@Neondog82: I just take HD to mean that the video is encoded at 720 lines of resolution or more - any other definition is fraught with even bigger problems than this one . Thanks for the links, too - I had seen the Lifehacker article (forgot to post a link here, d’oh!) but the other article is good too.

@sidelobe: Definitely not arguing that bitrate is not important or that we can even consider using uncompressed video in almost any application, so I do agree with your comments. I have to say in this day and age that anyone that is very into music should be looking beyond MP3s @ 128kbps (although this has become kind of standard through iTunes, that is hopefully changing with the plethora of iTunes Plus content now being released). I always encode using AAC at 256 kbps. That said, I wouldn’t bother encoding at that high a level if all I ever used to listen to music was the built-in speakers in my iPhone . Good quick math example, too, showing what the raw data would look like for video.

@anony mouse: Totally agree. At the very least, all these companies should be publishing details about the quality of their transmissions.

@Joe Dawson: I have heard about this but not tried it. I’ll check out the link - thanks!

I know the question about downloading torrents in Canada and legal aspects are still in question. But it is worth a look… Very nice bit of software that can really allow you to automate your downloading of TV shows.

I agree that there are a lot of variables in TV settings, but we’re talking about a basic infrastructure thing that should be defined and consistent.

A good HTDV is able to display a 1920×1080 image 25x per second. That’s a 2 megapixel image every 40 milliseconds. Assuming a 16-bit color depth in three colors (I have no idea what the real color depth is), that’s 2.4 gigabits per second. A Blu-Ray disc can carry a lot of data, but not that much.

We have no choice but to squeeze the data. That leaves us talking about bit rate.

We went through this with audio. A CD can carry uncompressed music at 1,400kb/s, but we prefer MP3-encoded music at 128kb/s. But it’s impractical to carry HDTV uncompressed at all.

@SteveintheUK Before the internet I would just borrow movies from everyone kind of like a social library of movie trading. If I missed a show I liked to watch then I would just chalk it up to being SOL.

I use TVersity. I haven’t actually used in about 6 months but I used to be pretty active with it streaming to my Dlink DSM-520. I had set up a windows service that would open happyfish and download all my podcast when the RSS was updated. I guess I just got tired of the problems associated with wireless streaming. I was actually thing about re purposing my regular Xbox to a media center with XBMC.

A couple of links for you to check out:

http://www.room362.com/archives/265-TiVo-for-the-Economically-Unstimulated.html

http://lifehacker.com/5138423/cut-the-cable-for-good-with-boxee-and-apple-tv

What did you do before video was available on the internet, or you got broadband?

I’m just wondering, and thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to answer.

Sorry Jeff, you can have you post back now, Thanks