Quote:
Originally Posted by sclitheroe
An h.264 stream at 1080p is nowhere near the bandwidth you are talking about, and visually would look as good to 99% of the population. It’s totally doable over broadband today, for people with mid to high tier broadband packages.
720p is already in place - buy an HD movie from iTunes today on an AppleTV and it streams just fine. We can quibble about whether what iTunes delivers today on ATV is true HD or not, but the point is that high quality video is being delivered over current broadband solutions.
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"High Quality" being completely subjective, of course.
I never claimed you can't stream compressed, dithered 720p video with 2.0 audio over the internet. Youtube & iTunes do that just fine.
But a 2hr h264 1080p DTS movie, which I'd call high quality, will run 10GB or so. That works out to 11-12mbps sustained to stream and is well outside the ability of Shaw's primary consumer offering.
Don't get me wrong, I'd happily stream that same movie in 720p DTS, and that alone would justify $99. I'm just skeptical of AppleTV living up to the unofficial claims of 1080p video streaming without sacrificing a lot of quality.