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March 27, 2008

CBS Testing HD Streaming

Michael Arrington

36 comments »

CBS released a high definition player today in the labs area of their site, along with a few clips. They are currently streaming (not progressive download) in H.264/AVC format at 480p, with 720p and 1080p coming soon, they say.

Hulu and others are also beginning to test high definition streaming. Some shows on Hulu, for example, are optionally available in 480p format. They also have a few clips available in 720p.

Update: We’ve had a chance to speak with Eric Feng, the CTO of Hulu, about how this CBS announcement compares to the video quality provided by Hulu.

Hulu currently provides three levels of quality: 360p, 480p, and 720p. The first two levels are streamed whereas the third is progressively downloaded. Since CBS has yet to stream anything above 480p, these new tests are nothing extraordinary…yet. However, even if CBS begins to stream 720p or higher, consumers might not see much benefit. According to Feng, the median broadband download rate in the US is 1.9mb/sec and high definition video (ordinarily considered 720p or higher on the web) consumes 2.5mb/sec. So if CBS tries streaming 720p, they’d probably run into lots of buffering issues.

We should note that 480p and 720p are not available for all videos on Hulu. Only a certain selection of movies are available in 480p and only very few samples are available in 720p. Hulu doesn’t currently plan to deploy 1080p because it takes up too much bandwidth and processing power.

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Comments

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  1. browse

    March 27th, 2008 at 5:11 pm

    it’s not really fair to call 480p ‘high-def.’

    HD on a computer is at least 720.

  2. Michael Arrington

    March 27th, 2008 at 5:12 pm

    browse - 480p is very close to being true HD, which is 720 vertical lines of resolution.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.....television

  3. THEO

    March 27th, 2008 at 5:25 pm

    Isn’t that the girl from Showgirls and Saved By The Bell?
    I could get into this high-resolution stuff.

  4. Craig

    March 27th, 2008 at 5:26 pm

    Too Bad Comcast and Verizon are going to limit your bandwidth so that if you actually try to stream HD you’ll be labeled a ‘Heavy User’ and have to pay 10X for your bandwidth.

  5. Aaron Choi

    March 27th, 2008 at 5:37 pm

    elizabeth berkeley?

  6. More Profitable than Justin.tv

    March 27th, 2008 at 5:39 pm

    She’s yummy in HD, SD, DD, whatever…

  7. Dru Nelson

    March 27th, 2008 at 5:55 pm

    Great, now they can run our HD video ads :-)

    http://www.brightroll.com/2008.....vertising/

  8. browse

    March 27th, 2008 at 5:55 pm

    Mike,

    look on wikipedia again. 480p is most definitely standard def.

    “vertical resolution” means image height. 480 < 720.

  9. Anstrum

    March 27th, 2008 at 6:19 pm

    480 or 720 - whatever. The clips seriously look great. Bring it on CBS. Can’t happen soon enough.

  10. KJM

    March 27th, 2008 at 6:54 pm

    CBS is actually using our transcoding engine for the HD gallery.

    if anybody is looking for high-quality, high-throughput transcoding solutions, shoot an email to transcoding@agnostic-media.com, and we can talk.

  11. CARversation.com

    March 27th, 2008 at 6:54 pm

    Is that kelly from save by the bell?

  12. Ed

    March 27th, 2008 at 8:12 pm

    I seem to recall 480p being referred to as “Enhanced Definition” and 720p, 1080i, and 1080p (and presumably anything else 720p or above) being referred to has “High Definition.” While it’s great that we can finally stream shows online at the same resolution my SD TV gets (480), don’t go patting these sites on the back quite yet.

  13. HDRSS

    March 27th, 2008 at 8:22 pm

    Good stuff… Internet TV comes of age, finally! :-)

  14. BA

    March 27th, 2008 at 9:14 pm

    Do we know what technology is going to be used? I believe ABC uses Move Networks, what will CBS use?

  15. veejaytsunamix

    March 27th, 2008 at 9:35 pm

    I can produce in full HD but the only free online distribution
    I’ve found & used sucessfully is :

    http://www.vimeo.com/tsunamix/videos

    they requirer 720p to be considered HD there.

  16. vicky

    March 28th, 2008 at 2:00 am

    Only available in usa not anywhere else

    admin
    http://freeindiantv4ever.com

  17. Jason

    March 28th, 2008 at 6:05 am

    Arrington, I think you better stick to commenting on things you know something about. Because clearly HD resolutions are not one of them.

    480 is the VERTICAL resolution

    Normal SD is 720×480.

    HD resolutions are as follows.

    1280×720 and 1920×1080.

    SLIGHTLY different more resolution than 480, by like a magnitude of 3 and 6.

  18. Dutch

    March 28th, 2008 at 6:07 am

    > According to Feng, the median broadband download rate in the US is
    > 1.9mb/sec and high definition video (ordinarily considered 720p or higher on
    > the web) consumes 2.5mb/sec.

    Wow… 1.9 millibits per second! That’s almost 165 bits per day! Is it really so hard to use to correct terms on a site that has “tech” in its name?

  19. Pete Steege

    March 28th, 2008 at 7:05 am

    do higher bandwidth countries like Japan have HD streaming now? The US is limited by the pipes, but several other countries are not.

  20. Jake

    March 28th, 2008 at 7:33 am

    Wow. Quality on these CBS videos on my computer is better than on my HD television.

  21. Jason

    March 28th, 2008 at 8:02 am

    Jake when you are viewing them on a 20″ monitor, anything with decent quality looks great.

  22. Alex

    March 28th, 2008 at 9:44 am

    Has anyone gotten this to work? It just hangs when I click Play.

  23. Jason

    March 28th, 2008 at 10:47 am

    Works for me!

  24. Shannon

    March 28th, 2008 at 11:24 am

    Looks awesome. How do I get this to play on my TV?

  25. Jason

    March 28th, 2008 at 12:13 pm

    Hook up pc/mac mini - use wireless keyboard/mouse

  26. mimi

    March 28th, 2008 at 5:18 pm

    Hasn’t ABC.com been offering HD streaming online for some time…i know you can watch Lost in HD and I think other stuff too

  27. Alex

    March 28th, 2008 at 9:49 pm

    Are people watching this with a wifi connection or with ethernet? It plays back horribly for me but ABC’s video works great. I know ABC is using Move.

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