Video on demand pic quality: How does Shaw stack up?

[ss_blake]

Just wondering if anyone has done comparisons on how new HD movies on Shaw Video on Demand stack up against the competition in terms of picture quality.

Right now, the two best VOD providers in terms of picture quality are the Xbox Live "Zune HD" service, and "Vudu" (used to require a set-top box, now available via PS3 app) - both are 1080p. Of course, anyone can stream 1080p crap, and HD quality these days boils down to bitrate and compression. Most Zune HD movies are around 9-11 GB, which for a 2 hour movie would be around 9 MBS if my math is right (about 1/4 the bit rate of blu-ray). My eyes can barely tell the difference between Blu-Ray and Zune HD, so they must use excellent compression technology.

Where does Shaw VOD fit in? Anyone know their bitrate, or average GB size for a movie? Are all new movies offered in 1080p HD?

[verd]

Shaw HD VOD is 720p afaik. I rented a movie (Transformers 1) from them last week for the first time and was really disappointed. The picture was not sharp, even in comparison to movies on Showcase HD. Additionally, there was some occasional stuttering, which is totally unacceptable imo. But mostly I'm comparing it to Blu Ray, not to other streaming or download services, and there is just no way it is in the same league. I will not be making much further use of the VOD service.

Also good to note: The movie was shown in 16:9 full screen; not letterboxed.

[talljak]

The HD VOD movies look you are watching a DVD.
The SD VOD movies look like standard TV.

They need to boost the HD quality up.
Movies on movie central HD for example look a lot better.

Also the menus and screens in VOD are heavily compressed a pixelated.
But that does not affect your movie, just makes the system look cheap.

[Shaw Champ]

I would say that Shaw would fit in as one of the top VOD providers not only in terms of quality but content available. Our VOD library offers over 1200 HD titles and over 5000 VOD titles overall.

Shaw is continually improving their video quality on both SD and HD content, they are also a leader in 3D VOD content. We also have a very up-to-date and continuously evolving infrastructure to serve our customers VOD.

In some of our recent advertising out there, with our network upgrade going on, one the goals mentioned is to offer Blu-Ray-like Quality VOD. For specific bitrates I'm afraid I can't supply you with those due to competitive reasons.

I would point out that some of the other choices out there from VOD providers use over the top service via the internet which can’t always guarantee quality of service, whereas Shaw’s VOD provides dedicated bandwidth through QAM, so the quality theoretically should be better.

I'm pretty sure I remember reading when using Zune HD docking to HDTV it will be at 720p with a max support of up to 14Mbit/s. I would assume that most likely the other guys are using Adaptive bitrates to serve their content too.

@Verd and talljak appreciate your feedback which we will pass on.

[talljak]

5000 VOD titles overall

Oddly for subscription VOD service such as Movie Central VOD there are currently only 204 titles to choose from. I would be a much happier costumer if this selection went up.

[verd]

I would certainly welcome Blu Ray quality VOD, but that would require a minimum continuous stream of 54 Mbps. If Shaw can pull that off in the coming years with network upgrades, I will tip my hat in quite sincere appreciation.

[Shaw Champ]

@Talljak, Movie Central VOD used to be less than 30 titles like it is with everyone else out there. We integrated Shaw Movie Club to Movie Central VOD thus the increase to 200+. This can change based on the length of the title contracts bound by for VOD.

Additionally when I said 5000 number before it is about 10,000 titles we have available to order! (using online ordering)

[audacity]

Shaw Champ,

A few technical quibbles with your post...

Originally Posted by Shaw Champ

I would point out that some of the other choices out there from VOD providers use over the top service via the internet which can’t always guarantee quality of service, whereas Shaw’s VOD provides dedicated bandwidth through QAM, so the quality theoretically should be better.

I'm pretty sure I remember reading when using Zune HD docking to HDTV it will be at 720p with a max support of up to 14Mbit/s. I would assume that most likely the other guys are using Adaptive bitrates to serve their content too.

Using the Zune service on a XBOX console allows you to buffer the content on local console storage to guarantee the video quality doesn't need to "fall back" to a lower bitrate. I've never used a Zune HD device, but I'm pretty sure that the content would be buffered there as well, so if you plug a Zune HD into your TV and watch a video, it wouldn't be using a WiFi network to stream the content "live". So, the bitrate in this case would only be "adaptive" in the sense that whoever encoded the video got to pick the bitrate. It isn't like Netflix streaming where it determines what the most your internet connection can handle "live".

Additionally, you can easily have an adaptive bitrate where the "high bandwidth" bitrate is much higher than the bitrate supported by the "constant quality" QAM bandwidth allotment.

Finally, this conversation about bitrates isn't complete unless we also mention which codecs are being used. In many cases Shaw's services are using MPEG2, so while the bitrate may be higher than what Zune/Netflix offer, the relatively old codec ends up delivering a lower image quality at a higher bitrate. This would explain the video quality problems that some posters are experiencing. 10 megabit MPEG2 and 10 megabit VC-1 (in the case of Zune) are very different animals.