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iTunes 1080p Content Comes Close to Blu-ray Quality, But Can't Quite Match

charlieegan3 said:
how often do you stare at a dark corner though?
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There are many movies that are "dark" and lose details when compressed or get pixelized because of compression. Look at the image above. Now think of movies like blade runner, The Dark Knight, and many movies that are not brightly lit.

To each their own. I would rent comedies and other movies I don't care about image quality via iTunes in 1080P - but if I want to own a movie or it's something significant (IE - Hugo, Tintin, Lord of the Rings, etc) it's Blu-Ray for me. Both for image quality and audio quality.

Not to mention - if a friend wants to borrow my disk - it's pretty easy to lend it out.
 
At the least, Blu-ray needs to include 1080p digital video copies to stay alive at this point I think. I have a Blu-ray player, but it's always been clunky and slow, and I can't imagine I will ever upgrade it or add further to my Blu-ray collection. Getting a good deal on a blu-ray disc with a 1080p digital copy would help though. But even having said that, I have yet to see great value in Apple's offerings of purchases and rentals, and I have moved to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Prim, and Spotify over iTunes. iTunes does have new releases, which is their big selling point—for some reason it's easier for me to justify spending $8 a month on Netflix than $5 per movie rental with iTunes.

I also would love to see new releases come to iTunes at the same time they come to theatre. I think it could eventually happen—I know not soon. But I don't go to theatres, and while I will often write down a movie I want to see when it comes out to rent later, I usually forget.
 
iBreatheApple said:
It's probably a 'rollout' process. I didn't hear that anywhere, but I think it's a pretty good assumption.
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when you compare it to iTunes plus for music though it seems less likely. It took them quite a long time to upgrade to higher quality versions.
 
For the file and encoding size of these films, I think they look damn good. Of course they aren't going to be Blu-ray quality, but this is a step in the right direction of film distribution
 
The real issue

I think the real problem is the restrictions and limitations from ISP & Studios. Already ISPs are moving to cap and slow down customer use. Apple and many other companies can easily provide the hardware and content for near BR quality for streaming. It's not a technical issue. The issue is the providers and Studios. Studios afraid of losing physical disk sales.
 
This is very, very impressive. The truth is most people won’t ever notice the difference when the picture is moving –*to be honest it was hard to notice the difference between 720p and 1080p on my 109" projector screen when not pausing and scrutinizing. I’ll still be buying Blu-ray for certain films but the writing is on the wall.

The two real victories here are:

1) No force fed commercials and “clever” menus.
2) It’s going to be much easier to upgrade the quality of iTunes purchased content than Blu-ray. Next year HVEC enters final draft status(H.265 double data compression + improved video quality and the elimination of macroblock (hooray!)). I doubt we’ll even see a disc based solution for HVEC the cost is far too great and adoption rates too slow.

Now let’s hope Apple maintains their recent ability to convince studios that upgrade in quality is not a “new” purchase
 
I'm still just not that thrilled with the pricing on movie rentals (or purchases, for that matter...) on iTunes. Movie rentals are still up there at $5- Red Box Blu-Ray rentals are $1.50 for a day with DVDs a bit less. Granted there's the problem of availability and such with Red Box, but they actually have to keep the discs around, maintain the sites, etc. vs the entirely online/digital (yes, I know they have to have data centers and such too) iTunes- which means that by quantity, iTunes should be able to do a LOT more business.

Quality-wise? Of course it's going to be lower than that of a Blu-ray. It has to be in order to stream it. Are most people really going to care/notice? Unlikely.
 
I'm curious to see how this looks on the 3rd gen iPad. I know that suddenly becomes an apples to oranges comparison but I'm still curious. I'm wondering if the added resolution will help or hinder still images take from these movies.
 
kagharaht said:
I think the real problem is the restrictions and limitations from ISP & Studios. Already ISPs are moving to cap and slow down customer use. Apple and many other companies can easily provide the hardware and content for near BR quality for streaming. It's not a technical issue. The issue is the providers and Studios. Studios afraid of losing physical disk sales.
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It is a technical issue. There's not enough bandwidth. If bandwidth wasn't an issue - there'd be no reason to compress video at all.
 
Lesser Evets said:
I like Apple, but their video technology has been dancing to an ever-more-eccentric drummer since BluRay appeared on the scene. At least they took a large step closer to 2006 with this.


I wish they'd offer upgrades for already-owned videos from their store.
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When Wal-mart wants to start an HD download service, they can because they know only 100 people will actually use it so they can afford the bandwidth without going bankrupt or causing technical problems for anyone.
Apple know that tens of millions will download from them the second they are allowed to so they have to make sure that the internet isn't going to break even if they can swallow the increased bandwidth charges.
 
*LTD* said:
This.

We're getting there.
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All fun and games until your internet goes out - or slows down. Now you have no access to anything you "own."

Meanwhile, I'll enjoy popping in my much better quality audio and video experience into my player and watch a movie I paid for.

Nothing to "get" LTD. You might want to only live in the cloud. I don't.
 
archer75 said:
For me I would actually rank audio quality slightly more important than video quality. Lack of HD audio on itunes means i'll never get movies from them. Of course DRM has something to do with that as well.
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This is EXACTLY what I was going to say. I will NEVER purchase a 1080P movie from iTunes, even if it looked better then blu-ray for the simple fact that the HD sound quality isn't there. Nothing like true uncompressed audio coming through Paradigm's Studio Series.
 
I've downloaded hi-rez movies via torrent and they look very close to blu-ray. In fact, the screen shots here are exactly what I've experienced. The only time it's noticeable it on very dark content.
 
swingerofbirch said:
At the least, Blu-ray needs to include 1080p digital video copies to stay alive at this point I think.
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1080p digital copies should be the standard now, they should never have been SD.

iTunes 1080p is not Blu-Ray quality. The prices should reflect that. Digital download prices seem high. Bear in mind that Blu-Ray RRP does not match real prices.
 
I think it is excellent for what you get from something you've downloaded off the internet, it has to be compressed a lot, otherwise the file sizes would be huge.
 
Lesser Evets said:
I wish they'd offer upgrades for already-owned videos from their store.
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If you have bought 720p videos then you can go to Purchased>Movies in the iTunes Store and if the movie is now in 1080p you can redownload.

EDIT: You might have meant upgrading from SD to HD. If that's what you were talking about, then yes that option would have been nice too.
 
Lesser Evets said:
I like Apple, but their video technology has been dancing to an ever-more-eccentric drummer since BluRay appeared on the scene. At least they took a large step closer to 2006 with this.


I wish they'd offer upgrades for already-owned videos from their store.
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You don't have to upgrade. All the TV shows I've bought are available for me to redownload from the "purchased" menu in 1080 for no extra charge.

It seems 1080p movies aren't here in Canada yet, so I can't test that. Anyone in the states confirm it's the same?
 
slapple said:
Last week I bought some movies off iTunes that were 720p. Will Apple be offering 1080p versions of everything now, or just new stuff?
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They have updated a lot of my 720p to 1080p AND 720p. If you go to preferences in iTunes and mark 1080p as your preferred download quality, iTunes will download 1080p when available. If you want 1080p on current movies for ones that have been updated, go to iTunes store and click on purchased. Then you can download 1080p content for movies already purchased for FREE.

EDIT: I have noticed that some of the movies on the purchased page just re-download 720p movies (thinking Apple changed something so it thinks I don't have it). For ones that are available in 1080p, it downloads everything over and overwrites your existing movies.
 
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