Let’s repeat: everything is about HDTV

June 23, 2006 By

I don't know why we keep dancing around these facts:

When you hear about dark fiber, it's all about HDTV.

When you hear about DVD disk formats, it's all about HDTV.

When you hear about video game consoles, it's all about HDTV.

When you hear about video advertising schemes, it's all about HDTV.

When you hear about Network Neutrality (or lack thereof), it's all about HDTV.

Let's go over this again. Why is Google (and others) buying up dark fiber? It's not to distribute more email to you. That won't increase the load on the Internet. It's ALL about HDTV. Well, OK, those server indexes are pretty big, Don Dodge is right, but really, they will be dwarfed by HD files. I am getting a Panasonic HD camcorder. The files it records will be gigs per hour. Gigs!

I want to get them to you.

How will that happen?

Filed Under: 1
  • HDTV as been awesome...I recommend everyone get it..the prices have really comedown!
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  • ... and when you here high quality OTA television, it's all about HDTV too
  • Robert,

    I think Google's interest in dark fiber is about having a way to lower the costs of interconnecting their DataCenters.

    If they can make a private net for synchronizing their distributed indexes and have failover without relying on AT&T then they save money and can route around external network problems that might impact their services.

    Is MS buying up dark fiber to compete? Most likely. It a real steal compared to paying market rates for big pipes. Even Enron saw the advantage of having a lot of bandwidth as a hedge strategy... and they WERE the "Smartest Guys in the Room".

    But I can see you're on an HDTV campaign so keep going... you're on a roll.

    "When someone Blogs... It's all about HDTV."

    "The middle east and the war against terror... it's..."
  • Kamal Jain
    Robert, I meant the comparison according to prices announced by Sony. But I do think that sony might be providing a good system but it is expensive and delayed. In the end, it is not impressive R&D. Because impressive R&D keeps an eye on cost and schedule too. Having more functionality at the expense of schedule is often not a good trade off. Similarly letting the cost increase for a non-core functionality (i.e., Blue Ray in a Game machine) is hardly a good trade-off.

    My comment was to respond to the commentator who was saying that Microsoft missed an opportunity by not bundling HD with Xbox 360. I think Xbox 360 followed a more robust game plan than PS3.

    Kamal
    PS: The commentator is a Microsoft employee. The opinion in this comment is commentator’s personal opinion.


    Kamal
  • Christopher Coulter
    I'd go Mainconcept H.264/AVC Encoder v2 or CCE-Pro for MPEG2 encodes (CCE is kicking!). Also Sorenson SqueezeHD XCEL is a good solution. Mix and match, find what works best for you, depends on needs, market and in what format most of your content will end up as.

    It's not all about HDTV, sure a part, but never the all. Bad economics to place all the marbles on one tech. Each of those technologies have many uses beyond just HDTV. Dark fiber is the world. DVD formats are also about the data. Video game consoles, are also about, surprise, the games and the online marketplaces. Video advertising schemes are about making money, period. Network Neutrality is a byzantine political, contractual and content creators rights legal sandpit. HDTV is a part, but hardly the all.

    Geesh, give the guy a new toy, and he thinks the world should move to his beat.
  • Personally, my son is watching an HD video he downloaded off of Xbox Live. It's about the same quality as Blueray or HD-DVD gives you. And he didn't need to buy another player.

    In two years we aren't gonna be talking about DVD formats.
  • Kamal: can you buy a Playstation 3 yet? No.

    Let's compare the market when you can. Xbox won't remain the same price forever and they've already announced an HD-DVD drive too (and if you don't buy into the hype, you can get an Xbox without one of those for less than Playstation 3 is supposed to sell for).
  • Kamal Jain
    You keep forgetting the cost factor. Microsoft may have wanted to give choice to the consumer. Why force a more expensive system to people who are looking for something cheaper?

    Sony is not only selling a game machine but a Blue Ray dvd player too. Why should a game player who does not want a next generation DVD player pays for this additional functionality?

    If you try to argue that Sony is not charging for this feature then compare the price of Xbox and PS3. Even if I accept your argument for a moment then it could be a non-optimal move for Sony. Instead of providing Blue-Ray functionality free with PS3, they should provide this functionality for free with their regular high end DVD player. Of course they want to dilute their success of PS3 to increase success probablity of Blue Ray. This could again be non-optimal. Because by the time PS3 launches, Xbox 360 and HD-DVD together will be the cost of a PS3. And they lost a year unnecessarily.

    It is easy to make a good car in $50K but what is difficult is to make a good car at $20K. That's the success of Japanese car makers. I would have appreciated Sony R&D if they could have developed a good game machine at an affordable price.

    Kamal
    PS: The commentator is a Microsoft employee. The opinion in this comment is commentator's personal opinion.
  • Matt: wrong. PS 3 is not shipping yet. It therefor has no hard drive that you can compare.

    Xbox 360 is shipping, and has been shipping for six months, with a 20GB drive.

    When PlayStation 3 ships, drop me a line and let's compare systems then.
  • Patrick: and Beta was sharper than VHS, but still lost.

    Who cares about larger storage? HD stores a movie. You really think the movie industry is gonna store two movies on a disk? You are smoking good crack!

    Better how? Resolution? Give me a break. Sound? Give me a break.

    It'll come down to price. So far HD wins there.
  • Blu-ray wins - totally smashes HD DVD, larger storage, and better still, not supported by microsoft, wish it was though.
  • The hard drive for the PS3 for the basic console about 20gigs and the deluxe 60gig. What's the 360 like 20gigs?
  • HDTV/HDV is amazing, and since we are on topic, here is my view of the (lack of) future of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray:

    http://marcelo.sampasite.com/brave-tech-world/e...
  • I'm really digging the HD QuickTime stuff 1080i60. But, then you've got a wider audience that may not want QT content or have the pipes for it. Torrent definitely! I think Leopard's gonna have it built in (if not, then Opera 9 does).

    Wonder if you're gonna have access to Final Cut Studio Pro? Michelle and I are LOVING it! Makes for GREAT 1080i60 output from DV.

    hehe... wanna hear something funny? Al Gore's new movie has some neat exclusive content over at an MTV site (and it's NOT in QuickTime). A board member of Apple no less! And his content's not up in QT. hehe
  • I suppose you'll compress it with something like H.264 and them make your content available in many different flavors so people will be able to comsume it however and where ever they'd like.

    The largest files will be downloaded to my computer while I sleep by some type of aggregator which may or may not make use of a bit torrent type of protocol.

    There'll be a special feed you'll have to distribute your content to third parties who will then distribute your content to me via some type of connected TV device like Akimbo, XBOX, Playstation, or computer.

    Then you'll also make content available in a Flash/QT/WMV format for people who want to subscribe via RSS 2.0 or watch online.

    And you'll probably want to make some cell phone / mobile device content too.

    I'm sure there will be other formats too...
  • Gwhiz, not sure. I just ordered a new MacBook. What format would you like?

    Jcposner: I totally agree. If I were running the Xbox team I'd be coming out with a huge ass hard drive and pushing HUGE amounts of HD down. I guess they gotta wait for one of those huge data centers to be built, though (you know, the ones where Ballmer is spending $2 billion).
  • Not sure why Microsoft is not leveraging the Xbox 360 hard drive (needs to be significantly bigger) to provide more and better HD content. This is a golden opportunity that is being missed. I know Sony is going to leverage the PS3 for a major HD play. MS has first mover advantage and is blowing it. Let me upload my hd content via the USB port and share with family and friends my user generated content :-).
  • Robert... curious. What's the encoding you plan on using?
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