Piracy could put film industry out of business, warns group

[admin]

Illegal downloads of popular films are nearly as numerous as box office visits, a French antipiracy association claims. The Association Against Audiovisual Piracy (ALPA) analyzed P2P traffic in France between November 2007 and June 2008 and concluded that a number of popular films had been downloaded so many times that the phenomenon could endanger the entire film industry.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080806-piracy-could-put-film-industry-out-of-business-warns-group.html

[dr_ml422]

Hi admin. How good of a download can you actually get online? I've never done it and don't plan to, but heard different results. Some said the pictures don't come out that good and others say they're great. I'm pretty sure a really good connection like fios or w/e would definitely be needed.

[admin]

Film download quality can be quite good these days, especially video encoded with H.264. DVD quality stuff at under 1 GB.

For streaming, again H.264 type streaming can now deliver very good quality video over 450 kbps (~ 60 KB/s). Not quite broadcast quality, but some will beat downloads from a couple of years ago using DivX. YouTube's high quality mode uses H.264.

For HD content @ 720p, you can get away with good quality under 8GB.

I think that, if bandwidth is available freely, then TV episode downloads and streaming are quite possible with current technology. We just need someone to come up with a good system and a good pricing scheme for it to take off. An "all you can eat" plan, I think, will be quite good for TV episodes, allowing users to download and watch the latest epsiodes plus all archived episodes for a set fee per month.

[dr_ml422]

I need to learn more about the H.264 encoding to really make my new build work to it's potential. I'm not sure which sub-forum to post in regarding that. I know it's 1 that you moderate and I am going to need your help being you're mostly knowledgeable w/the whole hd thingy. Thnx.

Btw is it true that streaming is for the most part still the norm as other methods are still not fully implemented as you suggested.