Do you watch in standard or High Def?

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.

WolfForager

pickarooney wrote: »

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.

It'll be on Sky1 HD, think it airs a few days before RTE2 too.

Our man in Havana

This thread will be moved.

tman

Usually go for the 350MB xvid release, but for anime I have started swaying towards 720p rips... Perfect for my laptop seeing as it is nowhere near capable of a res supporting 1080p.
Most of my viewing would be done via the PS3 (or 360 if the file isn't supported, or failing that, the laptop hooked up via HDMI)

slave1

720p always, .mkv the best

HDfan

I try to watch in HD but...

170 GB cap / with smart /for 3 comp. it give me 2 GB / day

and 1 episode from iTune have 700 MB - 1.3 GB.

Trevor451

I have both a HD Sony Bravia TV and one of those old sony widescreen TVs and I honestly noticed no diffrence watching the dark night on blu ray and watching it on sky movies in SD :rolleyes:

miralize

Once i get a decent connection, strictly HD

Right now, its a mixture

wheresmybeaver

I don't have the storage space to justify getting TV shows in HD. I'm happy enough with standard def, and if I can I'll make an MKV DVD rip rather than getting an AVI TV rip as the quality is always better. Recently I've started to use Handbrake to rip DVDs to MKV with AC3 audio intact as the encode quality of h264 is only getting better and better. DivX / Xvid unfortunately makes everything very soft and smudgy in comparison.

For movies, if it's top-rated or has good photography / soundtrack I'll go for 720p. I don't notice the difference between 720p and 1080p on a 40 inch screen, and my netbook won't happily play 1080p anyway.

For movies that are only ok, or comedies etc, I'll just get a standard def copy. No need to be in HD.

I have an ordinary Sky box. Their HD offering is expensive and doesn't offer a HD experience like the US just yet, so I'll hang on.

Richard Dower

LOL....the move from TV forum to here garnered more votes :-)