Why the aversion to disc formats?
Oh, I dunno. Slow boot-up. Annoying animated menu systems that delay me getting to the movie. Same for annoying FBI warnings and forced movie previews and little "NO" signs that say you cannot skip through them or get to the menu (let alone the flipping movie). I kind of have the same aversion to commercials on TV these days too. I thought being able to fast forward through them on a DVR was nice, but having NO commercials (off Net) is even nicer yet.
If anything, a 93 inch screen is begging for the highest bitrate, highest resolution format. And Blu-ray is undoubtably that (unless you've got access to 880Mbit/s 4:4:4 HDCAM version of movies).
Well, two things. One is that I hear a lot of talk about high bit-rates and what not, but when I compare side-by-side snapshots of high versus what you seem to call "low", I don't see all these supposed visible artifacts people think are there. In fact, ATV rentals are extremely clean looking for such horrible bit-rates. It could just be that BD is overkill on the compression. That's fine if you have the room to spare (like on a disc), but not necessary on a hard drive if you can't tell the difference at 1/2 or even 1/4 the file size. But that's the thing. If you compress them yourself, you can use as little compression as you desire or your system can handle. I STILL want them on a hard drive server so I don't have to put up with the annoying crap mentioned earlier. Really, until you TRY that kind of setup, you probably don't realize what you're missing. I can NEVER go back to a disc format. It's SO NICE to have ALL my digital media available on a menu system from photos to music to movies to TV shows. And I don't need racks and racks and racks of discs to wade through to find what I'm looking for. They're available at the push of a button and not just in one room. They're ALL available all around my house! And I can easily dump them on my iPod Touch as well! Yes, discs suck hard!
So you're converting Blu-rays and movies in the name of convenience? That seems counterintuitive.
Don't' knock it until you try it.
I prefer Blu-Ray on my 92" screen/6.1 channel system. Of course, you beat me by an inch, so maybe you're right.
You can prefer anything you want. I was only speaking for myself and saying the above poster doesn't speak for everyone. To each their own.
You have a 93" screen and 6.1 channel home theater and you prefer starved-bitrate 720p downloads to Blu-ray? Lol.
Actually, my projector is 720P (1080p projectors cost over $5k a few years ago when I bought it; I've never had any guest complain about the picture quality yet; I really think I'd need a bigger screen before I would feel 1080p is "necessary", but when I buy the next projector, it will probably be 1080p...then again it might just be a 3D projector, most of which are 720p right now). And who says the movies are bit-rate "starved"?
You sound like someone who believes in propaganda more than reality. There are ways to encode BD at high bit-rates and still put them on a playback server. Apple may not currently offer 1080p output playback (it can still play back 1080p files, though), but others do (like my old 1st Gen ATV with a crystal card added for $30) and then the same files output in 1080p. I know that's hard to digest, though. Have fun sitting through ads, menus, FBI warnings, slow boots and that's after you locate the disc you want (I know; I used to have racks and racks of discs to browse through; now I browse a menu and press play).
tv2 has the horsepower to output 1080p, so I agree it will likely be a new piece of hardware with the dual-core A5(?).
