Comments on: Battle Royale: The Participants & Rules

By: Ivan

Ivan — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:59:16 +0000

@ Dave: can we pre-register for SlingCatcher giveaway yet?

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:26:50 +0000

@Ivan Whenever the vendors allow it, I give away the gear. For example, Eye-Fi ($99) wanted their card back. Seems kinda crazy for a low-ticket item, but whatever!

By: Ivan

Ivan — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:56:03 +0000

I wish Sony would’ve released their rumored Store, so you could include PS3 in the mix. Not that it matters to me, since I used Live Search’s 35% off eBay promo to pick up Vudu box (second) and MGS4 PS3 bundle (first).

P.S. You should make it a policy to give away review gear! I’m sure Vudu won’t mind, lol. (unless you completely trash it, which — if you keep your expectations at the right level — is pretty darn hard to do).

P.P.S. HD should have been a pre-requisite. I’m sorry, but why would I pony up for an SD content for my HDTV? Netflix and Amazon need to get with the program. Although, Amazon is supposedly coming out with HD this year (right?).

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 04:42:51 +0000

@Ben I’ve seen it more than once, though I haven’t rented a movie recently via Unbox. (Did rent two episodes of Psych which looked fine, though stretched.)

@Yun Yeah, I’ve gone SD on occasion because it’s cheaper and quicker.

@Glenn I’m going to try and save the head to head video quality for another trip to the west coast. Perhaps a pal at Sling can let me borrow his two side-by-side 1080p Westinghouse HDTVs and help me with a comparison.

@tivoboy Not too many disclaimers/disclosures on this one. I’ve purchased the TiVo, Xbox, and Roku STBs. The Apple TV is a loaner from Ben Drawbaugh (Engadget HD) and the Vudu is a loaner which will be returned once this is complete (I don’t keep any review gear).

By: tivoboy

tivoboy — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:18:04 +0000

Spinmaster, it’s ME tivoboy, looking forward to this one!

(p.s.. Where’s the disclaimer!!)

By: Glenn

Glenn — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:45:16 +0000

HD has to be part of the comparison. I have ONLY rented HD movies on my Apple TV so far, waiting until the movie was available in HD or not renting it. For $1 on my Living Room HDTV, the quality improvement is easily worth it. Now if the SD quality were really DVD like this might not be such a big deal, but it isn’t….

By: rob

rob — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:09:48 +0000

This will be intersting, the biggest issue i still see is real estate in the Ent. Center. There’s only so many spots and by the time you add cable/sat box, maybe a TiVo, 360/PS3, DVD, Stereo, spearker(s) and maybe a power conditioner the space is about gone. That’s where I see TiVo and Xbox (add in Netflix and it wouldn’t be close)being the real winners if they can make the service work

By: Yun

Yun — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:22:45 +0000

Thanks Dave, looking forward to this. Any plan to do an HD update once all participants have caught up to HD download?

For now I think it’s a tough call between SD vs HD download. If it’s buy to own, for me it’s a no-brainer, I haven’t bought a SD DVD for ages. But if just renting once, I almost prefer the lower cost SD download. If I really like it and would want to own, then I’ll splurge on HD disks instead.