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

[Born Again]

Way to gloss over one of the biggest strengths of blu rays - the Audio!!!!

Lossless 7.1 audio over compressed 2 channel audio isn't even a contest.

Bluray > iTunes

 

[samcraig]

1) No force fed commercials and “clever” menus.

Perhaps I'm in the minority - but I appreciate good design from packaging to "clever" menus to the actual content. I would have thought many posters on here would appreciate good design. But maybe too many are too into immediate satisfaction.

I'm also someone who stays and watches the credits.

I also appreciate the tons of extras on blu-rays which sometimes/rarely make it to the iTunes store. (directors commentary, PiP story boards, etc)

So again - for me - blu-ray wins. Without question.

 

[IlluminatedSage]

This is of course stating the obvious, 1080P as a standard is not all the information necessary for viewing quality.

1080P can involve compression to reduce data, which effects picture quality. So although in same basic format as a BD disc, it may not have the same amount of data. a 50 GB blu-ray disc with just quality encoding will blow away a 1.5 GB 1080p itunes file.

similarly audio can blow away the basic quality of a standard Dolby Digital track.

I would be interested to see how itunes 1080p compares to Vudu's HDX 1080P which also features higher end audio.

 

[AbSoluTc]

Considering I gain 'get it right now' and lose 'annoying menus/trailers/FBI warnings' I consider this very slight loss of quality a very fair trade.


I tend to rent movies instead of owning anyway...but IF I ever buy, this seems like a fair trade-off.




The article full of screen shots seems to indicate that yes, they CAN be compared. Blu-Ray wins, sure. But the comparison is not ridiculous.

Slight loss of quality?

Lol. Blu-ray disc holds up to 50gig of data. Most movies are in the 30-40gig range. You lose audio and video quality and it's not a slight loss. Sorry, until Apple gives us excellent quality 1080p with 7.1 surround sound, I'm not going to bite unless it's free. I will stick with my blu-ray movies and DC's for my mobile devices.

 

[Rocketman]

returned with a new analysis But despite an impressive effort by Apple, Blu-ray still reigns king when it comes to image quality. And unlike iTunes titles, BRDs can have uncompressed multi-channel audio, multiple audio language options, and special features.

With digital content each language is just a different file and extras can be extra file(s). The media form factor is forsaked, not the content of the media itself.

Apple's designated media files are necessarily standardized, minimized, and have compromises as compared to audiophiles or videophiles preferences. Given.

One wonders if there will be philes mode files at some point to allow some limited content to be experienced at full capacity? Maybe open source is the first order approach on that. An app for that?

Rocketman

 

[charlieegan3]

...No force fed commercials and “clever” menus....

but the clever menus are just SO important

 

[tdream]

It becomes retina at 50ft

 

[JAT]

Bull... I'll admit the iTMS videos look nice, but there is no way they can be compared to blu ray quality. What are the files encoded at? 3-5 Mbps? Blu rays get up to about 40Mbps! That's a huge reduction of data.

BD is stuck with the codecs listed in its rules. Compression codecs get better all the time, and often take jumps of 2x or 4x reduction for the same pic. Without comparing full details, the numbers don't mean a whole lot.

That said, this isn't going to get me to change from BD to iTMS.

 

[pkson]

Now, less complaining about the omission of bluray support on Macs.

 

[charlieegan3]

It becomes retina at 50ft

it's a revolution!

 

[miniConvert]

Really pleased that the quality is so good. Makes me just a teeny tiny bit more excited to take delivery of my new Apple TV!

 

[11thIndian]

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.

You make a valid point about the cost, but remember once REDBOX buys the disks they're able to set the rental price.

Apple has negotiated the best deal it could with the studios, but Apple has no leeway to change pricing without their express consent.

I think once the studios are more onboard with digital distribution, could could see launch day deals for purchase, or discounted rentals on older catalogue titles. But for now they don't seem interested enough in helping Apple grow this as a business.

 

[diamond.g]

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.

What I wonder is why the jump from 480p to 720p is noticeable when the jump from 720p to 1080p isn't. Does the difference in pixel density really need to be at least 3 times?

 

[charlieegan3]

Now, less complaining about the omission of bluray support on Macs.

second that. So glad this time has come.

 

[dagamer34]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9B179)

The one thing iTunes has that no disc format ever will is the ability to endlessly improve the quality of the file you can download/stream to your devices. If Apple gets better quality with 1/2 the bitrate from H.265, they have a strong incentive to stream that version over the Internet from their servers. Storage is cheap, bandwidth is not.

 

[416049]

1080p digital copies should be the standard now, they should never have been SD.

I don't quite understand this.... not even that long ago it was impossible to download and/or buy 1080p movies.
So we were stuck with SD and in quite a few places still nowadays downloads speeds are still very low so it is a bless to even manage to download sd quality...

In regards to the O.P most people won't notice the difference or won't care the ones who do will either rip blu ray or find another way to watch it.

 

[kagharaht]

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.

True in the US. Still it a very valid point I made.

 

[mudman2]

I may not be representative but I stopped buying BluRays 2years ago.

Between DIVX via Airvideo > Ipad > Apple TV and soon Airplay in OSX direct to Aplle TV and Netflix, optical media is dead to me unless someone buys it as a gift

 

[charlieegan3]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9B179)

The one thing iTunes has that no disc format ever will is the ability to endlessly improve the quality of the file you can download/stream to your devices. If Apple gets better quality with 1/2 the bitrate from H.265, they have a strong incentive to stream that version over the Internet from their servers. Storage is cheap, bandwidth is not.

the bandwidth issue will be the big one for many people here

 

[Anonymous Freak]

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.

I have access to 100% of my iTunes purchases at home, even when my internet goes out. I can sync a dozen movies to my iPad before going on an airplane flight with no internet access, no need to carry a dozen discs around. I can store all of my movies, music, and TV shows on an external hard drive to carry with my notebook computer (and I could even store them internally if I upgraded the hard drive,) no discs to carry around. VUDU/Ultraviolet - no way. iTunes - the files are mine, no constant internet connection needed.

Even with AppleTV, I have the choice of streaming from Apple or streaming from my local PC. (Or streaming FROM my iDevice to the AppleTV.)

 

[charlituna]

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This isn't surprising. It's a matter of balancing download size and screen quality. I think they have done a decent job of that.

Personally I would be willing to have slightly larger files with higher quality. I would take a 1080p that was 2-2.5 times the size of the 720p if that meant better picture, including better and more audio and subtitles. I suspect others would as well

 

[nsayer]

Brightness enhanced for clearer demonstration

You can't claim that that demonstrates any sort of flaw in the content, really. All lossy compression is an exercise in throwing away information that humans cannot perceive. That you had to jack up the brightness in order to see the difference is prima facie evidence that the difference was insignificant.

 

[11thIndian]

Way to gloss over one of the biggest strengths of blu rays - the Audio!!!!

Lossless 7.1 audio over compressed 2 channel audio isn't even a contest.

Bluray > iTunes

It's quality vs convenience- as simple as that. If you're on the road and you want to watch a movie you don't already own, iTunes is there. BluRay can never get more convenient, but digital download quality will continue to sneak up.

The audio issue aside, from a pure picture quality standpoint. If this is the quality Apple is getting out of the 5Mbps. Then someone at home doing their own copy from an HD source at double that [10Mbps], let alone the specs max of 25Mbps- The quality should be pretty wonderful.

 

[charlituna]

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Bull... I'll admit the iTMS videos look nice, but there is no way they can be compared to blu ray quality. What are the files encoded at? 3-5 Mbps? Blu rays get up to about 40Mbps! That's a huge reduction of data.

Just like camera isn't just about the megapixels, compression isn't just about the bit rate

Makes me wonder if blurays could have the same pic quality at half the bitrate. Is that extra 20 really adding that much

 

[hayesk]

Slight loss of quality?

Lol. Blu-ray disc holds up to 50gig of data. Most movies are in the 30-40gig range. You lose audio and video quality and it's not a slight loss. Sorry, until Apple gives us excellent quality 1080p with 7.1 surround sound, I'm not going to bite unless it's free. I will stick with my blu-ray movies and DC's for my mobile devices.

Lol at you believing quality is directly proportional to data size when different compression algorithms are used.

Good for you. I'm sure you had an acoustical engineer come in and design your home theatre room to actually take advantage of the improvements of 7.1 and the latest DDS codec.

Most of us aren't so lucky.