Dan203 said:
Isn't that the same thing people do when they buy an HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Player? Or how about an XBox/PS3? They require $50-$60 games to actually do anything. I know they're not exact comparisons, but they are similar in that you have to buy an expensive box then have to turn around and pay more for content to actually use that box.
I personally am going to seriously consider one of these when they come out. Based on what I've read the video quality is far superior to most competitors and actually in line with upsampling DVD players. I'll probably try one out at BestBuy or the like to see for myself, but it sounds promising.
Dan
this is not quite the same thing.....an XboX/PS3 has more uses than just playing movies (and you can rent the games, so you don't necessarily have to spend $50 - $60 on the games), and with a Blu-Ray/HD-DVD, you have a disc to play, which means you're not limited to a 24-hour period to watch the movie before you have to pay for it again. in my area, all the movie rental stores give you 5 days before the movies have to be returned....and there's also the option for rental programs like Netflix & such. hell, even the crappy DivX on-demand discs back in the early days of DVD (not to be confused with DivX-encoded media files) gave you something like 2 - 3 days before you had to pay to watch the movie again, and you even had a physical product that you owned.
then add to that the fact that if you buy a movie on this service, you cannot even make a backup copy of it onto a disc, so if your box's hard drive fails, you're screwed (or at the very least, you have to use up your own bandwidth to download it again).
the main thing with these types of products, really, is not the actual technology, unfortunately....there's a lot of awesome tech out there, including this product....it's just being held back by the RIAA/MPAA and the record companies/movie studios who are trying to give you less for the same or higher price (i.e., you don't even get a physical product, or the ability to create a "fair-use" backup of your purchased content).
sorry, but if i want to rent a movie, i'll go to the video store and get the actual disc that i don't have to return for 5 days....and if i want to buy a movie, i'll go buy the disc that i can make a backup of, and actually have a physical product for my money as well....
Anyone know how they achieve a higher quality? Are TiVo/Amazon underestimating their audience, or limited by technological shortcomings of the TiVo hardware?
