I have found broadcast (including ota which is best) to be highly variable depending on how much bandwidth it's allotted. Sometimes significantly worse than streaming hd, sometimes better. High profile sports tend to be the best.
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iTunes 1080p a Joke
- Thread starter HurtinMinorKey
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I have found broadcast (including ota which is best) to be highly variable depending on how much bandwidth it's allotted. Sometimes significantly worse than streaming hd, sometimes better. High profile sports tend to be the best.
I would agree with cable and satellite, but I always experience some of the best HD with OTA.
God, I wish that were true for me. All my local stations have sub channels, decimating the bandwidth of the core HD channel, esp for sports. NBC football is so atrocious sometimes I have to turn it off.
Nice list, is it your personal? I might put superbit DVD a bit higher, but quality varies a lot on them.
Thanks
Yup. My personal list based on what I've seen over the years. I think the reason I put Superbit DVD on par with laserdisc is that their both limited by the same color gamut. Neither has Rec 709, which everything above it does.
This used to be the case for me. Then some of the channels started splitting up their bandwidth to allow for 1 HD stream and 3 SD streams inside the same channel.
It's fine for static shots lining up the tee in golf, but when confetti falls in a football win, it's a macro block mess.
Two other big points (And this isn't directed towards you brent) - The broadcast signal is encoded on the fly, the downloads are encoded with much better frame prediction on multi-passes. The broadcast signal uses older codecs, the downloads use newer codecs.
720p OTA is NOT as good as iTunes 1080p in my experience and I'm surprised to hear others have faired differently.
Once upon a time I thought that way. Now I look at my around 200 DVD library and think what a waste, they are worth about zero. VUDU, iTunes, Hulu+, Amazon Prime instant for me.
Call it some primal thing, but my preference is to own the physical media which my content lives on vs going exclusively digital. We own a few hundred DVDs and the library continues to grow, although not as quickly as it used to. That which I digitize is 'favorite content' vs disks which get pulled out once or twice per year, as well as content I want to view while traveling.
You also said in the same post that you didn't think it was fair to call it 1080p. That's why the post you're replying to stated that 1080p only specifies resolution.
Apples 1080p encodes are certainly disappointing. With the exception of animated shows, their 720p offering usually looks better.
Here is a comparison of True Blood 720p vs. 1080p
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/28741
Detail is totally wiped out on the 1080p.
720p: 4 Mbps
1080p: 5 Mbps
They tried to say using high profile 4.0 on 1080p would improve the compression, and it does, but not enough to overcome the only 20% bitrate increase for over 2x as many pixels. I'm hoping the next apple tv will support H.265. They could keep the bitrate the same and have ~double the quality.
Here is a comparison of True Blood 720p vs. 1080p
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/28741
Detail is totally wiped out on the 1080p.
720p: 4 Mbps
1080p: 5 Mbps
They tried to say using high profile 4.0 on 1080p would improve the compression, and it does, but not enough to overcome the only 20% bitrate increase for over 2x as many pixels. I'm hoping the next apple tv will support H.265. They could keep the bitrate the same and have ~double the quality.
H.265 would be a good start. I often wonder why Apple lets crappy product go out other than people sometimes can be lemmings and accept what they are told as to what is "good." I think the real challenge will be how they elect to do the transfer and from what "master." I find it sad when Vudu's HD offerings look as good and more often better than iTunes purchased 1080 offerings. Who would have thought streaming would look better than directly file playback (sigh).
Now, the real question is - who's making the transfer from the Master to the H.264 transport file - Apple or the studios?
Good point. I just find that both Apple and the Studios not providing us the "best possible" but more like passable product. Similar can be said for other types of movie media.
Apple requires 220 Mbps ProRes video from studios to encode from. They then outsource the jobs to companies who do the encoding for them on the guidelines of what apple requires. They probably are using propriety encoding software, instead of x264 (which is the best encoder available, bar none).
I am currently watching House of Cards season 2 on Netflix, and the quality is absolutely amazing. Very close to Blu-ray, if not matching, and it's only 6 Mbps.
You've misunderstood laserdisc. It's not analog, at least not now. It's a digital format just like CD SACD, DVD, DVD-A, superbit DVD, and Blu-ray.
The earliest LDs in 1978 were analog, but the format evolved to its final digital form quite rapidly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserDisc is a good place to start.
Also, keep in mind that in terms of quality, it's not as simple as giving the medal to the digital option. Film is analog, and is still the gold standard for many for pq in movies. Just because components of LD have been analog doesn't make them inferior to digital options of the time. Laserdisc happened right at the transition from analog to digital home video presentation. LD wasn't criticized for being analog at the time because it didn't matter. It was, however, a niche product, and was doomed to fail in the marketplace.
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The sound eventually was upgraded to digital, the video was always analog.
From your linked article: "LaserDiscs use only analog video"
A.
(who still has a box of laserdiscs, and a player to play them)
Laserdisc can only produce about 400 lines of resolution, whereas DVD can do the entire 480 of SD. LDs also had a tendency to be fairly noisy on anything except the most expensive players. The only area it beat DVDs on was in lack of macroblocking and color banding, which wasn't really a problem on commercial DVDs after 2000 (if not earlier).
I know there were plans to make the entire disc a digital format, but by then it was too late as DVD started taking over with the release of the PS2 as well as price drops on the stand-alone players.
Was not doomed to fail as the audience was different. It was a playback-only format which offered higher quality (LP records were better than 8-track, CD was better than cassette, LD was better than VCR). The competing format was RCA CED Videodisc, but that was the one doomed to fail as that format still had a record stylus. I had an LD player and the pic was a lot better than my Beta.
Plus, prices on LD players became reasonable. I still have the last one I bought, a Pioneer LD/CD combo player on sale at Service Merchandise for $200.
Yes, I guess I can do a comparison. I have Star Wars on DVD (special ed.) as well as the special restored originals on CAV and CLV so will compare...
Not to digress, I guess the question is now the quality of non-recordable BR purchased disc compared to downloadable video content onto a "re-recordable" media (flash memory, hard drive).
Hey, I have one of those...
Personally, I have never seen a laserdisc look as good as a decently-mastered DVD. I allow that there may be better equipment than I have owned, or perhaps better manufactured laserdiscs - but I have never seen them.
To offer a more on-topic observation, I notice in threads that I have read here and elsewhere, people report positively about movies from iTunes and the bulk of the negative comments come from folks talking about television. I do not know that anyone has taken that further.
A.
Its most likely due to file sizes. Bluray discs can store up to 25GB (as far as I'm aware) and I'm sure iTunes HD movies aren't that size. I know full well it'd take my internet connection a good month to download 25GB.
Dual-Layer BluRay disc can hold 50GB and there is also a 100GB BD-XL format available.
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