Short in length but hi in quality.

Fancy getting short films delivered to you for free ?

You could do a lot worse than popping over to Atom Films: Hi-Def where you'll get the chance to install a small gizmo that sits and monitors your internet connection and, when it's idle and just begging for data, downloads the films to your hard drive to be watched as and when you wish.

Every couple of weeks films time-out, are deleted and new ones shuffle quietly in. Some are brand new material premiering on the system and others are things like past Palm D'Or winners.

In a handy (and coincidental) link back to a previous comment of mine Microsoft are also partnering with Atom Films to make some of these shorts available in 720p High Definition video - ie better than DVD resolution.

If you wonder what all this fuss I'm making is all about and fancy grabbing a few demo HDTV clips then pop over to WMV-HD Showcase and nab yourself some.

There are two 'flavours' of HDTV video - one running at 1280 x 720 with the other an insane 1920 x 1080. Those people who aren't as big an anorak as me when it comes to things like this may therefore find it interesting to compare that with what they're watching now.

Currently PAL DVD is 720 x 576. This means that even the smaller of the new formats carries double the info and the larger is, at full tilt, around five times the amount.

You'll need a PC over about a 2.4 processor or above but it's so worth it. The large downloads (2 mins can be anything between 80mb and 150mb...or more !) are real eye openers once you see the increased quality over DVD. Colour saturation is incredible, detail is stupidly precise and things like skin just look more human.