[IP] more on Talk about HDMI

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 06:24:44 -0800
To: <dave@farber.net>
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Talk about HDMI


On Jan 18, 2005, at 5:42 AM, David Farber wrote:

> I don't doubt that Dewayne is able to play back content that
> originates as
> high-definition television, but I doubt that any of this content
> qualifies
> as "HD content."  So far as I can tell, every single instance in which
> high-definition television content has been made available via
> BitTorrent or
> other bandwidth-maximizing tools, that content has been drastically
> reduced
> in resolution (commonly in the course of digital-to-analog-to-digital
> conversion to MPEG or .avi files).
>
> The resulting content may have originated in high definition, but it
> doesn't
> qualify as "HD content" anymore.   This fact puts the lie to claims by
> Hollywood that HD content is routinely or widely pirated over the
> Internet
> merely by virtue of its being digital -- the digital originals, even
> though
> already compressed, are far too large (much bigger, for example, than
> images
> of DVDs, which one does occasionally find on the Internet).
>
> Of course, once one reaches a certain age, it's harder to tell whether
> one
> is looking at true HD content at normal viewing distance.  This factor
> may
> explain the frequent exaggerated claims about whether HDTV content is
> available in full resolution over the Internet.

 Private to you.

 I had this argument with Mike about a year ago about the quality of
content available on the Darknet.  At that time the argument centered
on whether or not the content available was truly at DVD quality
levels.  He seemed concerned that Hollywood's claim that DVD quality
movies being widely available on the Darknet not be proven to be true,
as it would give the Hollywood cartel all the ammo they needed to force
through legislation to protect there content in various draconian ways.
  Well, as it turned out, at the beginning of last year, the DVD quality
content was indeed small in number and varying in quality.  However,
over the course of last year, that all changed drastically as
BitTorrent and the various compression technologies used made major
improvements.  You can now find DVD quality content for a particular
film available in various encodings that can vary in size from just
under 1GB to just over 4GB depending on your needs.
 Now it seems he's got trouble with whether or not the content is truly
available at HD levels.  Much like the situation with DVD's, you can
get HD OTA content at various quality levels again depending on your
needs, with a major gating factor being how long you want to take to
download the content given the speed of your Net connection.
 Part of the problem as Mike does point out is the 'HD' label and just
what it means.  I'm well aware of this issue as are the various
providers of this content on the Darknet and there are standards for
all this stuff in place and known by the community that supplies and
downloads the content.  When you download HD content provided by a
particular group such as POL, you know what you're getting.  Mike
doesn't seem to be aware of all this stuff that is going on.  I know
that when I tried to clue him in a year ago, I really never got
anywhere with him as he didn't want to seem to look at the info that I
pointed him to or the things that he did, he discounted for one reason
or another that I really didn't consider valid.
 So to close, I know that you have an HDTV setup and as such, you're
well aware of the difference between digital and analog content and the
differences between HD and SD digital content.  You've seen it.  Well,
I've seen it all too and I'm quite pleased with the results that I'm
seeing on the content thats available now on the Darknet.  I'm also
sure that over the course of the year, its going to get better and
better, just as it did last year.

-- Dewayne


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