GuaiHong's Profile

Sunny in Philadelphia is NOT the kind of thing that makes a difference whether you watch it on Blu-Ray or streaming. Check out Planet Earth or an action movie like Transformers 2 on BluRay (on a large 1080p TV). It can be stunning, especially when paired with good sound. For shows and movies where a lot of effort has been put into making it look and sound good, BluRay is a HUGE upgrade over any streaming you are going to find from a network site, Hulu, Netflix, etc.

That said, it's not the BluRay format itself that makes it look great. It's the resolution, and the amount of information encoded. I'm no expert, but I assume you could get the same quality in a variety of digital formats, if you were to encode them at the same resolution and bit rate. The problem is that transmitting that much information, that quickly, takes more bandwidth than a lot of people have (plus, as I said, there are no hi-quality streaming sources). Mailing a BluRay to someone is one solution to that problem. Downloading an HD torrent is another (because you can transmit the information more slowly, then watch it once it's complete). Watching it in lower quality is another alternative, one which, as you pointed out, works great for a lot of programs.

Hmm, Plex looks good. Is that also a branch from the XMBC development tree, like Boxee?

Too bad it is Mac-only.

Or you could tie up your current too-long cord with a twist tie, which is cheaper and "greener."