VUDU has been trialing higher quality HD downloads for a little while, but now they’re officially available for all users. The so-called HDX downloads are 1080p24 downloads which take longer to download but offer superior image quality compared to their usual ‘instant on’ highly compressed downloads. I’ve said before that I’d rather have quality over speed for most of my movie viewing, and I’d take Blu-ray over HD downloads be cause the services out there over-compress the content. As I said, all 1080p content is not the same.

So it is nice to see VUDU giving users the option to wait a little longer and get higher quality content instead of being limited to fast but comparatively poor quality playback. However, they don’t say just what the quality level is. They talk resolution, but, as I’ve said, resolution is just part of the puzzle. All 1080p24 content is, by definition, the same resolution. But if one is 40Mbps and the other is 4Mbps, all else being equal (same codec, etc), one is going to be much higher in quality. I really would like to know what the HDX bitrate is. Conventional non-HDX HD content from VUDU requires 4Mbps, I’m presuming HDX is higher, but how much?

Some press is calling it Blu-ray quality, but that’s bunk. Even without knowing the bitrate being used I’m positive it doesn’t match Blu-ray, and I’m just as positive it doesn’t use lossless audio like Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD-MA. The website says:

HDX technology delivers the best available surround sound quality for Internet delivered movies with immersive, high resolution sound at a 40% higher bit-rate than standard surround sound DVD’s.

‘Standard surround sound DVDs’ use Dolbly Digital at 448Kbps, sounds like they’re using Dolby Digital at 640Kbps.

HDX is definitely a step in the right directly, IMHO, but don’t believe it is Blu-ray quality.

EDIT: Found this from David Pogue at The New York Times:

To see why HDX looks so good — especially on big screens — check its data rate, a measure of how much information is used to describe each frame of the video. It averages around 9 megabits a second, but spikes to 20 during action scenes. Compare that with Vudu standard definition: (2.2 megabits a second), Vudu and Apple TV high definition (4), regular DVD (8) or Blu-ray DVD (40). In other words, HDX quality is somewhere between DVD and Blu-ray. The audio offers a 40 percent improvement, too.

That is a marked improvement over their normal HD streams, but yes, still not Blu-ray quality. It does make the product more appealing in my eyes though, and certainly puts VUDU in the lead as far as HD download services go. I’m not sure if he’s comparing just video bit rates or what - DVD’s full video rate is ~10Mbps, but that’s MPEG-2 so apples and oranges to the others which are H.264. Blu-ray is 40Mbps max for video (not that it is all used normally), 54Mbps total bit rate.

HDX raises my personal interest in VUDU, though with a TiVo Series3, PlayStation3, and SlingCatcher already it isn’t high enough yet to get me to put another box under my TV.

Netflix has done a deal with Starz Entertainment, immediately adding 1,000 titles to Netflix’s streaming service, with 1,500 more to follow in the coming weeks. Following on Netflix’s deals with Disney and CBS to stream current and back episodes of TV content, this is a solid step towards increasing the relevance of their streaming service. The largest drawback to the service to date has been the dearth of first tier content.

From The Hollywood Reporter.

A new channel has shown up on TiVoCast, TheWB.com. Right now it looks like there is just one program carried as part of the channel, Sorority Forever. Which describes itself as:

Phi Chi Kappa is the hottest sorority on campus. For every freshmen girl, getting in seems like a dream come true, but there are mysteries around every corner of the Phi Chi House. Behind the sex, the drama, and the beautiful people lies a terrifying secret.

Yeah, so I’ll be giving that a miss. But I do hope this is just a first step and more of the content from TheWB.com becomes available on TiVo, there are a few good shows there. It would be great if TiVo connected with more content sites like Hulu, CBS.com. etc.

Subscribe online or on your TiVo via Find Programs & Downloads -> Download TV, Movies, & Web Video -> Browse Other Videos -> All -> TheWB.com

As I mentioned last month GeekBrief.TV had stopped updating on TiVoCast sometime in early July. It had been one of my favorite TiVoCasts since it was added last November, so I missed it.

Well, I got a pleasant surprise today when GeekBrief.TV showed up in my Now Playing List. Nice to see that whatever the problem was it has finally been resolved.

On the not-so-nice side, I signed up for the new 3 Minute Ad Age TiVoCast and got deluged. Ten episodes downloaded (I set mine to Keep At Most 10), I watched and deleted them - and ten more came in. I watched and deleted those. And ten more came in. All told I think thirty episodes came in. It looks like they went live with a backlog and they were all marked as new. So beware.

And on a different note, after my laptop post last week I finally pulled the trigger and bought a new one. Why? I found a coupon for $500 off good through 9/22. That was about 1/3 off, too good to pass up.

Another channel has joined the TiVoCast lineup, and this one is most likely to appeal to industry insiders. 3 Minute Ad Age is a daily, roughly three minute (surprise), video produced by the magazine Advertising Age. As you might expect, it focuses on stories in the advertising and marketing industry.

Subscribe online or on your TiVo via Find Programs & Downloads -> Download TV, Movies, & Web Video -> Browse Other Videos -> All -> 3 Minute Ad Age

Revision3 has just picked up another vodcast, Hak5, and thanks to they relationship with TiVo it is already available via TiVoCast. They describe themselves as:

Hak5 isn’t your typical tech show. It’s hacking in the old-school sense, covering everything from network security, open source and forensics, to DIY modding and the homebrew scene. Damn the warranties, it’s time to Trust your Technolust.

Subscribe online or on your TiVo via Find Programs & Downloads -> Download TV, Movies, & Web Video -> Browse Other Videos -> All -> Hak5

Web video from Hulu, CBS, ESPN, etc, is great, but it is generally stuck on your PC. Sure, you can hook up a PC to the TV, and some web video is available on set-top boxes, such as YouTube on TiVo, but it is still limited. There are are some devices which allow access to more of the sites, like the D-Link DSM-520, but then you need Yet Another STB in your A/V stack. What to do? Well, PlayOn from MediaMall Technologies can help.

PlayOn installs on your Windows XP or Windows Vista PC, and acts as a kind of transcoding proxy for web video. It retrieves the web video and streams it to DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) compatible devices such as the PlayStation3, Xbox 360, and HP MediaSmart TVs. While those are the officially supported devices, they state that they will work to expand the list, and since they’re using DLNA I’m thinking may work on other DLNA devices even if not officially supported. They currently tout support for Hulu, CBS, YouTube, and ESPN, and promise Netflix support “just down the road”. They’ve also promised playback on the Nintendo Wii “by the end of 2008″. PlayOn is currently in beta, and MediaMall plans to charge $30 for the final product when it is ready for release.

MediaMall also has a blog where you can keep track of their development efforts. In a post there they reiterate that Netflix will be added before GA (that’s general availability, aka the official release for the non-geeks), and also state that CNN will be in before GA. MediaMall also develops the ActiveTV platform that powers the above mentioned DSM-520, which supports a plethora of web video sites, so it seems logical that they’d be bringing that know-how over to PlayOn to add more sites over time. After all, PlayOn was only released to beta on Monday.

Picked up from EngadgetHD.