IPHD - ABC digital High(er) definition primetime.

click to launch website

Competition for eyeballs... Its a wonderful thing. Ok so its not true HD in any sense, but its good enough to write about, and well worth your time to investigate.

Basic typical Digital TV is about 352 pixels across the width of your tv screen, which for most people is far less than the available resolution of a computer screen. Its all about pixel realestate and the screen. ABC is delivering a nicely scalable 720 pixels.

Click the image above and take a look at ABC's latest. visually it is every bit as capable as Joost, its got all it takes to deliver what you want. yes, at full screen. Select "Size" in the lower right. Resolution here will be at least 3 times better than any broadcast option. If your display has nice upscaling internal to the monitor then you will actually prefer this to your basic Comcast. Although it is high bandwidth, i think most good to great broadband connections will handle this just fine. It basically is the file quality of a progressive DVD in "Big" mode. Go for it... you will be hooked.

Awesome sums it up nicely.

... credit where credit is due, ABC is going to grab a lot of eyeballs with this latest offering, several very savvy advertizers are in on it. Nissan, Toyota all announce at the openers. Navigation is a left right slider and a click gets you the episodes, up to the last 6. I missed SIX DEGREES and didnt realize what a great show it is, thanks basically to this website and its video. There is no reason at all why this convergence cant win out over other options, in a huge way. Advertizers get thier eyeballs. Currently its wide open, no membership hassles, and it totaly kills AOL Hi-Q etc all the rest. At this moment in time, the ABC primetime content player and its production quality, kills every other offering out there for video on a web connection...

It is 16:9 so it fills my 1680 x 1050 screen 1 here at hd1080i labs... Nicely. Only my own videos look better, and thats because they are coming off my local server farm at HD1080i . This is from a website. I do not know what this codec is yet, but i plan on finding out more. It puts my mpeg2 Comcraptastic subscriber cable digital service to shame.

It has a mini mode, and yes, if you have the right phone, you can see it there also. Its BIG mode is 720x400 pixels, basically DV1 format. It seems that its the source file that is upscaled by a custom codec and surrounded by navigation with flash (7,8,9) enhancements. It is in Stereo.

You will need to download several new software bundles that use active-x. It is worth it. My dual core cpus loaf along at 22% to play this in Big mode. It only plays in screen 1 of my 3 screen setup (5280 pixel desktop - I reconfigured and whatever screen 1 is , will get the full screen playback. its quite nice in 1920 x 1080.)

My desktop screen capture ( 3 monitor setup )

For me this was a serious eye opener. There are GREAT ABC shows out there that i would have had no exposure to, and totally missed, had it not been for this player/website. It's quality is better then STD Digital CableTV. This is the type of entertainment convergence-repurpose & reconnect that I was harping on last year, and it will be very strong in the entertainment marketspace.

I just tried it on my other HD/PC and quite frankly, its better than APPLE TV so hold on to your wallet. I have windows media center with YpBPr component output for 480i on the Toshiba satellite laptop and ran this through my std NTSC CRT monitor. Stunned. Then through component input DVD player out the s-video connection and into to a big screen 4:3 the kids play video games on... Fantastic. ( in basic talk - i hooked a laptop up to my 50" rear projection circa 1996 TV set and it was better than Comcast in quality and ease and stereo sound.)

I sort of wrote-off ABC as a 720p not really into high definition quality network. They carry on about "Scan Lines" in HD1080i... and i know anyone with that problem in HD1080i is simply doing it wrong and living in the past. Watch "planet earth" in Discovery HD and tell me you see anything of a scan-line problem. You wont, they do it right and its amazing. This new ABC website is causing me to re-think the delivery-value of desireable content though. There is a lot of great HD network operations out there, but they are lost in poor content - most of it is stuff i do not care to see.

I will cover the options for making all this work in 1920x1080 through DVI from a cost efficient box next time, but i should mention that all my graphics displays are driven by nVidia cards, and they have HDCP and PureVideo off a Verizon FIOS connection.