Apple to Debut 'HD+' 1080p iTunes Movie Services Later This Year?

[fluffylion]

And where would this "competition" be that streams movies at 1080P through an online service that has the same library selection that iTunes does? (Hint: Vudu doesn't come close in terms of selection).

Its amazing how many negative people just crawl out of the woodwork anytime something new and interesting is announced.

Did you ever think maybe its not Apples choice? Perhaps its the IP holders who make the rules?

competition is anyone that sells the same or similar product as you.
there are 2 two types. direct and indirect
therefore blu-ray which everyone is referring to, when you can stop and wipe your lips clean, is competition, and provides a much higher quality product.

this "streaming" service just plain sucks with low quality video for this day and age. I am all for digital content, but not when it is poorer quality.

 

[scottsjack]

Bye bye Blu Ray, this is pretty much the nail in the coffin for Blu Ray and Apple.

It should be the beginning of the end for Blu Ray as a whole since the price of a new release in 1080P on iTunes should be substantially cheaper than any Blu Ray disks I've seen for sale.

It can't be too much longer before optical drives start being phased out.

The beginning of the end for BluRay? Tell that to the other 95% of computer users who don't use Macs, also to the people who use BluRay players hooked to their TVs.

It's funny that since Steve criticized BluRay many of the fanboys have jumped right on the story line. A highly compressed, downloaded 1080P movie from Apple will be no comparison to a BluRay disk when it comes to quality and freedom to watch it.

 

[oracle_ab]

I've been really happy w/ the 720p from my ATV2. 1080p wouldn't be that big of a deal to me.

 

[MrSmith]

1080p… what a joke. 99% of the people want 1080p will be watching on an improperly calibrated television set, positioned for aesthetic value (usually over the fireplace) blind to the visual artifacts from the massive compression needed to stuff it down the mediocre bandwidth we have in America. Blissfully unaware of the copious amounts of DNR to reduce that pesky grain (why can I see grain on my HD television?!).

America has turned in to Nigel Tufnel – “Yeah but these go to 11!”

Are you saying 720 will look better than 1080 on my HDTV?

It looks like I might be done buying physical media.

You may be finished, but I hope the media is around for a bit longer. My local vid store rents out its BDs for the equivalent of $1.25.

 

[kiljoy616]

Nice but not going to happen for most people. at that bit rate lots of people are going to be mad at all the lagging. I for one just don't have the bandwidth to truly enjoy movie like that except on my bluray payers.

Going to be fun to read all the complains when it comes out.

 

[Xtremehkr]

It's funny that since Steve criticized BluRay many of the fanboys have jumped right on the story line. A highly compressed, downloaded 1080P movie from Apple will be no comparison to a BluRay disk when it comes to quality and freedom to watch it.

I've never been on board with Blu Ray, I've never seen it as being a sustainable distribution model and Sony charges far too much per disk.

Not everyone is going to agree with that position but the long term trend is going to be a move to digital content distribution using the internet. Companies who insist on physical formats are not going to be able to compete with the discounts that online distributors are going to be able to offer.

I don't see downloading as being a big problem as iTunes has never been slow in delivering anything I've ordered.

Even using bittorrent, a 46GB file containing all 6 seasons of The Sopranos only takes a couple of days with enough peers. Not that I would ever use bittorrent or anything.

 

[RobQuads]

Let me know when bandwidth is so prevalent that such a hog that is Blu-Ray effortlessly becomes deployed on a nation-wide basis.

Blu-Ray will be surpassed by other formats long before Joe Six Pack has 40Mbps down.

Maybe the US isn't up to it but it doesn't stop other countries. Much of europe have this capability.

I have a 50Mbps to my house which is readily availble to much of the UK (this has now already been surpassed by a 100Mbps service at the top end)

 

[TsMkLg068426]

This great news, but as for having better internet speed is going to be problem such as bandwidth caps for most and having better internet speed is not cheap, I hope most ISPs notice the major change and give a free upgrade like Charter Communications did with my Cable internet twice. Even than I got the 18 MBPS download 2 MBPS for upload when watching Netflix streaming most often the highest it gets is 6-10 MBPS at some times but at late at night I noticed 12 MBPS I guess less traffic. But still Netflix HD is like 720p at best. ISP needs to take notice in the future for faster internet being cheaper.

 

[kiljoy616]

The beginning of the end for BluRay? Tell that to the other 95% of computer users who don't use Macs, also to the people who use BluRay players hooked to their TVs.

It's funny that since Steve criticized BluRay many of the fanboys have jumped right on the story line. A highly compressed, downloaded 1080P movie from Apple will be no comparison to a BluRay disk when it comes to quality and freedom to watch it.

Steve is right, I have bluray at home and its not going to be the end, but it pisses me off that every other week there is some upgrade or something that need the bluray to be online if I want to see a movie. Bluray is a great idea but Sony owning it is not.

 

[zin]

Is it just me who still finds SD content a pleasure to watch?

I must be really lagging behind.

 

[Primejimbo]

You don't get it, do you?

The point is that the technology to watch 1080p video online is already here, not that those sites are ideal to watching full-length movies. It's just a bigger file on the server. A 120-minute movie is basically the same a playlist of thirty 4-minute videos.

Besides, doesn't Netflix do this?

My guess is that you can watch full-length pornos in streaming 1080p.

I think Netflex does 1080i on some movies, and most aren't even that from what I been watching (I think PS2 has the rights for 1080P for Netflix if I remember right). Also if it wasn't for porn, I don't think we would have the movies streaming like this in the 1st place.

 

[BC2009]

What competition? Who (aside from torrent sites) currently offers 1080p movies for streaming or download?

Ha ha. I'm with you.

I love all the "Apple is late to 1080p!" comments that don't mention who beat them.

Netflix? Hulu? Seriously, who?

Surely people aren't comparing physical disks and pirate-sites to an official movie streaming service. I mean, that would just be stupid, right?

So I'm still curious who, exactly, has beaten Apple to 1080p streaming. So many snarky comments here, so few answers to that question!

Check out Microsoft's Zune marketplace. 1080p for years.

I'm a big Apple fan and I own an Apple TV, but one major main-stream player that has had 1080p video-on-demand streaming for quite some time is Dish Network. I'm not sure about the data rate that Dish is offering (10MBps? 30MBps?), but they have offered 1080p for at least a couple of years now. They also charge you more for it -- its like $6 or $7 per movie rental.

I will be buying a 1080p-capable Apple TV if they can't upgrade the old one. My only concern is.... If I buy a 1080p video, do I also get the 720p and SD version as well? Because my old Apple TV won't be able to handle the 1080p and I am not sure about my iPad. I actually think I would rather sell the old 720p Apple TV and buy two of the new ones rather than waste the hard drive space on the 720p version. What we really need is the iCloud re-download of video content so we don't necessarily have to store all that video on our personal hard drives along with backups of it -- just keep our backups in the cloud.

 

[JTToft]

Internet connections and movie rentals

I want the Movie store in Scandinavia first , it is crazy Scandinavia is one of the parts of the world with very high internet connection speed yet we still can't stream movies (legally)

- Very much agreed! We want iTunes Movie rentals and purchases in Denmark!
Movie streaming services are virtually non-existent here, and the few services that do exist offer horrendous video and audio quality.

I have a 50/50 Mbit/sec fiberoptic connection, and I can't use it for anything legal.
Now, if you're going to ask "then why did you get such a fast connection?" I'll tell you why: it's one of the slowest and one of the cheapest connections available!
At my other address, our connection just got upgraded to 25 Mbit/sec, because our existing connection of 20 Mbit/sec had been removed from the company's offering.

Seriously, we have ridiculously fast internet connections in Denmark and we have no data caps, but we can't use our connections for anything...

Do something, Apple!

 

[MacFly123]

ABOUT #&$^%*&# TIME!!!!!

This whole time period of migration between SD and HD has been a NIGHTMARE! It is not HD+ Apple is it just regular good ol' fashioned HD the way it is SUPPOSED to be, but probably still at a lower bit rate If they charge even more for this than 720p that will be sooooo lame!

Goodness, if SD - HD has been this bad, how long is it going to take us to get to 4K and beyond???

 

[dashiel]

You don't get it, do you?

The point is that the technology to watch 1080p video online is already here, not that those sites are ideal to watching full-length movies. It's just a bigger file on the server. A 120-minute movie is basically the same a playlist of thirty 4-minute videos.

1080p doesn’t mean anything other than you have 1080 lines of resolution. Capacity != Quality and with the mediocre broadband infrastructure in this country they’re going to have to heavily compress these films. Videophile bitch and moan about some Blu-ray releases having too much compression. You can broadcast a 4K video over the internet if I compress it enough.

 

[Rad99004]

Does apple have the bandwidth to do this? Seems on holidays and weekends movie start times go to a crawl.

 

[noty]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8J2)

If this is true then it be nice if 720p became the standard, 1080p became HD and the current standard definition version were only used for syncing to iPods, iPhones and iPads.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

As someone who has long awaited a 1080p-capable TV, this is about the best rumor I've seen in a long time. And I'm not a bit surprised to see the same tired-old gripes from the "720p is good enough" crowd, as if getting better technology in a next-gen TV (as this rumor would have us presume) somehow adversely affects their ability to watch their 720p or SD to it's maximum playback potential. 1080p-capable hardware will have no problem playing your 720p or SD software; it just doesn't work the other way for those of us that care about better picture quality.

For those griping about bandwidth, storage, etc, I would suspect that just as there is currently options for the 720p OR SD version, I would imagine this "HD+" option will be just another version you can choose. Don't have the bandwidth for it? No problem, continue to choose 720p or SD. Don't have the storage (really? with hard drives as cheap as they are???)? No problem, buy the 720p or SD version. Etc.

1080p will finally make this a real challenger to "the bag of hurt" in the way that matters most: picture quality (and hopefully sound too). FINALLY, consumers can have a real, iTunes-friendly challenger to the biggest benefits of BD players.

For me personally, it will be soooo nice to finally get to play back precious home movies I've been shooting in 1080 on consumer camcorders for years (since about 2005 or so) without having to downgrade the clips. Apple gave us iMovie HD in 2006 and it could work with and output 1080 HD files just fine. iTunes has long been able to import and play back those files. I've had 1080HD HDTVs since about 2001. This final link in the chain is long overdue.

I think this will be a very hot seller for the holiday season (assuming it's coming out with the iDevice refreshes this year). I know I'll likely buy 2 or 3 myself on the day it arrives. The current model seemed to sell pretty well even though it was still limited to 720p max output- just like the 2006 version I own. Now, Apple can give the "full HD"-minded Joe Sixpacks a "full HD" alternative to BD. At last!!!

 

[Bubba Satori]

That would be nice but bandwidth and storage requirements of 1080p content is just huge

ISPs are going to love it.
Big boost for their bottom line.
They should send a special gift to Steve every Christmas.
BD bag of profit hurt.

 

[Nostromo]

1080p doesn’t mean anything other than you have 1080 lines of resolution. Capacity != Quality and with the mediocre broadband infrastructure in this country they’re going to have to heavily compress these films. Videophile bitch and moan about some Blu-ray releases having too much compression. You can broadcast a 4K video over the internet if I compress it enough.

Yes, the broadband in this country if overpriced and underdeveloped due to almost monopolies by the broadband companies who each have their own protected area.

In my area, I had the choice between Time Warner or some crazy, unreliable "high speed" DSL.

If the media companies want to sell us streaming video they fist have to offer decent infra structure. I'm not interested in heavily compressed "HD" movies.

IMAGE QUALITY is not only a matter of resolution. You can have a large photo with big pixel dimensions, and then smear the detail through heavy compression.

Streaming video would be great - if our broadband could reach 30-70 Mbs like in Europe (for less money than you pay here for 10 Mbs)

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

1080p doesn’t mean anything other than you have 1080 lines of resolution. Capacity != Quality

1080p is 1920 pixels by 1080 lines yielding a picture of a little over 2M pixels.
720p is 1280 pixels by 720 lines yielding a picture of a little under 1M pixels.

Would you argue against that kind of resolution difference in digital cameras? Who needs sharper pictures?

Would you argue against retina screens in tiny iPhone screens?

Would you argue against doubling the iPad resolution on that tiny screen as soon as Apple can do it?

Would you argue against putting higher resolution cameras in iDevices?

Is this 2560 x 1440 iMac screen I'm looking at right now just useless overkill when I could see the same desktop image on a 1024 x 768 screen... or maybe 640 x 480?

Isn't the 720p that Apple serves now overkill when the SD version will also play on our TVs?

Or does your argument only apply to this ONE thing? Somehow a higher resolution picture on a screen 40, 50, 60+ inches is not worth it but Apple delivering retina resolutions on screens under 10 inches makes fantastic sense?

 

[Nostromo]

1080p is 1920 pixels by 1080 lines yielding a picture of a little over 2M pixels.
720p is 1280 pixels by 720 lines yielding a picture of a little under 1M pixels.

Would you argue against that kind of resolution in digital cameras? Who needs sharper pictures?

Would you argue against retina screens in tiny iPhone screens?

Would you argue against doubling the iPad resolution on that tiny screen as soon as Apple can do it?

Is this 2560 x 1440 iMac screen I'm looking at right now just useless overkill when I could see the same desktop image on a 1024 x 768 screen... or maybe 640 x 480?

Isn't the 720p that Apple serves now overkill when the SD version will also play on our TVs?

Or does your argument only apply to this ONE thing? Somehow a higher resolution picture on a screen 40, 50, 60+ inches is not worth it but Apple delivering retina resolutions on screens under 10 inches makes fantastic sense?

It's not all about pixel dimensions.

You can have a terrible picture at high resolution - where all detail is wiped out by compression.

You can see the same effect on lower resolution videos on YouTube - where it's all so blurry you can hardly see any details.

 

[Winni]

I think Apple has to fix a bunch of other stuff in their iTunes movie section, too. When you are forced to use non-US-American iTunes stores, you will find only few movies in the store with the original audio track and only get dubbed versions, which usually totally suck. You also don't get movies with subtitles. And most of the movies are not even available in HD. And for what you get, the prices are way too high - you usually get a much better deal when you order the DVD from Amazon; even with shipping included, the DVD normally costs less than the iTunes download. And the DVD is not crippled with DRM that prevents you from putting it in another DVD player.

Also, the download sizes of iTunes movies are ridiculously big. I bought "Night Train" two days ago and it was 3.8 Gig for the "HD" version which is nowhere near BluRay quality, but at almost 4 Gig size, you usually get 1920*1080 BluRay rips.

iTunes movies are not nearly as attractive as they could be. While Apple might not be the only one to blame for the high prices, they certainly could do something about the video quality and the missing audio tracks and subtitles.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

It's not all about pixel dimensions. You can have a terrible picture at high resolution - where all detail is wiped out by compression.

That's right but he didn't bring up elements like bit rate, etc. He just marginalized 1080p as if lines of resolution was nearly meaningless.

It's not an automatic assumption that to go "HD+" means making a terrible sacrifice in bit rate. My assumption is that the appropriate compression will be used to make an HD+ video look sharper than a 720p video... just like a 720p video is allotted the necessary compression flexibility to look better than it's corresponding SD version.

I'm pretty confident that if this rumor is true, Apple is not hungry for over-compressed, detail-wiped video to be added to the iTunes store. In fact, Apple's track record with other media has been the other way (increasing the quality vs. existing offerings in the store) over time.

 

[Nostromo]

Also, the download sizes of iTunes movies are ridiculously big. I bought "Night Train" two days ago and it was 3.8 Gig for the "HD" version which is nowhere near BluRay quality, but at almost 4 Gig size, you usually get 1920*1080 BluRay rips.

Well, you can't have it all. Either a large download (perfectly reasonable) or a smaller download with compression (=losing image quality).

I could imagine such a store charging by package size as well, e.g. you will pay more for more image quality.

I agree that such downloads should have options like subtitles and original audio tracks. This wouldn't increase the file size by much.