Is purchasing HD movies worth it over purchasing SD movies. I know with my iPhone 5s It doesn't take advantage of HD but I was wondering with the new iPad Air 2 if it will take advantage of full 1080p HD movies you buy form iTunes Store. Thanks in advance
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iPad iPad Air 2 movies...SD vs HD
- Thread starter Gincoma
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iPad Air 2 screen res is 2048 x 1536 so it is greater than 1080. Will you notice the difference and is it worth the cost to you? We can't tell you that. You need to look at the same source material in HD and SD and decide for yourself. It's not a one-size-fits-all matter and polling won't tell you if it's worth it to you.
Some consider the lowered cost of SD material worth the lower resolution. Some are more picky about resolution and less picky about the cost of HD material. Worth is always highly subjective no matter what the topic.
Some consider the lowered cost of SD material worth the lower resolution. Some are more picky about resolution and less picky about the cost of HD material. Worth is always highly subjective no matter what the topic.
If I buy movies from iTunes, I always buy the HD version. But that's mainly because I sometimes watch them on my front projector with a 7-foot screen, where the differences are very obvious. 😉 But I usually use the SD versions for watching on the iPad since I see little difference on the small screen and they take way less room. Just download both versions for one movie and try it yourself (there's a handy "prefer SD videos" option in iTunes if you sync the movies over USB).
Yup
I buy the HD versions only if I'm going to watch them on something larger than an iPad.
The difference, at least to me, isn't noticeable enough to matter on that size screen, while it's definitely noticeable on my 1080p, 42" TV.
I buy the HD versions only if I'm going to watch them on something larger than an iPad.
The difference, at least to me, isn't noticeable enough to matter on that size screen, while it's definitely noticeable on my 1080p, 42" TV.
Sometimes..
I do this only for movies/shows both my wife and I will watch. She claims not to care about SD/HD and I ONLY watch shows/movies on my 1080p TV, so the increased resolution matters to me.
But like he said, getting HD isn't a terrible deal.
I do this only for movies/shows both my wife and I will watch. She claims not to care about SD/HD and I ONLY watch shows/movies on my 1080p TV, so the increased resolution matters to me.
But like he said, getting HD isn't a terrible deal.
hovscorpion12
macrumors 68040
Keep in mind that what matters in the end are not the pixel dimensions (i.e. width and height of the video in pixels), but the actual resolution of the source material. You can blow up a standard definition video to 1920x1080, but that doesn't magically increase the resolution. 😉
In my experience the quality of iTunes 1080p videos is rather low when compared e.g. to Blu-ray (which is not surprising, since iTunes HD files are far more compressed). This is really obvious on big screens. I doubt the resolution after compression is anywhere near "real" 1080p, much less even higher resolutions. Combined with the small screen size, there is a point of diminishing returns ...
Shanghaichica
macrumors G5
I always buy the HD version as I think the difference in quality is worth the extra money. I think you can see the difference on a large device like the iPad, however I could see the difference on my 3.5 inch iPhone 4.
haruhiko
macrumors 604
Close. 😉 I'm implying that the strong compression that is used to achieve the small file sizes removes so much fine detail from the image that it doesn't even fully utilize 1920x1080. If you watch iTunes HD movies on a big screen and compare them to a good Blu-ray, you'll see that they have a lot less fine detail and look soft (not to mention frequent compression artifacts such as color banding).
rui no onna
Contributor
I think what you mean is detail or picture quality not resolution. Upsampling does give you a higher resolution video but it doesn't give you more detail or better PQ (at least not without some complex madVR post-processing or something). At best, you just get as much detail and PQ as the source video.
I almost never buy movies from iTunes preferring to purchase higher quality Blu-rays if available. On the extremely rare occasions I buy videos (usually TV shows with no Blu-ray release), I get the HD version given the $0-5 price difference for entire seasons. Buying the HD version also gives me the option of downloading in either SD or HD. More often than not, though, I just tend to just wait for videos to be available on Netflix or Amazon Prime.
The term resolution is today often used in a wrong way. It doesn't really mean the pixel dimensions, but the ability to resolve details. Even analog film, which does not have a fixed amount of pixels, has a resolution. It is measured in the maximum amount of "lines" per unit length that can still be distinguished. In that sense, compression (or more generally lowpass filtering) can lower the resolution of a digital image even if the pixel dimensions remain the same.