Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
But sadly, downloads in high-definition are a reality (in 720p only) for US consumers, through Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Live download service, through Amazon’s Unbox service and for movie rentals using iTunes. But the key here is that they’re still only available for US customers – too bad if you’re ready with money to buy but aren’t a US citizen.
We can blame the movie studios for that – they still live in a pre-Internet world where distribution and region coding and DRM are still important. Silly studios – they are learning the hard way that consumers simply detest the limitations placed on digital media.
Downloads are already universal if you traipse the underbelly of the Internet and choose the illegal, dark side of the force.
Those wanting to ‘go legal’ and pay money for movie downloads wherever they are in the world just have to wait until HD movie download services, whoever they are from (Apple, Microsoft, BigPond, etc) become available in their area, alongside multi-megabit download speeds and download caps of hundreds of gigabytes becomes common, especially if you want to download in HD.
So – your choices are simple. Buy a cheap HD DVD player from Toshiba and get a stack of bonus movies, as well as a player that can upscale DVDs, but with little hope of future HD DVD titles.
You could buy a PS3 or other (upgradeable) Blu-ray player, or you could wait for HD movie downloads, or you can download them now illegally.
Or... you can just sit back and relax with your existing DVD player and TV, and just wait for prices for HD equipment to come down even further.
SD, HD, Blu-ray, HD DVD, downloads... it’s nice to have choice, but with so many things to look out for, going HD is sadly nowhere near as easy as it should be.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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