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dvin

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 12, 2009
59
0
i recently bought a new MBP and am kind of mac challenged....is there a difference between the HD movies purchased on itunes and the regular movies....when watching them on my MBP?
 
Make your own judgements.
sdhdjo5.jpg
 
Normally I'd say "TIMG, man, TIMG!", but this is the one case where it is appropriate to have a large image. :D

There is visible difference between 480p and 720p. There is also visible difference between 720p and 1080p.

Apple's HD movies are 720p.

There is also even visible difference between 1080p and 4320p (Super Hi-Vision), but beyond that, the human eye physically cannot distinguish change.
 
let me rephrase, i know there is a physical difference between the reg and HD movies...i was curious if when watching on the MBP screen and not on a HDTV, is there a difference.
 
Yeah, not without a really great setup. 720p is fine for a MBP...

Even with a really great setup, "studies" have shown that most people really can't even tell the difference on "really great setups."

Also, one the Macbook, and Pro (1280 x 800 and 1440x900), 720 looks amazing on fullscreen.

On the 17", that's a different issue. It still looks great, but because the resolution is so great (1920x1200), you're better off with 1080p. The resolution on the 17" is higher than 1080p, so even 1080 would have to "expand" to fit all of the pixels. There will be some quality loss on fullscreen, but nothing noticeable at all.

1080p would look great on ever laptop, because it would "shrink" to fit the pixels on screen, which would make everything look extremely crisp. Think of opening up a blurry image (or even a crisp one) in photoshop, and shrink it. It almost always looks better and sharper.

720p is a smaller resolution than the Pros (not macbook (1280x800, and 1280x720)), so it would also have to "expand" (or enlarge) to fit the screen. But, it still looks amazingly great.
 
The larger the screen the easier it is to tell the difference between 720p and 1080p. I could run 10 different video's on my 17" UMBP and probably never guess which is which. Put that same video on my 73' DLP HDTV and I'd probably guess 70% at best. Blue Ray really pops out on it and looks very very good, but my cable box switching from a 720p feed to a 1080p feed can be difficult.

All I know it looks 1000x better than non HD so I'm happy either way. :)
 
Even with a really great setup, "studies" have shown that most people really can't even tell the difference on "really great setups."

On the 17", that's a different issue. It still looks great, but because the resolution is so great (1920x1200), you're better off with 1080p. The resolution on the 17" is higher than 1080p, so even 1080 would have to "expand" to fit all of the pixels. There will be some quality loss on fullscreen, but nothing noticeable at all.

1080p would look great on ever laptop, because it would "shrink" to fit the pixels on screen, which would make everything look extremely crisp. Think of opening up a blurry image (or even a crisp one) in photoshop, and shrink it. It almost always looks better and sharper.

Please share these "studies" :p I personally can tell the difference between 720 and 1080 content. It comes down to bitrate, rather than resolution that makes video look great.

The 17" UMBP does not shrink or expand 1080p content, it displays it 1:1, meaning no shrinking or expanding. The resolution is 1920x1200 - so when I watch content on my MBP, there are black bars top and bottom of exactly 60px. 1080p content on a MBP is sharp, because the video is sharp in the first place ;)
 
Most people can't HD is HD to them, things like color depth, sharpness and black levels stand out but those are not things that are dependent on resolution. Some people like to make it seem like the difference between 720p and 1080p is night and day like comparing 1080p to 2K film when it really isn't the case. Take two high end Pioneer KURO Plasmas one 720p and a 1080p one and the difference is negligible.
 
The studies were done by the BBC and on their recommendation it was decided that 720p would be the broadcast standard. This was based on their findings in that studie I don't have the link unfortunatly.
I like to think I can see the difference, but it's not asbig as I would have liked it to be
 
in those pics the 1080i/p color looks better. her hair is a more natural brown and i think the skin tone is a bit more accurate. also the grey scale detail looks better. how did you take those pics? all at the same time or one after another.
 
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