• yolandaty69
• 16 Sep 2021
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Video Streaming Gets Hip

The days when video streaming was fatally unhip may be waning. No longer do you need to fuss with set-top boxes or chain yourself to a PC to enjoy Internet-delivered programming. Nowadays, all it takes is a Samsung Blu-ray player, a TiVo DVR, or a Sony BRAVIA HDTV—and you can hardly call yourself a videophile without investing in those product categories.

Samsung is enabling Netflix movie streaming through its BD-P2500 and BD-P2550 Blu-ray players, both of which list for $400. The former is BD-Live capable (Profile 2.0). The latter has Bonus View (Profile 1.1), and a firmware upgrade brings it into BD-Live territory. It is only available at Best Buy. Both will do DTS-HD with firmware upgrades, including bitstream output of lossless Master Audio.

Why should you bother with the BD-P2550 if it doesn’t do BD-Live out of the box? Because it streams music from Pandora Radio. This Internet radio station is part of the Music Genome Project, which employs a team of analysts who classify every song by 400 characteristics in order to personalize your listening choices.

Another new Netflix streaming partner is TiVo. The two first tried to team up in 2004, but licensing and technology problems intervened. With those problems finally solved, TiVo Series3, HD, and HD XL DVRs will stream from the Netflix online catalog. As with all Netflix partnerships, streaming is a side benefit of unlimited Netflix subscription plans, which start at $9 per month. Other outfits in the streaming business with Netflix include LG, Roku, and Microsoft/ Xbox.

Meanwhile, Will Smith is making streaming history with his new movie, Hancock. The leather-clad superhero made his home debut on the Sony BRAVIA Internet Video Link, a $300 device that attaches to the backs of Sony LCD HDTVs. Pay $10 for the streaming presentation, then register online, and Sony will send you a free Blu-ray copy of the movie. Then you can compare your golden memories of the streaming debut (in 720p or one of two 480p feeds, optimized for your broadband connection) with the 1080p version on the disc.

Sony isn’t the only DT V maker with streaming plans. Toshiba intends to build the Cell microprocessor into future DTVs, which will enable them to display up to 48 simultaneous streams from a hard drive. This new job would be moonlighting for the Cell, which was developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM for the PlayStation 3.
Finally, Warner Brothers and DivX have struck a deal to offer the studio’s movie titles in the codec’s HD and SD formats for online distribution to DivX- certified devices. The latter includes LG DTVs, Denon DVD players, JVC HTIBs, Samsung phones, and PC software.

However, despite all of this encouraging news, predictions of the optical disc’s demise may be premature. The state of broadband in the United States is still disappointing compared with Japan. Various estimates peg the average data rate in the U.S. at somewhere between 1.9 and 4.8 megabits per second. Compare that to Japan (61 Mbps), South Korea (45.6 Mbps), and the Netherlands (21.7 Mbps), and you’ll understand why Harold & Kumar aren’t the only guys who want to move to Amsterdam.

Perhaps someday we’ll all be Verizon FiOS or AT&T U-verse customers and our discs will be coasters. But the troubled economy will probably not usher in a golden age of broadband anytime soon. In the meantime, the new options above will let us dabble and dream a little.

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