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

[iSee]

I'm fine with iTunes quality for 95% of what I watch.

I can see the difference but I only care when it matters. E.g., for me:

• Has to be a movie or show I really like (or expect to really like)
• Has to be a movie or show where the visuals are an important part of the experience.

Between the two, there aren't many times where I care. Most comedies and dramas don't focus on the visuals that much. You'd think action movies with the latest CGI would benefit, but most are more about the movement and fast cuts. So, e.g., I have The Planet Earth and LOST on Blu-ray and I rent the occasional movie on Blu-ray.

 

[Icaras]

BTW, I’m with you on the opening previews/menus/BS (I realize I didn’t quote that post ... )

While there’s some options for manual chapter skip, FF, it’s just painful sometimes. I’ll swear, we popped in the BD for Wall-e for the little one the other day and it was like 10 minutes before I could get to the actual movie content.

We scored some movies from iTunes recently and being able to just start the movie immediately was worth the difference in PQ/SQ.

(I’m currently ripping our BDs to avoid this too)

Oh it's like that for every Disney blu-ray. I absolutely loathe their blu-rays for their marketing crap, yet at the same time, their video and audio quality is incredibly pristine.

But yes, the iTunes version of Disney movies are such a relief to just start playing them. Video and audio quality is great too, especially that many are now in 1080p, so I definitely agree it was worth the difference.

 

[ncaissie]

That is not a DAC, it should remain completely digital. So, it totally depends on the quality of the new gpu and associated software.

You've never put a BD into a player and had it claim DRM problems and refuse to play it? Lucky.

No, But I'm all for DRM. I believe they have a right to protect their work. But I also believe if I buy a downloaded copy then it’s to play on the go and I should be able to play it on any mobile device. Just like I can play my Bluray movies on any of my bluray players or Playstation 3’s.

 

[JAT]

They don't care about their heavily compressed 1080i/720p broadcast images from cable or satellite. You've compared OTA vs cable/sat? The difference is amazing. No one cares. Garbage in/Garbage out.

Too many OTA sources are now no better or even worse, while the cable/sat companies have been improving. Subchannels.

 

[tbrinkma]

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?

Well, SD was actually 420i but DVD gave us 420p if your set supported it. In practice that meant a movie on VHS either did 'pan & scan', so you only saw part of the frame at once, or was 'letter boxed' so you had big black bars above and below the image.

Well, *most* movies are shot in a wider aspect ratio than the 16:9 of HDTV, but they're at least *closer*, so you've got less dead 'letterbox' space above and below the image. Well, SD was actually 420i but DVD gave us 420p if your set supported it.

Assuming DVD & a good set, that usually gave you somewhere in the neighborhood of 315p worth of actual vertical resolution for a film. Bumping that up to 720p is a *significant* gain (+128% vertical resolution). The move from 720p to 1080p, by comparison, is only +50%.

Combined with typical screen-sizes and viewing distances in most homes, 720p actually meets the requirements for most TV sets to be 'retina displays' in Apple's parlance, so there's absolutely no visible improvement for 1080p. People with larger sets, or viewing at shorter than typical distances may see some benefit, but it isn't as pronounced as the difference between 420p and 720p was in practice.

To give a quick illustration of the importance of viewing distance:
If you have a 1080p set sitting at *exactly* your 'retina display' threshold at 10', you need a monitor approximately 1/5 the size at the same resolution to get the same 'retina display' effect on your desktop. Most people consider a 50" TV pretty big, but would seriously balk at the idea of a 10" 1080p monitor as their primary display on their desk, despite the fact that they cover approximately the same field of view for their respective viewers.

Oddly enough, those same people often buy 19-20" 1080p displays for their computers, but would consider a 95-100" display *far* too large for their living room. I guess that just goes to show the differences in expectation more than anything else.

 

[ThisIsNotMe]

A comparison of iTunes vs HDTV would be far more relevant.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

how often do you stare at a dark corner though?

I can think of a movie or two where black levels are important.

 

[669532]

Everytime the movie starts?

isn't that a plain black screen? however I've got the point

 

[leroypants]

but you don't get to download a Blu-Ray movie! sync it to your devices etc

Google dvd Catalyst 4....

 

[JAT]

A comparison of iTunes vs HDTV would be far more relevant.

Only for TV. Not for movies.

 

[Scarpad]

I wonder if this will be avoidable in Handbrake? That is when we creating from ripped blu-ray discs, achieve blu-ray quality in the m4v file.

I hope Handbrake comes out with a ATV3 preset super fast.

Just use High Profile and set it to 1920x whatever.

 

[Cougarcat]

For many people on this Forum, that's no problem, but if Apple doesn't want to include it, the least they can is support an external drive in the OS.

I agree, but I think there's a whole lot of licensing issues that Apple doesn't want to deal with. There's a reason there are very few Bluray players even in Windows (and they all suck).

 

[Scarpad]

Since I never buy a Blu Ray when if first comes out, I never pay full price, I mainly buy blu's at 10 bucks or Less and for that price a $20 Digital Download even at 1080p is not worth it.

 

[distemp]

The general population likes Dancing with the Stars, Madonna and Adam Sandler movies. There is no accounting for taste. The general population likes Cheesecake factory and McDonalds. There is no account for taste. The general population likes True Religion jeans. There is no accounting for taste. The general population uses the Apple throw away earphones that come with ipods and iphones. The general population thinks 128k mp3 files are good enough.
Why would anyone think that people would care about heavily compressed 1080p files? They don't care about their heavily compressed 1080i/720p broadcast images from cable or satellite. You've compared OTA vs cable/sat? The difference is amazing. No one cares. Garbage in/Garbage out.

Taste is relative term. You come across like a real cock in this post.

 

[nofear1az]

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.

Sounds like you sir have one of the Sony one's from first couple versions. I had one too and it was bad. I replaced it with an LG and it's fast and agile. Sold the Sony on Craigslist to some guy. I told him why I was getting rid of it but he still wanted it. hehehe

 

[overcast]

I'll have to wait and see it for myself.

If someone wants to show me how bad the banding looks, turning up the brightness to make it noticeable is not the way to convince me. That's gaming the demonstration.

You can turn up the brightness to show that the banding is there, but for me to decide whether the banding will bother me, I have to see it at normal brightness.

If you're turning down the brightness to hide banding, then you're also crushing the blacks. The vast majority of people do not calibrate their monitors, let alone TV's, nor do they even care about anything I've just stated. So it's probably a pointless discussion. But when it comes to my gear, I'm after the absolute best source I can find.

 

[3282868]

Sounds like you sir have one of the Sony one's from first couple versions. I had one too and it was bad. I replaced it with an LG and it's fast and agile. Sold the Sony on Craigslist to some guy. I told him why I was getting rid of it but he still wanted it. hehehe

Yup. I have a 2007 Sony BDP-300 or such that is slow as heck. However I hardly use it any longer.

I hacked a 1st gen aTV with a Crystal HD graphics hard (replaced the WiFi N) for about $30 online. Hooked it up to my Synology NAS and my 1080P mkv's (and now m4v's as Handbrake support DTS in m4v containers) play perfectly.

I'm planning on picking up a Mini and throwing in a Blu-Ray to replace my 1st, 2nd gen aTV's and Blu Ray player as you can now watch Blu-Ray discs on OS X with "Blu-Ray Player for Mac and PC." Works great!

The general population likes Dancing with the Stars, Madonna and Adam Sandler movies. There is no accounting for taste. The general population likes Cheesecake factory and McDonalds. There is no account for taste. The general population likes True Religion jeans. There is no accounting for taste. The general population uses the Apple throw away earphones that come with ipods and iphones. The general population thinks 128k mp3 files are good enough.
Why would anyone think that people would care about heavily compressed 1080p files? They don't care about their heavily compressed 1080i/720p broadcast images from cable or satellite. You've compared OTA vs cable/sat? The difference is amazing. No one cares. Garbage in/Garbage out.

^This. FTW.

 

[AppleDroid]

I still buy blu because nothing sounds better than uncompressed hd audio over a 7.1 setup. No streaming service can compete with that yet.

 

[heliocentric]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B176 Safari/7534.48.3)

I wonder what the 1080p iTunes video quality is like compared to the 1080p movies you can rent on your 360 from Zune.

 

[KurtangleTN]

I like how people are clinging to the fact that a single still is close to single still in a blu ray.

Most compression does appear more in motion, not to mention besides a vastly better picture quality the audio is completely unmatched in Blu Ray.

All this fanboying it up because Apple is too stubborn to include Blu Ray. There was ever a microcosm of Apple's thought process it would be Blu Ray.. "Oh well, we don't give a **** about your choice.. we don't give a **** about you unless you buy on iTunes like a good boy"

Just one of the many reasons when it's time for me to upgrade I'll be staying away from Apple.

Since I never buy a Blu Ray when if first comes out, I never pay full price, I mainly buy blu's at 10 bucks or Less and for that price a $20 Digital Download even at 1080p is not worth it.

This is completely true, why the hell would I want to pay more for an inferior digital copy that I can't play on my TV without buying more Apple **** to stream it.

 

[a.gomez]

"pairing the new new content with movie support for iTunes in the Cloud and new 1080p hardware in the new iPad"

yeah because watching 1080p movie on a 10inch screen with a 4:3 ratio and a crap speaker has always been my HD dream.

wow, the apple community has really hit a new low if they buy this nonsense.

 

[polaris20]

For me it's definitely close enough, and the convenience of it far outweighs any quality drawbacks. At this point, Amazon Prime Instant Video, Netflix, Hulu+, and iTMS have killed my desire to deal with physical disks. I travel quite a bit for work, and these services are so much easier to deal with than lugging stupid disks everywhere.

Even at home I don't really reach for the Blu-Ray player very often anymore. But as always YMMV. I realize not everyone has stellar broadband.

 

[11thIndian]

Since the new iPad's display is greater than HD resolution, it has to be up-sampled right? And the quality of that totally depends on the DAC built into the new iPad...

That will be an interesting question. Can you view the image at pixel specific size, or does it default to fitting the width. Maybe you'll be able to double-tap to switch between the two.

----------

I still have to chuckle at those that are willing to compromise over video quality - which is OK... but at the same time are so excited about having a retina display on their iPad 3 "for the win!" no less.

It's a bit conflicted...

Why chuckle until you can see how it looks? You seem to be putting the cart before the horse.

 

[kugino]

this is big news? a bluray 7GB movie holds more information than a 2.5GB iTunes movie. of course you'll lose some detail and the bluray SHOULD look better.

 

[ArcaneDevice]

I like how people are clinging to the fact that a single still is close to single still in a blu ray.

Most compression does appear more in motion, not to mention besides a vastly better picture quality the audio is completely unmatched in Blu Ray.

Aha, someone else has noticed the flaw in this comparison.

Where are the comparisons of fast-moving scenes or those with explosions of contrast and light? That's where the compression rate breaks apart, not in slow moving still frames.