I can't believe that I'm defending Darren but HDX is a format FOR VUDU. They have HD formatted/encoded movies and HDX. It is streaming optimized format that reaches Blu-ray quality to some extent so comparison is indeed valid.
The quality remains to be seen, but you don't put proprietary nonsense in the headline as if it means something. Words like "stereo", "H.264", and other industry-wide terms have meaning and tell the reader something. Putting brand-specific gimmicks in the headline as if we're supposed to know what they are simply makes the poster look like a company shill.
If the company's top-of-the-line encoding only approaches Blu-Ray, then whatever they're calling "HD" is a fraud. Not that most things labeled "HD" aren't...
It's sad that the FCC failed so completely in its task to define HD and the future of the U.S. TV system. Technology exists to measure visually perceptible degradation. The FCC should have set not only raw resolution requirements, but established requirements for that resolution to be maintained in MOTION pictures. Today's crop of compressed garbage would have failed that test and others that could have been specified even 10 years ago.
I think you bought into the hype of BD PR machinery. Unlike what you would like to believe HD doesn't stand for Blu-ray. Blu-ray is merely the highest encoded HD footage, but HD is anything 720p and above, so it's definitely not "fraud" as you classify it.
As for quality and the need to be proven. There's really no such need. Those who have it (including myself) can vouch that aside from slightly lower DD 5.1 audio, HDX is as good as Blu-ray in PQ (maybe just a tiny bit softer - many usually don't notice as I watch it on 106" screen).
Vudu's HD quality, albeit, 720p is still HD and significantly better the DVD which many people are fine with. HDX was introduced to match Blu-ray for those who are more demanding and is 1080p.
Just some facts before, you start yelling FCC and fraud. The fact is digital downloads are taking over. Movies for rent are already dominant and day and date from most studios, on-demand video is offering now purchases too and even Sony is offering huge digital downloads for rentals but they are experimenting now with selling games. Not in too distant future they will also offer purchases (just watch).
Packaged media cannot be saved IMO. The numbers are shrinking and Blu-ray isn't helping so it's good that there are alternative ways now.
"Unlike what you would like to believe HD doesn't stand for Blu-ray."
Who said it did? Blu-Ray isn't even all that good, but here come downloads that are not even as good as that.
Most "HD" IS fraud, and it pervades the whole industry. For example, we have Panasonic selling 960 x 720 as HD. And that's an acquisition format. For the end user, we have DirecTV peddling their utterly abysmal picture quality as HD. The eventual format may wind up being 1920 x 1080 or 1280 x 720, but the image is actually inferior to that of a regular DVD. Come on, take a LOOK at this garbage.
The ATSC shat out a spineless, flailing "spec" that allows 18 different picture formats and INTERLACING. The allowance of interlacing (a relic of the '30s) tells you right there that this "next generation" TV standard is hopelessly outmoded already. Combine that with no provision for codec updates to every piece of equipment, and you have a massive boondoggle.
The widespread marketing of "digital quality" insults consumers, but they don't call the perpetrators on it. They don't even THINK about it: Every answering machine these days records digitally, making their barely intelligible recordings DIGITAL QUALITY.
We have the best video-display equipment ever available to the consumer, and nothing to play on it. We have a hash of compression artifacts, banding, and macroblocking that wouldn't stand up to a 27-inch screen let alone the 50-inch TVs you find so often today.
IC: Can you, perhaps, take your comments somewhere else?
In the real world, the one I live in and presumably Bozster does, and presumably most regulars at Engadget HD do, HD has a meaning. It's the system that's "high definition" in comparison with "SD"'s "standard definition". According to the ITU, HD is anything with 720x1280 (height x width) pixels of resolution or better.
That's what HD means. There's such a thing as good HD, great HD, bad HD, and awful HD. But they're all HD. If one of my local DTV stations were to squeeze six 720p channels into one multiplex, then it's safe to say they'd all look like ass, but they'd still be HD.
So it does include Vudu's Blu-ray quality "HDX" and their standard "HD". It also includes poorer quality systems such as Netflix's online HD streaming service, AppleTV, Hulu HD, YouTube HD, cable HD, etc. Vudu has chosen bitrates and codecs for HDX similar to those of Blu-ray, so if you admit, however grudgingly, that BD is HD, then HDX has to be too. But even if you don't, in the real world, the rest of us do consider it HD.
As we do ATSC HD.
Yes, in answer to your question, we should be demanding high quality. Here's how not to demand it however:
- Pretending something isn't HD because it's compressed enough to show artifacts. - Demanding some companies branded products be debranded and described generically using the technical details (what next? In the next "HD round-up" a demand that "TWC added USA HD, TNT HD, and TBS HD, to its service in Charlotte, NC" be rephrased to "An operator of cabulousvisional services added three audio visual streams containing mixes of movular, dramatical and comedial content"?)
How do we demand it? We demand bitrate and codec combinations that result in less artifacts. We make a distinction between good HD and bad HD, and we demand better bitrates where we see bad HD. And on the very, very, rare occasion that a company claims to be producing HD when they are producing content with a lower base and/or transmitted resolution than commonly accepted definitions (such as the ITU's) we call them out on it.
But redefining HD to mean "High quality HD" is a dead-end. It makes those who resort to such tactics look, well, dumb. On a technical level, you're wrong, and that's all anyone will see, your wider argument in favour of higher quality video will be discarded with the rest.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Information Central @ Feb 24th 2009 3:10AM
"HDX" isn't a real format. So what is it that they're peddling as "HD"?
This is pretty much pure spam, a straight PR page.
Nice "reporting", Engadget.
Bozster @ Feb 24th 2009 3:49AM
I can't believe that I'm defending Darren but HDX is a format FOR VUDU. They have HD formatted/encoded movies and HDX. It is streaming optimized format that reaches Blu-ray quality to some extent so comparison is indeed valid.
Information Central @ Feb 24th 2009 4:33AM
The quality remains to be seen, but you don't put proprietary nonsense in the headline as if it means something. Words like "stereo", "H.264", and other industry-wide terms have meaning and tell the reader something. Putting brand-specific gimmicks in the headline as if we're supposed to know what they are simply makes the poster look like a company shill.
If the company's top-of-the-line encoding only approaches Blu-Ray, then whatever they're calling "HD" is a fraud. Not that most things labeled "HD" aren't...
It's sad that the FCC failed so completely in its task to define HD and the future of the U.S. TV system. Technology exists to measure visually perceptible degradation. The FCC should have set not only raw resolution requirements, but established requirements for that resolution to be maintained in MOTION pictures. Today's crop of compressed garbage would have failed that test and others that could have been specified even 10 years ago.
Bozster @ Feb 24th 2009 4:43AM
I think you bought into the hype of BD PR machinery. Unlike what you would like to believe HD doesn't stand for Blu-ray. Blu-ray is merely the highest encoded HD footage, but HD is anything 720p and above, so it's definitely not "fraud" as you classify it.
Bozster @ Feb 24th 2009 5:10AM
As for quality and the need to be proven. There's really no such need. Those who have it (including myself) can vouch that aside from slightly lower DD 5.1 audio, HDX is as good as Blu-ray in PQ (maybe just a tiny bit softer - many usually don't notice as I watch it on 106" screen).
Vudu's HD quality, albeit, 720p is still HD and significantly better the DVD which many people are fine with. HDX was introduced to match Blu-ray for those who are more demanding and is 1080p.
Just some facts before, you start yelling FCC and fraud. The fact is digital downloads are taking over. Movies for rent are already dominant and day and date from most studios, on-demand video is offering now purchases too and even Sony is offering huge digital downloads for rentals but they are experimenting now with selling games. Not in too distant future they will also offer purchases (just watch).
Packaged media cannot be saved IMO. The numbers are shrinking and Blu-ray isn't helping so it's good that there are alternative ways now.
Information Central @ Feb 24th 2009 6:00AM
"Unlike what you would like to believe HD doesn't stand for Blu-ray."
Who said it did? Blu-Ray isn't even all that good, but here come downloads that are not even as good as that.
Most "HD" IS fraud, and it pervades the whole industry. For example, we have Panasonic selling 960 x 720 as HD. And that's an acquisition format. For the end user, we have DirecTV peddling their utterly abysmal picture quality as HD. The eventual format may wind up being 1920 x 1080 or 1280 x 720, but the image is actually inferior to that of a regular DVD. Come on, take a LOOK at this garbage.
The ATSC shat out a spineless, flailing "spec" that allows 18 different picture formats and INTERLACING. The allowance of interlacing (a relic of the '30s) tells you right there that this "next generation" TV standard is hopelessly outmoded already. Combine that with no provision for codec updates to every piece of equipment, and you have a massive boondoggle.
The widespread marketing of "digital quality" insults consumers, but they don't call the perpetrators on it. They don't even THINK about it: Every answering machine these days records digitally, making their barely intelligible recordings DIGITAL QUALITY.
We have the best video-display equipment ever available to the consumer, and nothing to play on it. We have a hash of compression artifacts, banding, and macroblocking that wouldn't stand up to a 27-inch screen let alone the 50-inch TVs you find so often today.
DEMAND BETTER.
squiggleslash @ Feb 24th 2009 10:29AM
IC: Can you, perhaps, take your comments somewhere else?
In the real world, the one I live in and presumably Bozster does, and presumably most regulars at Engadget HD do, HD has a meaning. It's the system that's "high definition" in comparison with "SD"'s "standard definition". According to the ITU, HD is anything with 720x1280 (height x width) pixels of resolution or better.
That's what HD means. There's such a thing as good HD, great HD, bad HD, and awful HD. But they're all HD. If one of my local DTV stations were to squeeze six 720p channels into one multiplex, then it's safe to say they'd all look like ass, but they'd still be HD.
So it does include Vudu's Blu-ray quality "HDX" and their standard "HD". It also includes poorer quality systems such as Netflix's online HD streaming service, AppleTV, Hulu HD, YouTube HD, cable HD, etc. Vudu has chosen bitrates and codecs for HDX similar to those of Blu-ray, so if you admit, however grudgingly, that BD is HD, then HDX has to be too. But even if you don't, in the real world, the rest of us do consider it HD.
As we do ATSC HD.
Yes, in answer to your question, we should be demanding high quality. Here's how not to demand it however:
- Pretending something isn't HD because it's compressed enough to show artifacts.
- Demanding some companies branded products be debranded and described generically using the technical details (what next? In the next "HD round-up" a demand that "TWC added USA HD, TNT HD, and TBS HD, to its service in Charlotte, NC" be rephrased to "An operator of cabulousvisional services added three audio visual streams containing mixes of movular, dramatical and comedial content"?)
How do we demand it? We demand bitrate and codec combinations that result in less artifacts. We make a distinction between good HD and bad HD, and we demand better bitrates where we see bad HD. And on the very, very, rare occasion that a company claims to be producing HD when they are producing content with a lower base and/or transmitted resolution than commonly accepted definitions (such as the ITU's) we call them out on it.
But redefining HD to mean "High quality HD" is a dead-end. It makes those who resort to such tactics look, well, dumb. On a technical level, you're wrong, and that's all anyone will see, your wider argument in favour of higher quality video will be discarded with the rest.
Information Central @ Feb 24th 2009 7:34PM
"In the real world, the one I live in and presumably Bozster does, and presumably most regulars at Engadget HD do, HD has a meaning."
So? The point is that "HDX" DOESN'T.