[mythtv-users] [OT] - VUDU - On-Demand 1080p movies

[Brad Templeton]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 10:51:35AM -0800, Mark Knecht wrote:
> This just in on a list I subscribe to:
> 
> [QUOTE]
> 
> VUDU, Inc., a leading provider of digital on-demand entertainment
> products and services, today announced it has achieved another
> industry milestone by becoming the first on-demand service to offer
> high definition  movies for download to own on its popular 1080p
> Internet Movie Player. HD movies are available for purchase today to
> all Vudu owners.
> 
> [QUOTE]
> 
> I wonder what that would do to my Comcast bandwidth budget? ;-)


Note that when providing movies, 1080p is no particular technical
challenge.   Movies are shot at 24fps, and doing them at 60 fields/second
interlaced is actually a terrible shame, though that is what is done
on a the broadcast and many cable/satellite channels.

I was quite pleased to learn that some of the cable channels,
such as AMC-HD, provide their movies at 1080 p, 30fps.   This is
good because it means a smaller file and no deinterlacing required
to watch or transcode.

The comcast cable box spits out mp2 over the firewire.  Does anybody
know if Comcast actually sends mp2 over thier QAM channels, or
do they send mp4 and then have the cable-box up-transcode it to mp2
to fit the spec (and then I re-transcode it down to mp4 again if I
will not be watching it for a while, sigh