Streaming quality improved?

[ThatGuyInLa]

I know this is coming late, but has streaming quality improved?

I never downloaded my purchased movies. However I clearly remember my dissatisfaction with Shutter Island’s foggy opening scene. The fog had banding and even some motion blocking when I first watched it when it was available. I happened to recently fire it up and all of this was gone. Looks great.

Makes me wonder those that chose to download their films? Do they get notification better is available?

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Probably not a better file. More likely, your broadband was faster or less clogged in that watching... maybe others sharing your broadband were not eating big chunks of it at the same time this time... maybe the time of day was different and others in the area were not consuming the pooled broadband at the same level... maybe wifi interference in your home was not as bad as the prior time you watch this... maybe you recently rebooted your TV and had more free memory... maybe a software update crushed some bug in the player... maybe you previously downloaded a different version of the file (and maybe didn't even notice)... maybe you have tweaked some key setting since the last play... maybe your broadband provider was doing some kind of bandwidth-affecting maintenance during the prior watch... maybe the TV had a software update to make it present a video in a different way... and on and on.

All that written, the file could have been a bad render since replaced too.

 

[BODYBUILDERPAUL]

Apple are constantly given updated files to films in iTunes. Sometimes iTunes Extras are added (happened to a few of mine lately), sometimes cover art is updated and yes, the latest files always seem to look sharper and sound crisper.

I noticed that my old HD copy of Grease has had its cover art updated to the new 40th Anniversary 4K HDR edition which is released on 26th April of this year.
Upon watching it, the picture is even better that it was before and the sound was louder and more dynamic.

Same thing happened with Saturday Night Fever - it was updated to the new 40th anniversary remastered one with loads of excellent iTunes Extras and the picture quality was excellent!

I guess this really is the beauty of buying from Apple and iTunes.
If you have a few favourite films that you back up, maybe it's a great idea to re-download and back up every few months so that you have the latest file!
Shame that you can't download/backup iTunes Extras as i'm really enjoying some of them at the moment!

PS To your question about notification - No sadly, you do not get a notification if an updated or better file is available. Apple probably like to keep this information to themselves.
If you do download - I have about 5 all time favourites downloaded to my MacBook as these are lifelong fave films & I sync them to my iPhone.
You would of course notice if those downloaded ones had been updated on the Apple TV if you stream from the usual iTunes Movies app for things like cover art change.
MAYBE iTunes Extras may appear on a downloaded file menu/description as the MacBook connects the iTunes store for a second or two when iTunes is opened.

 

[Rigby]

There have been reports here in the forum that Apple has started streaming at higher bitrates than what the downloaded files have:

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...higher-bitrate-than-itunes-downloads.2063000/

I haven't checked myself yet though.

And yes, Apple occasionally does update the files you can download as well. You can tell from looking at the MP4 metadata of the downloaded files, which include the date and time when the file was encoded.