Cinema Display and HD TV Show Questions

[rcnoodle90]

Hi,

Ive got a couple of questions regarding TV shows and things like that. I did some calculations and figured out that if I bought all my favorite tv shows on HD on itunes it would be about $900. If I bought the same exact ones in a dvd boxed set on amazon it would be about $500. What are the advantages of buying off itunes? Also how HD is it? Is the HD just dvd quality or is it blu-ray quality? Is there some advantage with iCloud if I download all my stuff off itunes?

Secondly I was hoping to buy a macbook air as well as a thunderbold cinema display. Suddenly I realized there is no reason to have such a high definition display if I could never download anything to make use of it. I guess my question about the "HD-ness" of the itunes downloads takes care of that and I suppose I could buy a superdrive. Is there some way to hook up a blu-ray player?

Are Itunes downloads just not there yet? For the premium price you pay you don't get special features but if they are better than dvd quality I can see the allure.

Also when I mention buying the dvd boxed sets I will convert them into digital format, I don't mind the hard work.


Thoughts? I'd love some input!

Thanks

 

[kokako]

the HD shows look pretty great from iTunes both on my 40" Samsung LED and also my 27" Apple LED (a great monitor investment for an Air) photos look amazing on this btw.
I bought a cancelled TV show called Defying Gravity on DVD and I also bought it on HD on iTunes, the iTunes version blows away the DVD SD, if a TV show is only available in SD on DVD or HD on iTunes in HD I'll grab the HD/iTunes version in a heartbeat, but I'm not going to buy any SD versions on iTunes, I bought some of the Star Trek TV seasons (DS9, Voyager and TNG) the encoding for iTunes was done maybe 4-5 years ago and it's appalling and was encoded for an iPod so I bought the DvDS and ripped them with MakeMKV and just stream them to my AppleTV from whatever hard drive they sit on.
So thumbs up for HD Tv shows from iTunes (especially ones that were cancelled after one season (The Cape, Happy Town, Defying Gravity etc )because these will NEVER be available on HD on Blu just SD on DVD I'll grab them from iTunes in HD while I can...

 

[rcnoodle90]

Thanks so much! I appreciate the input. What sucks is my favorite show was on a %50 off sale last week and I didn't jump on it...lame anyway. I hate how my generation just pirates everything. I really want to purchase these. I also apprecitate your input about the cinema display I figured I could buy that for my personal use as well as a sort of TV for my and my girlfriend (getting netflix and buying off itunes)

Thanks again!

 

[cperry2]

To be clear:

DVDs - 480p
iTunes - 720p
BluRay - 1080p

If you're setting up a permanent collection, I would honestly go for BluRay at this time, especially as you cited that it's cheaper - and you won't have to download all of it. You could put the savings towards a bluray player.

The only advantage with icloud might be that you can download the purchase again at any time, pending availability on the store (but I don't imagine they will take anything down in the near future). Even then, the rules for icloud as it pertains to video are pretty well unknown right now.

The cinema display has a resolution that will support playback of video of a high resolution than bluray. You can actually test this out on Youtube, of all places, because they are hosting some 4K content (i.e. equivalent to digital film in the movie theater!)

Cheers

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oops, you said DVD.

That does change things.

Just make sure the itunes version is 720p. They may not have it in all instances, but if it's recent (past 5-10 years) they probably do...

 

[rcnoodle90]

Thanks so much for the response! The resolutions of each of the formats was a huge help.

I love this forum!