«
»

Why HD Matters

November 25th, 2007 at 08:17 by Jim Louderback in Polemics

My friend Kevin Maney, over at Portfolio.com, finally got my company right (Herb Scannel must have been so surprised!). But that’s not why I’m posting.

In his latest blog post, he predicts a bifurcated future of video, where traditional TV video keeps getting better, while internet delivered video on the PC stays standard definition or worse.

But I think he’s wrong. Kevin is making the mistake of equating internet delivered video with the PC. The PC is just one of many devices that will be used to view video delivered via FTP, HTTP, RTTP or other internet protocols. The audience for Revision3′s episodic, personality-driven shows, along with others in our space, watch on everything from an iPhone to home-theater PCs, portable media players, AppleTV and other web-connected devices.

And even if you do restrict yourself to the PC, the history of that device has been a constant flight to quality.

There was a time – back when I was running PC Week’s Lab - when I thought it folly for a notebook to have a color screen. In fact, monochrome monitors looked far better than the first CGA models. But EGA, VGA, SVGA, etc kept on advancing the state of display quality — and what we looked at got progressively better too.

That’s only going to continue. Today’s HDTVs are no different from the computer monitor sitting on your desk or in your laptop. Some are connected to locally deployed computers (TiVo, Motorola DCTs, etc), and others get their bits from computers a bit futher afield, either at a cable head-end or at the other side of an ATSC transmittion signal.

Quality matters. And the story of the PC and computing devices is an inexorable march towards higher-fidelity (with a short detour as the internet become the dominant transmission medium). And unless we all end up going back to dialup, that’s not going to change. Even if you’re just watching dry how-to videos, or yet another LOLCAT, the better it looks, the better the payoff. And better payoffs translate into more traffic, more ad support and more sharing. The alternative, from where I sit, is dial-up AOL. And not even Time Warner believes in that anymore.

– Jim Louderback, CEO


Tags: , , , ,

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 25th, 2007 at 8:17 pm and is filed under Polemics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • xpose

    Kevin Maney is dead wrong. To put this into perspective, even national broadcast networks have HD quality streaming video for select tv shows. We all know how long it took them to get on the bandwagon for any streaming video.

    Most trailers are streamable in HD nowadays at apple.com. Even ign.com has HD content for reviews.

    Codecs like h264/x264 make HD very possible in a small package. In fact, you can compress and download a blu-ray movie in 1080p resolution with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound in just 5 to 9 gig using that codec.

  • dtm3dd

    I have to say I love my HD content, but where is it from Rev 3 in iTunes?! I love Diggnation in HD but everything else’s “large quicktime” can be a bit dodgy – I mean watch last weeks Tekzilla in places that looks darn awful.
    I understand that file size and download time is a big concern, but at least give us the option! I see you can download most in HD individually but who does that? I also understand that subscribing in iTunes helps you guys track statistics.
    So whats with the hold up?

  • mattdrome

    DON’T CANCEL INFECTED

  • http://web.mac.com/movinglights/A_Working_Vacation/Home.html MarcInVegas

    I would only add that it seems like while more and potentially better devices can and will probably be developed that can handle streaming HD or close to it in the near future, most devices that can or could do that tend to be developed closer and closer to a PC. I think most people would think….”Hey why spend $800 on a set top or portable high def stream box or similar, when I can buy a PC?” Look at the success of Youtube. It’s all about the $10 webcam or the old VHS tape camcorder and an elaborate PC input interface.

    While I hope things do develop quicker, I have doubts that high quality streaming video will pick up like the industry has (mainly due to government deadlines). I mean how cool would an IPhone with a high quality camera that can stream high quality live video from anywhere. (on EDGE that will never fly) It will get there, but it will be slow. Unless there is an industry standard for video content delivery, there is no way to regulate and end the use of bad video.

    Like my old college professor in Avid Editing Class would tell me:

    Shit In – Shit Out

  • midyat

    Taşın ve gümüşün sanata dönüştüğü kent Midyat
    Midyat Resimleri mutlaka gezip görülmesi gereken bir yer

blog comments powered by Disqus