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Old 07-19-2010, 09:46 AM   #17
MickMcGeough
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Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Calgary
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimmy Stang View Post
Honest question - I'm not trying to sound condescending here, but what are the benefits of having physical media mailed to you instead of streaming? If you can have the same movie streamed instantly as opposed to waiting for it to become available, sending it back, etc., I simply don't see why you wouldn't want to press a button and watch it right away. I can understand that sometimes you might want to own a certain movie and have it on your shelf, but for renting - I have no problem streaming it and then having it disappear into the ether.

I'm not saying that there aren't advantages to physical media at this point in time. As I understand it, the library size for physical media at Netflix (and probably Zip too) is bigger than what Netflix will be streaming. And if you're a big HD buff, 1080 on a Blu-Ray will be preferable to 720 streaming.
This.

I'm as excited as anyone to get Netflix in Canada, but like any other streaming services, there are some serious sacrifices in video/audio quality that make streaming a reality for the average user's connection.

I'm fine with the 720p limit. All other things equal, 1080p requires double the bandwidth of 720p. A good 720p stream will look much, much better than a compressed, dithered 1080p stream. As it is, all streaming services I'm aware of compress the crap out of their 720p streams, I can only imagine how awful 1080p would look.
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