the Vudu that has the potential to be streamed to users with a fast enough internet connection. I don't know what the native resolution is of those recordings, I just know they look darn good to me. If you aren't satisified with them, then the Vudu may not be right for you. It sure is right for me.

    Comment


      #32
      Re: vudu pricing vs Amazon Unbox

      Originally posted by rstone View Post
      I would say based on that, your avg HD movie in HD-DVD is alot more than 15gb.
      Here's where I got 15 GB from:

      HD DVD-R and HD DVD-RW have a single-layer capacity of 15 GB, a dual-layer capacity of 30 GB

      See the disc structure section in the link...

      My bad then in getting movie sizes wrong. I was talking about the size of the disc - and I hit it on the head for single layer. However, as has been pointed out, do those file sizes you stated consist of only the main title and English tracks or does it include all the secondary info. I would bet that there is GB (not gb, btw ) of data on those discs that is not the movie itself. In fact, given that some of your discs showed upwards of 27 GB, this would indicate dual layer HD-DVD disks and since the dual layer is at most 30 GB, then the movie files would be a lot smaller since there is likely way more than 3 GB of extra stuff on the disc.


      Can you post file sizes for just the main title and none of the extra content?

      Comment


        #33
        Re: Who is to say what is truly HD?

        Originally posted by Nded View Post
        The challenge here is that there is no HD authority with quality standards that are enforced on a recording that claims to be HD. At the most simplest of levels, High Definition TeleVision (HDTV) means "a TV that displays 1280x720 pixels or better"
        Bingo. I see pixelation on my HD cable and also on broadcast all the time. It's still considered "HD" as it is 1280x720 or higher.

        Comment


          #34
          Re: vudu pricing vs Amazon Unbox

          It seems to me that HD refers to resolution only. Compression is orthogonal and the more compression you use, the more loss and artifacts can occur.

          Comment


            #35
            Re: vudu pricing vs Amazon Unbox

            Originally posted by rstone View Post
            I'm curious how you did that when on their website it clearly says you can only rent Live Free or Die hard for $3.99. Same thing for waitress... says $3.99 for rental... strange...

            http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...RFZRA226TDM4YQ

            http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...RFZRA226TDM4YQ

            Knowing that, Vudu is in line with Amazon... so I have no clue where your getting your facts or numbers from.
            It was under special renting on my Tivo HD and was probably only a weekend special. Oh and I also have the Tivo connected to my network so maybe that makes a difference.

            Comment


              #36
              Re: vudu pricing vs Amazon Unbox

              Originally posted by NA9D View Post
              I'm not sure what HD-DVD and Blu-Ray use.

              But I know for a FACT that the Vudu uses H.264. SD movies are around 1.5 to 2 Gigabytes in size and HD movies are 3 to 4 Gigabytes. How do I know this? I've been testing the product and working with Vudu engineers for 11 months. Yeah, it's a damn good picture for 4 Gigs of size.
              there are other factors such as codec bandwidth that affect file size greatly (BD's use 40Mbs for primary video, another 10 for secondary video and lossless audio).

              Comment


                #37
                Re: vudu pricing vs Amazon Unbox

                Originally posted by desmond212 View Post
                there are other factors such as codec bandwidth that affect file size greatly (BD's use 40Mbs for primary video, another 10 for secondary video and lossless audio).
                I completely agree. With a good transfer encoded at the right bit rate and compression, even 480p can look as well as (if not better) than so-called HD content that was poorly encoded (such as initial release of "Fifth Element" on BluRay).

                If you want to read up on process on film transfer process, Sound & Vision has a very interesting article about WB's operations -- http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/fea...d-is-made.html

                AVS thread about the article is here -- http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=951385

                P.S. With regard to movie sizes, from what I remember seeing on Xbox Live and Usenet, most HD movies converted to HD WMV or H.264 are 5-7 gigs for 720p and 8-10 for 1080p.
                Last edited by Rusdude; 01-03-2008, 08:50 AM. Reason: Added P.S.

                Comment


                  #38
                  Re: vudu pricing vs Amazon Unbox

                  XBOX Live HD content is inferior to HD-DVD and BR.

                  Comment


                    #39
                    Re: vudu pricing vs Amazon Unbox

                    Originally posted by desmond212 View Post
                    XBOX Live HD content is inferior to HD-DVD and BR.
                    If you mean the quality, than yes but so is Vudu. HDM (high def media) offers the best possible quality (1080p) but no company finds it viable to let people download or stream HDM-quality content. For Blu-Ray or HD-DVD movies we're are looking at 25-30 gigs per disk while Vudu, Xbox Live, and other sources offer slightly worse picture quality for 4-6 gigs.

                    Comment


                      #40
                      Re: vudu pricing vs Amazon Unbox

                      Originally posted by Rusdude View Post
                      If you mean the quality, than yes but so is Vudu. HDM (high def media) offers the best possible quality (1080p) but no company finds it viable to let people download or stream HDM-quality content. For Blu-Ray or HD-DVD movies we're are looking at 25-30 gigs per disk while Vudu, Xbox Live, and other sources offer slightly worse picture quality for 4-6 gigs.

                      i would not call it slightly worse... audio is also not as good.

                      Comment


                        #41
                        Re: vudu pricing vs Amazon Unbox

                        Originally posted by desmond212 View Post
                        i would not call it slightly worse... audio is also not as good.
                        How is audio not as good? Because it is 5.1 as opposed to 7.1?

                        Comment


                          #42
                          Re: vudu pricing vs Amazon Unbox

                          lossless pcm/true hd/dts hd ma is better than this.

                          Comment


                            #43
                            Re: vudu pricing vs Amazon Unbox

                            Originally posted by desmond212 View Post
                            i would not call it slightly worse... audio is also not as good.
                            I was discussing video quality, but you are correct that HDM offers superior audio codec support. But first things first -- lets push Vudu to release all new content in DD 5.1 instead of stereo.

                            Comment


                              #44
                              Re: vudu pricing vs Amazon Unbox

                              Originally posted by desmond212 View Post
                              lossless pcm/true hd/dts hd ma is better than this.
                              Bourne Identity is in Dolby Digital 5.1. Lossless PCM is not Dolby Digital or surround sound. DTS is not supported on the box or in the streams.

                              What is your beef with DD5.1? It's what most broadcast HD stuff uses.

                              Comment


                                #45
                                Re: vudu pricing vs Amazon Unbox

                                Originally posted by NA9D View Post
                                Bourne Identity is in Dolby Digital 5.1. Lossless PCM is not Dolby Digital or surround sound. DTS is not supported on the box or in the streams.

                                What is your beef with DD5.1? It's what most broadcast HD stuff uses.

                                Dolby True HD and DTS HD MA when uncompressed is bit equivalent of master i.e. PCM. BR uses better audio than broadcast.

                                Comment

                                Working...
                                X