Channel 9 offers videos in different levels of quality in two different formats (wmv and mp4).
Everytime I would like to download a video comes the question: What offer is should take? So I have made a comparison of all formats. Here is the result:
As Input I used the Rx Workshop Introduction (Rx Workshop: Introduction).
| Format | Dimension | Size | Visual Rating (subjective) |
High Quality WMV
(PC, XBox, MCE) | 1280 x 720 | 58 MB | ++ |
Mid Quality WMV
(Low-Band Mobile) | 512 x 288 | 34 MB | + |
High Quality MP4
(iPad, WP7) | 1024 x 576 | 140 MB | ++ |
MP4
(iPod, Zune HD) | 480 x 272 | 15 MB | o |
Both high quality videos are very similar – maybe with a little advance for MP4 – but MP4 is three times larger, that it is not worth.
So for me the two WMV-choices are the right one. If the videos have detailed artefacts (like Visual Studio coding) the higher resolution could be a benefit.