Streaming video, Blu-ray in competition

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LONG BEACH, Calif., April 3 (UPI) -- Online streaming video is approaching Blu-ray DVDs in quality, but the DVD format's U.S. advocates say there are reasons its 1080p resolution won't be beaten.

"Blu-ray Disc's high bandwidth and capacity allows for a comparatively luxurious data transfer rate and file size, since we don't have to worry about irritating customers with excessively long download times or rapidly filling up their hard drives with multiple 3GB-plus files," said Andy Parsons, vice president of corporate communications for Pioneer Electronics and chair of the Blu-ray Disc Association's promotion committee in the United States.

Still, streaming competitors to Blu-ray are growing in number, homemediamagazine.com reported Tuesday.

Both the PlayStation Network and the Xbox 360 offer 1080p video, as does Walmart's Vudu streaming movie service, and Netflix, which began offering 1080p streaming in 2010, offers 1080p streaming on the new Apple TV and says it has plans for 1080p streaming on the new iPad.

However, Parsons said he was "skeptical" most American households could reliably sustain the roughly 4 Mbps to 5 Mbps transfer rate needed for highly compressed 1080p streams.

"When we consider that Netflix alone can currently consume up to a third of the nation's Internet capacity during peak times, adding 1080p to the mix does not seem like a viable option long term," Parsons said. "Blu-ray Discs will never frustrate users with unexplained buffer under-run errors, do not rely on network service quality or availability, and contain the very best possible image and sound quality that a studio can deliver for a given title."