Do you watch in standard or High Def?

Richard Dower

Just wondering how many of you are HD equiped, be it LCD or HD service providers such as Sky etc?

Would you favour a HD broadcas over SD?
Do you prefer watching a standard 350MB tv show, compared to a 1.1-1.2GB 720p HD show?

Just getting sense who has access to what and what prefrence people have.....me?

I tend to vary, say Dollhouse or Heroes i'll go for the 720p but something like Gossip Girl i'll just do the lower res. Sadly i don't have Sky HD but my tv is ready for it!

It does seem more and more shows/channels are doing HD, which is good. Hopefully soon SD broadcasts will be done away with.

Ricky91t

I downloaded the top gear artic trip and watched it through my laptop on the TV,Was brilliant!So clear..Can't justify getting the HD sky though..Will wait for a low price.

Thor

i always go for hd 720p!!!

Every show i get has to be that, although the 350mb ones are fine i just think if the episode of whatever im getting is good, i want the quality to be good!!!

i have like 3 Tb of space so i have to fill it somehow!!!

Edit, Would never go for sky hd though!!! its not worth the money!!

Richard Dower

Well i find some of the lower res. tv shows to look ok on the tv, from a distance. But you can *definately* see a big difference in the 720p....the colors and clarity of the image i much better + it's AC3 surround 5.1 :-)

J-blk

I always go for 720p versions of everything these days, "standard" avi files look way too blocky on a 40" HDTV... the only exception I make is with DVD rips of older box sets, which I might watch on the go, etc... The only problem is bandwidth, those 1.2GB files really start adding up .

L31mr0d

Always HD with DD5.1 if available. I'll usually wait now for the HD version, even if there is an SD version already available.

Used to get 1080p, but since getting a netbook which can only handle 720p I've now dropped down to only getting that, in the offchance that I will want to watch it on the netbook on the go.

Personally, I notice the difference between SD and HD 720p, But I really can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p when I'm sitting 6ft away on the couch.

Basq

Put simply..

I go HD for shows that "deserve" it - Lost, 24, Battlestar Galactica (when I did watch it), Supernatural, Chuck etc.

But for comedies like Modern Family and 30 Rock, a 175MB SD rip is sufficient.

PS - Wouldn't waste my money on Sky HD.. far too expensive, limited and I don't watch enough on it to warrant it!

ScumLord

Films I'd go for HD but tv shows it's not worth my bandwidth. I've been over the limit for a while now and fear the day I'll be clamped again.

Basq

ScumLord wrote: »

Films I'd go for HD but tv shows it's not worth my bandwidth. I've been over the limit for a while now and fear the day I'll be clamped again.

TV shows are not worth the bandwidth... yet you'd download 5GB for a 90min - 120min film? :eek:

bada_bing

sometimes i download the 720p version for good shows like Supernatural , Stargate Universe and the rest i just download the sd version

seanybiker

I go for standard. Feck that I couldnt be bothered waiting longer to get an episode than I need to. Once I can make out whats on the screen Im not bothered.

anotherlostie

I too go for the standard version for the same reasons (mainly impatience).

I've watched Lost S4 and S5 on Blu-ray now and while I would acknowledge the picture is richer than on the SD version I watched originally, it made no difference to my enjoyment of the show.

Our man in Havana

I have recently cancelled my Sky HD service as I feel it is not worth the extra €15 a month especially as I don't watch sport and rarely watch the movies. So for the extra few channels it really is not worth the money. Also with Discovery and Nat Geo shows are often only on the SD version at first, a HD version may follow a few weeks/months later.

Dman001

I watch anything I can on BBC HD as Im using a Sky HD as a FTA receiver. But that's it. Ive yet to purchase a BR Player, IMO the Blu Ray DVDs are just to expensive when compared to the equivilent DVD. Ive a few HDDVDs but they were going cheap.

After watching a few shows on BBC HD Im in no hurry to drive into the HD world just yet. SD content does me fine and I couldnt justify the high price of HD content.

I also have a Netbook so I wouldnt even consider downloading HD shows either.

Richard Dower

I've got an MSI U130 Netbook....it can play 720p OK, to a point.....if there is fast moving parts frame rates drop, stupid Atom. Moreso stupid Intel embedded graphics, pity ION based Netbooks are soo expensive.

Dman001

What do you use to play HD content? The VLC Player?

Its not so much that my Netbook wont play HD content, is more to do with that SD content looks fine on a Netbook and are small in size.

Richard Dower

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_lite_codec_pack.htm

K-Lite codec pack, pretty much every codec supported....it's software based decoding though, Intel's embedded 3150 GPU is just too weak or simply dosen't support hardware decoding. Some Netbooks have third party hardware decoders on the PCB such as Broadcom, nVidia ION is best....Nettops have ION. Higher end Netbooks as well.

ScumLord

basquille wrote: »

TV shows are not worth the bandwidth... yet you'd download 5GB for a 90min - 120min film? :eek:

Everythings in divx so the HD stuff is coming in at 2gig. I'm not saying every film I download is in HD but I'd only consider going for the HD option when it came to films, SD is more than enough for TV shows IMO.

amacachi

Combined Community Codec Pack is the best to download in my experience.


Anyway, standard def all the way, since I watch on the XBox on a 4:3 TV, no point watching on a poor quality laptop screen. Also IMO Sky HD is a waste of money unless you love sport, and I love sport but haven't got a decent telly.

Richard Dower

ScumLord wrote: »

Everythings in divx so the HD stuff is coming in at 2gig. I'm not saying every film I download is in HD but I'd only consider going for the HD option when it came to films, SD is more than enough for TV shows IMO.

Blu-Ray rip = 8GB :eek:

rednik

Sky HD. When you have watched sport, new series and movies in HD it's very hard to go back to SD.

Basq

ScumLord wrote: »

Everythings in divx so the HD stuff is coming in at 2gig. I'm not saying every film I download is in HD but I'd only consider going for the HD option when it came to films, SD is more than enough for TV shows IMO.

2 GB's is a BD simply encoded to a DivX at higher res and bitrate - slighty better than a 1.3 GB rip, but far from a BDRip. The encode process takes away from the HD quality also.

Our man in Havana

rednik wrote: »

Sky HD. When you have watched sport, new series and movies in HD it's very hard to go back to SD.

Not at all. I notice hardly any difference with Sky Movies. The quality has gone downhill lately. Not worth the €15 HD tax.

Richard Dower

What do you guys for playback?....WD Live TV?, i personally use an LG BD-370. Blu-Ray drive wth USB port, it supports divx/avi and importantly .mkv HD.

amacachi

Richard Dower wrote: »

What do you guys for playback?....WD Live TV?, i personally use an LG BD-370. Blu-Ray drive wth USB port, it supports divx/avi and importantly .mkv HD.

Xbox mostly. Lack of MKV support is somewhat annoying (especially for an animé head) but probably next year I'll put together a "HTPC", basically just a HD capable graphics card, loads of storage and bluetooth support. Add whatever codecs I want etc.

ScumLord

basquille wrote: »

2 GB's is a BD simply encoded to a DivX at higher res and bitrate - slighty better than a 1.3 GB rip, but far from a BDRip. The encode process takes away from the HD quality also.

Probably but you'd have to know the difference, which I don't. All I know is HD divx looks spectacular when compared to any other compressed format and doesn't require terabytes of space.

rednik

Bond-007 wrote: »

Not at all. I notice hardly any difference with Sky Movies. The quality has gone downhill lately. Not worth the €15 HD tax.

Well all I have to do is watch a movie on 301 and look at SD then switch back to 313 and the difference for me is obvious in HD.

J-blk

Richard Dower wrote: »

What do you guys for playback?....WD Live TV?, i personally use an LG BD-370. Blu-Ray drive wth USB port, it supports divx/avi and importantly .mkv HD.

Mac Mini with Plex (http://www.plexapp.com/) - it's overkill really, but plays everything flawlessly, looks gorgeous and is awesome at pulling media info for all the shows/movies, etc from sources like IMDB or TheTVDB...

Sad Professor

720p all the way. I got a WDTV Live recently and its great being able to watch hi-def content. Before that I was using XBMC which was limited to SD. I could never go back.

AlmightyCushion

Richard Dower wrote: »

What do you guys for playback?....WD Live TV?, i personally use an LG BD-370. Blu-Ray drive wth USB port, it supports divx/avi and importantly .mkv HD.

A dell studio hybrid. One of my better investments. I tend to always go with HD rips although I got a standard def episode today and it only took 2 minutes. Gotta love that upc.

Dman001

What MB broadband are you on?

AlmightyCushion

Dman001 wrote: »

What MB broadband are you on?

30Mb. It's freakin' awesome.

Conor108

Wow had no idea UPC offered those speeds to my area! Thanks for briniging that up, gonna look into it!:)

ScumLord

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

30Mb. It's freakin' awesome.

Is it unlimited? 3mb would be enough if it was unlimited. The only reason I'm on 7mb is to raise the limit. It was actually cheaper to get a 7mb connection than to pay for an extra 10gb.

AlmightyCushion

ScumLord wrote: »

Is it unlimited? 3mb would be enough if it was unlimited. The only reason I'm on 7mb is to raise the limit. It was actually cheaper to get a 7mb connection than to pay for an extra 10gb.

It's meant to be a 250GB limit but I've been well over it a few months in a row and never heard a word about it.

amacachi

ScumLord wrote: »

Is it unlimited? 3mb would be enough if it was unlimited. The only reason I'm on 7mb is to raise the limit. It was actually cheaper to get a 7mb connection than to pay for an extra 10gb.

Who are you with? Mate of mine got "unlimited" 7MB Smart and has been throttled for over a week, their idea of unlimited is 170GB over 30 days. Meanwhile I'm on 3MB with Eircom and went over 200GB last month and about 250GB this month without any problems.

Basq

This is turning into something that belongs on the Broadband forum..

Back on topic!

PS - AC, you lucky slag!

robby^5

Yeah I go with 720P these days, the quality difference is immense on a HD monitor.

Simon201

Having recently got UPC HD I'm finding it hard to watch any SD material now. Playback is also by either USB stick on a philips LCD or mini dvi out on a MacBook. Both work quite well and having gone 'unlimited' on the Internet is proving handy. Although, I thought I was downloading alot with 30 gigs a month but obviously not according to some of the posts here!

Richard Dower

Simon201 wrote: »

Having recently got UPC HD I'm finding it hard to watch any SD material now. Playback is also by either USB stick on a philips LCD or mini dvi out on a MacBook. Both work quite well and having gone 'unlimited' on the Internet is proving handy. Although, I thought I was downloading alot with 30 gigs a month but obviously not according to some of the posts here!

That's 'cause some people can't live without seeing Jenna Haze in 1080p HD

ScumLord

amacachi wrote: »

Who are you with? Mate of mine got "unlimited" 7MB Smart and has been throttled for over a week, their idea of unlimited is 170GB over 30 days. Meanwhile I'm on 3MB with Eircom and went over 200GB last month and about 250GB this month without any problems.

Digiweb.

Richard Dower

How do you guys feel about media players like the WD Live etc. - musy have?, i picked up a Medion box this morning.

amacachi

They can be pretty damn good, varies hugely though. Friend of a friend got one and it failed with some AVIs that both the Xbox and PS3 can handle.

L31mr0d

I have a HTPC I built about 2 years ago. It's ran rock solid since without issues:

CPU: E6600
GFX: 8800GT
RAM: 4GB
OS: Vista 32bit

I think I'd always build my own media device, I prefer the control over the smaller form factor.

For watching media I use Media Player Classic with the latest FFDshow beta builds from Afterdawn. For MKV's I use the CoreAVC codec which has nVidia CUDA optimizations (if you have a netbook, this codec will get 720p MKV's running like butter). I use spdifer to offload the audio processing to my amp for better sound quality on the DD/DTS 5.1 streams.

I also have the 30Mb UPC connection, so it makes getting HD a lot faster.

pickarooney

I've been debating this, particularly with Lost coming back soon. My fear is that not only will it take longer to get episodes but once I get used to HD I'll find SD annoyingly lower quality.

Minstrel27

I download everything in 720p where available. Uncapped 30mb connection FTW. I currently have SkyHD but plan on cancelling it when my contract expires. I do not watch enough on it.

cyning

I have Sky HD and blue ray: but for older programs i'll watch in SD.... otherwise it just looks weird. But I have no problem in paying the extra €15 because I do think its worth it especially for movies and sport!

AlmightyCushion

pickarooney wrote: »

I've been debating this, particularly with Lost coming back soon. My fear is that not only will it take longer to get episodes but once I get used to HD I'll find SD annoyingly lower quality.

Standard is still ok, you miss HD but watching SD is not making you violently ill just yet. There are some really low quality rips of episodes available which are painful to watch though.

WolfForager

Have Sky HD myself, watch about 1 out of 10 shows in HD i'd say.

pickarooney

I just watched part of a Lost ep in HD... I'm going to have watch the last season like this now - damn! Hope it's easy to get hold of in hi-def.

Now I'm wondering if poor quality rips aren't part of the reason I struggle to watch The Wire... might be worth testing.

Richard Dower

Friday Night Lights is rather dire quality this season, hard to find 720's. Lost - you'll be grand as it's a popular show.