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Hi,

I am fairly new to the forum and I am looking for some advice on movie downloads with a broadband connection.

Roughly how long would it take to download a 2 hour movie with a 1 meg connection? i.e. how big are the movies (file size) in GB's and are they compressed to make the files smaller so quicker to download?

Somebody told me that all VOD are in Mpeg4 or MP4 but I thought that was for iPods and PSP and I am looking for full screen films only.

Any advice would be appreciated and as I'm not a techie then in laymans terms would also help.

Just bumping this up to see if anyone can give some advice?

Ok I'll try and keep it simple...

The name Mpeg4 is a bit of a misnomer, AVI, mov, WMV, DivX, Xvid and even Blu-Ray DVD all use the Mpeg4 codec. (It comes in around 20 odd flavours). So don't worry about Mpeg4, if you have the latest versions of Quicktime, Windows Media Player and DivX you should be able to cover all bases execept Hi-def DVD which you won't be downloading anyway.

All the file extension names are, are the names of different "containers" for the Mpeg4 codec (think of them as different boxes that you put an Mpeg4 file in).

MP4 is aimed at Mobile phones, PSP etc. and is just another flavour of Mpeg4. Forget MP4 for full screen it's just not built for that.

Typical file sizes for DivX files, for example are ~ 650 - 750Mb for 90 minutes (give or take a bit).

Download times vary according to how you download and how much internet traffic you are using. For the above DivX file on 1Mb broadband I would expect to download it in ~ 2hrs on a good day.

The video quality depends on the bitrate and the video resolution, higher bitrate and higher resolution generally means better video quality but bigger file size.

Thanks for your reply and for your help which I appreciate and you have helped make things a lot clearer.

Can I ask you one more question?

If the movie I download from any VOD site is in DivX can I burn it to a DVD disc and play it on my DVD player or do I need to convert it back to Mpeg to be able to do that?

Some DVD players are now DivX certified, get one of these for ?40 from Argos and you are sorted otherwise you would have to convert to the DVD format to play. If quality is important to you go to Argos.

Did I say ?40? What was I thinking? I do applogise......it's ?29.95!!!

Ok thanks again for the help.

Last question I promise. Is there are any of these Mpeg4 files that play on a DVD player without having a special DVD player?

I ask as I bought Series 6 of the Sopranos from E-Bay and I asked the seller how he managed to get (6 by 55min episodes) 5 1/2 hours of video on each DVD-R disc with absolutely crystal clear and perfect DVD quality. It shows up as using 4.3GB on the disc in Windows Explorer.

He said it was easy with an AVI converter/encoder and DVD burning software like Nero or Clone DVD but to a non techie like myself then I doubt it's that easy.

If it's easy then I wouldn't mind back up some of my DVD's. If it isn't easy then I'll pass on it.

DVD uses a different codec so the answer is no. In fact the only Mpeg4 file that can be played is DivX provided that the player is certified as DivX (Xvid is the same as DivX its just spelt backwards)

All your seller has done is to recode files to fit a specific disc size. It's not really that difficult to do. Nero has a Recode option which is a doddle to use.

Is it that easy???????

I have Nero 7 Premium which has Recode 2 but I thought that converts to avi files and hence won't play on a normal DVD player. It does allow to convert to Nero Digital but those types of files don't play on 85%-90% of DVD players.

If you have any advice on how the E-Bay seller went about it then that would be a great help. If not then thanks for the help which you have already given which I appreciate.

In Nero select 'Recode DVD'

Import DVD

At bottom right tick the box 'Fit To Target'

From the drop down menu select Disc Size.

That will back-up a single disc.



For Your Sopranos:

Select 'Make your own DVD'

'Add Video Files'

If you go over the DVD size limit and hit 'Next' Nero will warn you and ask you if you want to fit the project to the available space.

Hit 'Yes'

Nero resizes project.