XStreamHD Video

[tomcrown1]

Scott does one have to install the dish or will XTREAMHD install the dish??

[Scott Greczkowski]

Scott does one have to install the dish or will XTREAMHD install the dish??

You can have it installed or install it yourself.

XStreamHD knows that many of us technical guys would rather hook up our own stuff then have someone come in your house and monkey around behind all your equipment.

[Arse69]

Are they going to be looking for retailers to offer their product?

[Bigguy]

I have a slimline dish still up but don't use it for any thing. Can this dish be used for this service?

[Stargazer]

The lnb looked like an FSS lnb that Dish Network used on their SuperDishes. Would be nice if all we needed was an 18 inch dish like what was used back in the early days of Dish and Direct as those dishes can be had for real cheap.

They could stream locals over their network couldn't they? Does this service offer all the channels you can get with satellite and cable or just movies and games? I think a service like this would be great for those wanting to do gaming where there is no cable or broadband service available.

[rockymtnhigh]

I am still boggled by their price stucture. As Scott said above:

From memory the movies to rent were $6.99 but that's for a full 1080p movie in the highest quality plus the lossless audio.

XStreamHD is not going to be for everyone but if you want the best quality audio and video in your house then this is a product for you. As I said before I was impressed with what I saw.

$7 to rent a movie that I can get from Blockbuster for $4.99, and not have to pay for a monthly fee, plus several hundred dollars up-front? And is the picture quality and sound going to be better than a blu-ray? Really?

And if the movies shown on their website are indicative of what they will be showing, wow.... serious waste of money.

I don't care if it is a DLNA server; I have two Dish receivers on 2 HD sets, external hard drives I can move around; plus a Sling HD Pro. Just not seeing how this succeeds.

I didn't see it as being impressive a year ago at CES, and based on the crappy movies they are ADVERTISING on their website - I am less impressed now.

[tomcrown1]

The lnb looked like an FSS lnb that Dish Network used on their SuperDishes. Would be nice if all we needed was an 18 inch dish like what was used back in the early days of Dish and Direct as those dishes can be had for real cheap.

They could stream locals over their network couldn't they? Does this service offer all the channels you can get with satellite and cable or just movies and games? I think a service like this would be great for those wanting to do gaming where there is no cable or broadband service available.

According to their site they will be doing cable--broadcast type programs as VOD in others words you download a show like house and watch it when you want.

According to engadget they will show first run movies 6 weeks after they hit the movie theaters.

[rjruby]

According to engadget they will show first run movies 6 weeks after they hit the movie theaters.

All movies or certain studios?

[SatinKzo]

All movies or certain studios?

Would be interesting to know, but even that is not unique. Vudu gets SOME movies as they are in theaters. Nothing I care to watch yet, but even this won't make up for the monthly fee yet even if they get rights to major releases.

[pendragon]

Time will tell whether XStreamHD will acquire sufficient content, but on the surface the technical capabilities of the equipment look very nice. However I'm having a hard time seeing how this will integrate into their target market, if I understand it correctly. I'm also frustrated they can't seem to publish coherent documents that start at the big picture and work down. Instead, most of what I've seen is a handful of amateurish videos that open more questions than they answer.

If XStreamHD is targeting the higher-end A/V market where people either can afford or at least care for the video and audio quality, XStreamHD seems to have the technology that can do it. But those who are interested are probably already doing something, not having sat around waiting for XStreamHD over the past few years. My conjecture is XStreamHD needs to worry more about how they fit into existing infrastructures, rather than trying to define their own.

Some of us have media servers. Most of us in this club figured out how to handle HD content via OTA years ago, perhaps a decade in some cases. We don't need XStreamHD to be a Johnny-come-lately me-too. Most of us already have content delivered by DBS, cable or even FTA and have the means to manage it. I expect quite a number also have Blu-ray or its one time competitor. With all of these choices, it's not uncommon that we build infrastructures that attempt to seamlessly integrate as much as possible.

In my system, the online storage capacity I had a year ago dwarfs the maximum XStreamHD can do at release by nearly two orders of magnitude, and has a designed-in capability to gracefully rotate in more as technology improves. We can setup, record and manage HD from nearly 20 centrally-served sources, including multiple OTA, FTA, DN, Blu-ray, HD DVD and soon Shaw at any of the screens in the house. The most important part is each position is managed by a common interface and remote that works the same in every room even though each set up has entirely different hardware.

If I were to buy into XStreamHD, I would have to outfit a parallel server and client architecture that would do a very poor imitation of what is already there. Even if I had built a shadow of my current system, the same would still be true. So out-of-the-box XStreamHD implements a separate interface, requires another spigot to feed in the video and audio, requires a new client box at each screen position and a separate device on all the universal remotes. About all that is common is there is already GbE in every room. The only good thing is their $200 media extender seems to claim support for HP MPEG2 & H.264. That's 4:2:2 if they're telling the truth. But can it play my high-rate FTA streams?

Even after all that brain damage I can only rent video? Geez, I still watch some of my 30-year-old LaserDiscs when the material is otherwise unavailable or worse, lost. I've invested a lot of dosh into Hollywood over the years, and I have no interest in having them tell me when I can watch what I have.