So we have all seen High Def videos on the Plasmas or LCDs TVs, but have you tried viewing the HD experience on your computer?

Some of you, like me, may not have migrated to the HD experience in your home (though that's changing soon in the Fritzsching household), but depending on how old your computer is, you probably can start viewing HD content now!

Akamai has released The HD Web resource Web site for that give you the details and industry standards of HD content online.

Akamai quotes in their White Paper about the viewer expectations and deliverability of HD content.

Viewers' expectations for HD Web content are equally straightforward: It has to look good, and it has to be available on demand. Providing this experience consistently, however, is not as simple as it appears.

Specifically, HD video files are large, and require extremely high throughput for uninterrupted, high-speed delivery. When they traverse the Internet en route from centralized infrastructures or centralized content delivery networks, these files encounter delays and failures specific to the capacity they require and the distance they have to travel to get to the viewer--namely latency, packet loss and peering problems. Files can take longer to download than they do to watch. They get interrupted; or delay for re-buffering; or the number of users that may access them is limited. In short, the experience is compromised.

Despite Internet traffic that's increasing 50% year over year, the capacity required to deliver a high-quality HD Web experience does exist. It's at the 'edge' of the Internet, leveraging the massive build-outs occurring in hundreds of networks worldwide. Only Akamai's highly distributed computing platform delivers content from within those networks, harnessing their capacity to accelerate downloads, serve HD content in its entirety, and scale to reach unlimited audiences--ultimately driving adoption of the HD Web.

The capacity of centralized or small-footprint network architectures is limited by the number of data centers and each data center's available exit/transit bandwidth. The largest centralized content delivery network providers (CDNs) have up to 30 locations within their network footprint and can, according to published claims, provide bandwidth of up to 1.4 Terabits per second.

So, let's see some examples.

720p - 1280 X 720 - BBC Earth Trailer (Windows Media)

1080p - 1920 X 1080 - BBC Earth Trailer (Windows Media)

720p - 1280 X 720 - Gannet Great Lakes Adventure (Quicktime)

720p - 1280 X 720 - - Respect - Skier documentary (Quicktime)
(Looks awesome on my machine!)

1080p - 1920 X 1080 - Respect - Skier documentary (Quicktime)

See if 720p or 1080p will work better for your computer. Note the screen resolution specifically. Don't freak out about the internet connection speed, it will just take a longer time to buffer. Then start looking for quicker ISPs.

To play 720p video

• Internet connection of 7.5 Mbps or greater (Wow! When is that coming to my house?)
• Windows XP /OSX - Windows XP /OSX
• Windows Media Player 9 Series / QUICKTIME 7.0 +
• 2.4 GHz processor or equivalent
• 384 MB of RAM
• 64 MB video card
• 1024 x 768 screen resolution - Note: Many files that I am viewing are being encoded at 1280 X 720.
• 16-bit sound card
• Speakers

1080p video with 5.1 surround sound

• Internet connection of 13.5 Mbps or greater (Double Wow!)
• Windows Media Player 10 /Quicktime 7.0+
• DirectX 9.0
• 3.0 GHz processor or equivalent
• 512 MB of RAM
• 1920 x 1440 screen resolution
• 24-bit 96 kHz multichannel sound card
• 5.1 surround sound speaker system

The web is about to change, see the future now. To see and learn more about HD content online visit the below Web sites.

The HD Web
Akamai HD Resource Center

Please comment if you have any more good online resources.

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