Maybe 1080p won't be final standard. Hear me out hear....
Say someone does setup a decent and reasonable priced product at a slightly lower resolution like 720 and for a large percentage of the audience this quality is acceptable (as well as sufficiently better than DVD) and deliverable quickly via broadband, then this could become the standard. Sure 1080p would exist for videophiles just as super-CDs and now FLAC exists for audiophiles.
I'm concerned that if blu-ray does become the standard by the time broadband catches up, hardware and movie companies will just release an even higher resolution standard and put the consumers through the mangle again.
This line of thought does have precedent, record companies were looking at higher and higher bit rate where all the average Joe wants is a bit rate slightly higher than what the player is capable of outputting and a fast and cheap way of getting it. MP3s are the standard now and the other ideas are long gone
The thing about a higher-resolution though...is that it doesn't really make any sense. You can't really tell a difference (sitting 6+ feet away) between 720p and 1080p until you get up to about a 47" screen. To make that same argument for 1080p vs. something higher (say 2160p or "Quad HD"), you'd need to have screens that are something like 70" and above. You're now starting to hit the physical limitations of most peoples' walls/rooms. Even at 50", unless you have a large living room or a dedicated home theater room, that's going to exceed most peoples' ideal picture size.
This is why I continue to make the argument that picture quality is largely becoming irrelevant. While many on Engadget can tell a difference between 720p and 1080p on a large enough screen, the average consumer simply can't. They will be happy with a DVD on a 42" television. Bump that up to 720p (EASILY streamable on most cable connections using H.264 compression) and add in the ease of access that comes from online delivery, and that is what is going to win people over. It's the same thing as DVD vs. VHS, except the quality is even less of an issue now, whereas the extras (no rewinding, remembering where you left off, etc) are all there.
While its tablet world topping pixel density, Tegra 2 silicon, and fresh to death OS certainly sound awesome, we had to get our grubby mitts on one to see if it's as good as its spec sheet would have us believe.
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Maybe 1080p won't be final standard. Hear me out hear....
Say someone does setup a decent and reasonable priced product at a slightly lower resolution like 720 and for a large percentage of the audience this quality is acceptable (as well as sufficiently better than DVD) and deliverable quickly via broadband, then this could become the standard. Sure 1080p would exist for videophiles just as super-CDs and now FLAC exists for audiophiles.
I'm concerned that if blu-ray does become the standard by the time broadband catches up, hardware and movie companies will just release an even higher resolution standard and put the consumers through the mangle again.
This line of thought does have precedent, record companies were looking at higher and higher bit rate where all the average Joe wants is a bit rate slightly higher than what the player is capable of outputting and a fast and cheap way of getting it. MP3s are the standard now and the other ideas are long gone
The thing about a higher-resolution though...is that it doesn't really make any sense. You can't really tell a difference (sitting 6+ feet away) between 720p and 1080p until you get up to about a 47" screen. To make that same argument for 1080p vs. something higher (say 2160p or "Quad HD"), you'd need to have screens that are something like 70" and above. You're now starting to hit the physical limitations of most peoples' walls/rooms. Even at 50", unless you have a large living room or a dedicated home theater room, that's going to exceed most peoples' ideal picture size.
This is why I continue to make the argument that picture quality is largely becoming irrelevant. While many on Engadget can tell a difference between 720p and 1080p on a large enough screen, the average consumer simply can't. They will be happy with a DVD on a 42" television. Bump that up to 720p (EASILY streamable on most cable connections using H.264 compression) and add in the ease of access that comes from online delivery, and that is what is going to win people over. It's the same thing as DVD vs. VHS, except the quality is even less of an issue now, whereas the extras (no rewinding, remembering where you left off, etc) are all there.