There are two ways to enjoy video on your computer—by downloading the file and then playing it from your hard drive or streaming it live over the Internet.

Anyone who’s sampled a YouTube video or watched an episode of Heroes via the NBC web site has experienced the streaming approach. It’s great for grabbing snippets of video, since the show starts moments after you click the onscreen Play button, and it appeals to Hollywood content owners who prefer delivering a stream of bits and bytes rather than putting a potentially piracy-prone file on your hard drive. What you sacrifice, though, is picture and sound quality.

Pumping video live over the congested Internet, even with a broadband connection, requires substantial compression. And while the codecs used to compress and decompress files continue to improve, they still can’t compete with even VHS video quality. (See “Color Commentary� in TPV78—the June/July issue for another take on movie downloading.)

Downloading and storing on a hard drive for playback, on the other hand, has no theoretical limit on A/V quality. It can be a time-consuming process for sure, but think of all the hours your computer sits idle while you sleep or otherwise fritter away time in the real world. Given the extraordinary capacity of hard drives today, there’s no reason you can’t use that downtime to load up on high-quality video files ready for playback at your convenience.

Next: Ready to Download