How are you getting High Definition movies?

ronb

Flat screen TVs on sale in Bali are mostly HD - some are the half-way standard of 720p, others the full monty at 1080p. So, I am sure many of you have a HD TV. Indovision offers a few channels -but I haven't tried that yet. More and more of the movies I download are now HD - mostly 720p. I haven't been haunting the DVD shops lately, but I assume most of them are still selling standard definition movies. So what HD content do you get?

JabberWokker

I gave up with DVDs in Bali, found the quality to be amazingly bad. I have Indovision HD which has a great picture for movies and NGC but they have not enabled the built in PVR ability via the boxes USB for subscription, so I use a dreambox which does not accept HD for viewing and recording, so back to SD. I also noticed that the Indovision HD does only 2.0 not 5.1 for sound. Once they allow the PVR subscription to be enabled in Bali I will plug my Samsung Indovision HD box back in with an external USB hard disk. For my main viewing and HD content I settled eventually to using a Mac Mini as an iTunes server where I can download movies and TV shows from Apple and stream to Apple TVs wirelessly for content of all my media up to 1080p and 5.1 dolby digital. You can also add other music and mp4/m4v movies to your library if you get them from elsewhere or convert to this format. I find this a very reliable and easy solution for playback and user experience. I have recently seen a shop (can’t remember the name) which is along from Discovery Mall and upstairs that sell so called real Blu Rays and DVDs at very low prices. I have not tried their versions as I am now happy with the above solution.

Markit

Finally someone that pays for our movies - Ta, very much.

kri$

i download all of my tv and movies. the quality is much better than that of indovision (they gave me free HD channels when i signed up but didnt bother to give me a decoder that could play them). Bali internet is pretty much awful but i can just about manage to get everything i need with the fastest speed available for me which is 2 mbps. All you need is a HD TV hard drive ie A.C.Ryan Play on which connects via HDMI.

kri$

yeah i used to push them through my wifi onto a ps3 but found they stalled quite a lot due to the HD file size. Its nice just to dump all the downloads on something that is always connected to the TV directly. just for your information the playon doesnt come with a hard drive, you buy a normal pc hard drive seperately and just slot it into the playon. i now have 1 box with 2Tb Full of TV shows and 1 box with 2TB for movies. I just use a mix of www(dot)eztv(dot)it for most TV shows in low res and high res and teh usual thepiratebay(dot)se for movies and other random downloads. sorry cant post links yet

ronb

Thanks Kris. I was not familiar with AC Ryan Play On - but found a recent review at AC Ryan PlayOn!HD 2 1TB review - Introduction. An interesting gadget, and Waroeng Komputer in Jakarta list a few models. I also have been downloading movies (many at 720p, some at 1080p) and find them better than the DVDs from the many shops around Bali. But instead of using a media player like your Play On, I have been using my laptop to manage them. I have USB disks to store the collection and then to display, I have Netgear Push2TV (see NETGEAR Connected Entertainment Wireless Display Adapter) connected to the TV by HDMI, and then depend on Intel Wireless Display or Widi (see How to Connect Laptop to TV with Intel® Wireless Display (WiDi)) to send the movie from the laptop. So, where next? As the collection grows, I think I will move to making the disks with the movies become Network Attached Storage (NAS) available wirelessly to the laptop - or to a media player like you Play On.

spicyayam

I have the Play On also, but without the internal HD. I also got the wireless dongle so you can watch movies from your laptop without attaching any cables.