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Digital copies via blu-rays. I like DTS-MA and 1080p on the 140" screen. Sorry iTunes do look like crap, and their sound quality just isn't as good.

I agree that Blu-Ray sound tends to be better and more surround-sound but I think iTunes movies look great on my 100" projection screen and I only get 720p with my ATV v2. Maybe I'm enjoying the story rather than nitpick subtle flaws in shadows… There's also a huge variation from movie to movie because of the way they were filmed at the time. Willing to bet digitally-filmed movies look much better than celluloid movies converted to digital.

Plus, internet quality is a big factor in streaming image quality so maybe your internet service is the problem.

Everyone's entitled to their opinion.
 
I still buy physical media, but I do like the ones that come with downloadable digital copies. I agree that a BluRay disc still beats "iTunes HD", but not every screen I'm going to use will really show that quality difference - probably only one of three TVs and none of the portable devices have a display good enough to show it.
 
I agree that Blu-Ray sound tends to be better and more surround-sound but I think iTunes movies look great on my 100" projection screen and I only get 720p with my ATV v2. Maybe I'm enjoying the story rather than nitpick subtle flaws in shadows… There's also a huge variation from movie to movie because of the way they were filmed at the time. Willing to bet digitally-filmed movies look much better than celluloid movies converted to digital.

Plus, internet quality is a big factor in streaming image quality so maybe your internet service is the problem.

Everyone's entitled to their opinion.

Yeah some looks fine enough. I have the appleTV connected into the whole setup and with a little tweaking, I can soften some movies to hide the compression, and it actually looks not half that bad.

Jurassic Park (I got it on iTunes as a gift) looks good enough.
 
Do you guys really tell the difference from 1080p bluray to 1080p Digital downloads? I've tried several times and either I have bad eyes or i don't see the difference! :cool:
 
Do you guys really tell the difference from 1080p bluray to 1080p Digital downloads? I've tried several times and either I have bad eyes or i don't see the difference! :cool:

When I can see the pores on the actors' skin I think that is plenty high res enough!
 
So because YOU don't like the terms the content providers have set for their content, you justify stealing it?

I think BMW's are over priced and I don't like that I have to go to the store to pick it out and deal with a salesman. I'm just going to steal one



Get off your soap box man. Not really that big of a deal. There's been times where I've downloaded a few movies out of convenience to see if they were good. If they were crappy, I was glad I did. If it was good, I'd buy it on Blu Ray.
 
Over 300 purchased HD movies and over 70 HD TV shows on iTunes. I also own about 30 blu-rays, only because these titles don't exist digitally.

My wife has a Netflix account that I use occasionally for some discovery if I'm really unsure of purchasing a certain title.

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Do you guys really tell the difference from 1080p bluray to 1080p Digital downloads? I've tried several times and either I have bad eyes or i don't see the difference! :cool:

There is a difference, but I find it very marginal. Hard-core blu-ray users will argue with you otherwise. I own both formats and 1080p iTunes is good enough for me.
 
I purchase blu-rays, through Amazon.

Blu-Rays are all I'll buy as far as physical media goes now, and they are mostly 3D movies.

I have amassed 4TB of movies, documentaries sic-fi shows all complete. I shudder to think just how much this would cost if I were to buy it all over.

I was worried when it was all on my R4 in RAID0, so purchase a USB 3 4TB drive to act as a backup.

I have under a TB free on both, so it won't be long before I have to consider expansion. My original plan was to pull the 4X1TB drives in the Promise and replace then with 4X2TB drives.

That covers that end of things, but I'd then have to go out and buy another 4TB USB 3 drive, or put two in an enclosure....
 
Blu-Rays are all I'll buy as far as physical media goes now, and they are mostly 3D movies.

I have amassed 4TB of movies, documentaries sic-fi shows all complete. I shudder to think just how much this would cost if I were to buy it all over.

I was worried when it was all on my R4 in RAID0, so purchase a USB 3 4TB drive to act as a backup.

I have under a TB free on both, so it won't be long before I have to consider expansion. My original plan was to pull the 4X1TB drives in the Promise and replace then with 4X2TB drives.

That covers that end of things, but I'd then have to go out and buy another 4TB USB 3 drive, or put two in an enclosure....

The nice thing about owning movies and TV shows on iTunes: zero hard drive space. :cool:

I used to have 2TB allotted to digital movies, until iTunes finally moved to the cloud. Once that happened, I never had to worry about storage space again. It was quite a load off my shoulders as I was always running out of space myself.
 
The nice thing about owning movies and TV shows on iTunes: zero hard drive space. :cool:

I used to have 2TB allotted to digital movies, until iTunes finally moved to the cloud. Once that happened, I never had to worry about storage space again. It was quite a load off my shoulders as I was always running out of space myself.

It's true, and I do have a big iTunes collection too, but most of the stuff I keep is rare, not available on iTunes and I doubt that a lot of it is even available on DVD any longer.....I would like to keep the storage aspect down a little...It's getting a bit cluttered on my desk...If you include the 3TB Fusion Drive in my iMac, I have a total of 11TB of storage with less than 3 actually free. I don't think the onsite stuff is likely to grow much more, and I have what I want, and as you point out, new stuff is available via iTunes, or on BRD.
 
It's true, and I do have a big iTunes collection too, but most of the stuff I keep is rare, not available on iTunes and I doubt that a lot of it is even available on DVD any longer.....I would like to keep the storage aspect down a little...It's getting a bit cluttered on my desk...If you include the 3TB Fusion Drive in my iMac, I have a total of 11TB of storage with less than 3 actually free. I don't think the onsite stuff is likely to grow much more, and I have what I want, and as you point out, new stuff is available via iTunes, or on BRD.

That's an impressive amount of storage space you have there! If you decide to adopt 4K disc titles, you'll at least be prepared. Of course that is if you decide you want to repurchase those 4K titles physically too, but that goes back to dreading the cost issues lol.
 
That's an impressive amount of storage space you have there! If you decide to adopt 4K disc titles, you'll at least be prepared. Of course that is if you decide you want to repurchase those 4K titles physically too lol.

The whole 4K thing just isn't ready yet...I wouldn't be able to replace a lot of my stuff with 4K versions anyway....I've pretty much maxed it out and I think dividing into a current and archival section might be the way to go....but first I'd need more storage!:)
 
The nice thing about owning movies and TV shows on iTunes: zero hard drive space. :cool:

I used to have 2TB allotted to digital movies, until iTunes finally moved to the cloud. Once that happened, I never had to worry about storage space again. It was quite a load off my shoulders as I was always running out of space myself.

As the saying Goes "You pay your money and you take your Choice" What you save on local storage you pay for in other ways.

Bandwidth usage.
Internet down when you want to watch a movie.
Cost of cloud storage.
 
As the saying Goes "You pay your money and you take your Choice" What you save on local storage you pay for in other ways.

Bandwidth usage.
Internet down when you want to watch a movie.
Cost of cloud storage.

Yep. No such issues as my stuff streams directly to my ATV units using Air Video Server...My iPad, rmbp and iPhone can all act as servers so I'm pretty much covered...I'd have to be really unlucky for all three devices to die at once...:)
 
The nice thing about owning movies and TV shows on iTunes: zero hard drive space. :cool:

I used to have 2TB allotted to digital movies, until iTunes finally moved to the cloud. Once that happened, I never had to worry about storage space again. It was quite a load off my shoulders as I was always running out of space myself.

I still make sure I've got a download of all my iTunes purchases. It hasn't happened in the UK ( yet ), but I don't trust a studio like Disney deciding that they don't want a movie being available anymore and yanking it from the store, and then I can't download it....

I think at the minute, my purchases are equally split between iTMS and BD's. Most, if not all, of the iTMS purchases are TV shows in HD that you can't in the UK ( W13, Suits, for example ).
 
I still make sure I've got a download of all my iTunes purchases. It hasn't happened in the UK ( yet ), but I don't trust a studio like Disney deciding that they don't want a movie being available anymore and yanking it from the store, and then I can't download it....

I think at the minute, my purchases are equally split between iTMS and BD's. Most, if not all, of the iTMS purchases are TV shows in HD that you can't in the UK ( W13, Suits, for example ).

I remember living in Connecticut three or four years ago and had a three day and a five day power outage in a six week period due to winter storms. Seem to happen very frequent because of the mixture of overhead electrical cables and lots of trees.

Ipad was the only entertainment I had.
 
Would it be wise to switch over to digital and start getting movies through iTunes? I've been buying blu-rays here and there the past couple years but I think digital is the future. I just hate having to tie myself to one ecosystem. Who knows what will happen in the future. Content could get pulled. Apple could go out if business or lose movies.
 
Would it be wise to switch over to digital and start getting movies through iTunes? I've been buying blu-rays here and there the past couple years but I think digital is the future. I just hate having to tie myself to one ecosystem. Who knows what will happen in the future. Content could get pulled. Apple could go out if business or lose movies.

Over the past year I've been buying more from iTMS, but that's mainly due to trying to declutter ( as the missus says.... ;) ), and it's mostly TV shows or films that I know will only get watched via the ATV ( mostly kids films ). Films that will probably be watched elsewhere ( via StreamToMe / Plex ) I buy on BD and rip....
 
As the saying Goes "You pay your money and you take your Choice" What you save on local storage you pay for in other ways.

Bandwidth usage.
Internet down when you want to watch a movie.
Cost of cloud storage.

True, but cost of cloud storage doesn't apply, as it's all on Apple's end. :D

Physical media also bears it's own external costs, some or all of which may be applicable, such as gas to drive to the local shop, or shipping costs from an online retailer, and sales tax.

I still make sure I've got a download of all my iTunes purchases. It hasn't happened in the UK ( yet ), but I don't trust a studio like Disney deciding that they don't want a movie being available anymore and yanking it from the store, and then I can't download it....

The day Disney took Lion King down from iTunes lasted about less than half a day, and I had pointed out on that day in this forum, that out of all my purchased movies, that was the only title it ever happened to and the downtime was hardly something to write home about. The press coverage and public awareness it got was instantaneous. Of course people will kick and scream to find that their movies that they've purchased have disappeared from their account. But I just knew Disney and Apple would correct it. And they did, Lion King was back up in a matter of hours. A lot of anti-digital-download people on this very forum made a huge fuss over it, condemning digital and praising physical media. But really, it was no biggie.

What I truly think is that Apple's policy is that they won't pull a purchased movie or TV show from a user's iCloud account. Of course studios can yank a film from the store anytime, but the content will always exist in your iCloud account. New users just won't be able to purchase a fresh digital copy going forward. Existing owners will be honored. Studios have to let Apple handle that policy on the front end, because as we've already witnessed before, random, unannounced disappearances of purchased movies is just asking for a PR nightmare.
 
Mostly iTunes, a few of my personal collection have been ripped and stored locally.

TV shows are recorded using EyeTV through 2 Silicon Dust HDHR tuners and dropped into iTunes for viewing. We do purchase one season pass for Mad Men.

Otherwise, it's airplay from Hulu and Netflix on the :apple:TV for my family.
 
interesting thread. i've recently started buying a lot of old movies on dvd. found a couple of pawn shops that keep a lot of movies there and my average cost per movie is $1.40. i realize that the cost will go up as soon as the selections get a little slim. as far as where i watch them, mostly on a dvd player hooked up to a tv set, either at my house or my girlfriend's house. now i'm starting to get a little hard of hearing and when others in either household is sleeping i'll watch them on a computer and listen with earphones. i have six macs and five of them have a dvd drive (the other has only a cd-rom drive). anyway i've started ripping a few of my favorites that i own and i am storing them on an external firewire drive. the reason for this is that in the past i've had a few dvd's that have kind of disappeared but i haven't had this problem recently. all six of my macs have a firewire port. downloaded or streamed movies? for some reason downloads just don't appeal to me. dvd's are old school i know but that's fine with me.
 
Really??? I mean REALLY??? This is one of the worst analogies I've ever heard. You may not be depriving the people who legally purchased their music of their enjoyment of listening to the music but you certainly are depriving the artist/rights holder of a return on producing that music.
In my analogy, the artists / right holders are also being deprived of a potential earning. I'm not trying to make piracy acceptable; I'm trying to correctly identify the problem. Piracy is a problem, no doubt. Incorrectly stating the problem, using analogy to theft, will bring about an improper solution.

The better analogy would be sneaking into a movie/concert that charged money to attend (one that you had no way of seeing/hearing otherwise unless you broke the law) to see that movie/concert and thinking that was fine - would you think that was OK?
The only difference between my analogy and your analogy is that in mine the concert / movie is open air and then in theory has unlimited capacity, and in yours the concert / movie has limited seats / capacity. As I stated before, with the nature of digital downloads, capacity is practically infinite. When one sneaks into a movie and take a seat, they are taking a physical seat that could belong to a paying patron. When one downloads an illegal movie file, they are not depriving any paying patrons.

Would you do that? You probably don't morally think its fine and you probably wouldn't do it for fear of being caught. Most people who illegally download justify it to themselves for various reasons but the main reason they continue to do it is because they don't believe they will get caught.
I never said it's fine; I never tried to justify doing it. I'm arguing that the proper analogy is trespass. Think about it: trespassing onto someone's intellectual property vs. trespassing into someone's real property. Trespass is illegal, it's bad, and it should be condemned. However, with real property, laws and courts generally say that going onto someone's lawn once or twice isn't so bad. However, putting down a tent and camping in someone's backyard for a long time is bad and the trespasser should be removed. A repeated trespasser should be criminally prosecuted. This is how I see piracy. Ripping a Blu-ray / DVD is like taking a shortcut across someone's lawn (not so bad). Downloading an movie is like pitching a tent on someone's lawn and living there (pretty bad). Downloading many movies is like pitching a tent in every lawn in the neighborhood and living wherever you please each night. (this is very bad). These analogies, I believe, will get people thinking about the problem in the right way; and will thus lead to better solutions.

This is a moral issue and what you choose to do is your choice but be honest and admit that you are no better than a common thief or shop-lifter and you do this because you simply don't want to pay the price that has been set for a product (albeit that might mean buying a physical copy of the item rather than a digital copy) and you don't think you'll be caught.
Woa now, let's not throw mud. As I've said many times on here, I'm advocating for a proper solution and not trying to make excuses. I want artists to get paid, and I don't like thieves. However, as explained above, the "thief" or "shop-lifter" analogy will get us nowhere. Digital downloads are not physical goods; can we stop pretending they are?

For the Record - I don't work for any industry body or studio etc and am somewhat of a hypocrite as I rip all the DVD's/Bluray's I own, which depending on where you are in the world can also be illegal.
In my analogy, what you're doing is the same as walking across someone's lawn every day to get to your bus stop a little quicker. Technically, the owner of that lawn can sue you and get some minor damages for the minute you spend on their lawn (maybe $1 per incident), and they can enjoin you from doing it again; but really they should just be happy to have you as a neighbor. You're a neighbor because by buying the DVD, you have licensed the use of a little bit of their intellectual property. The goal in preventing piracy is to keep out the people who are not part of the neighborhood at all.
 
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In my analogy, the artists / right holders are also being deprived of a potential earning. I'm not trying to make piracy acceptable; I'm trying to correctly identify the problem. Piracy is a problem, no doubt. Incorrectly stating the problem, using analogy to theft, will bring about an improper solution.


The only difference between my analogy and your analogy is that in mine the concert / movie is open air and then in theory has unlimited capacity, and in yours the concert / movie has limited seats / capacity. As I stated before, with the nature of digital downloads, capacity is practically infinite. When one sneaks into a movie and take a seat, they are taking a physical seat that could belong to a paying patron. When one downloads an illegal movie file, they are not depriving any paying patrons.


I never said it's fine; I never tried to justify doing it. I'm arguing that the proper analogy is trespass. Think about it: trespassing onto someone's intellectual property vs. trespassing into someone's real property. Trespass is illegal, it's bad, and it should be condemned. However, with real property, laws and courts generally say that going onto someone's lawn once or twice isn't so bad. However, putting down a tent and camping in someone's backyard for a long time is bad and the trespasser should be removed. A repeated trespasser should be criminally prosecuted. This is how I see piracy. Ripping a Blu-ray / DVD is like taking a shortcut across someone's lawn (not so bad). Downloading an movie is like pitching a tent on someone's lawn and living there (pretty bad). Downloading many movies is like pitching a tent in every lawn in the neighborhood and living wherever you please each night. (this is very bad). These analogies, I believe, will get people thinking about the problem in the right way; and will thus lead to better solutions.


Woa now, let's not throw mud. As I've said many times on here, I'm advocating for a proper solution and not trying to make excuses. I want artists to get paid, and I don't like thieves. However, as explained above, the "thief" or "shop-lifter" analogy will get us nowhere. Digital downloads are not physical goods; can we stop pretending they are?


In my analogy, what you're doing is the same as walking across someone's lawn every day to get to your bus stop a little quicker. Technically, the owner of that lawn can sue you and get some minor damages for the minute you spend on their lawn (maybe $1 per incident), and they can enjoin you from doing it again; but really they should just be happy to have you as a neighbor. You're a neighbor because by buying the DVD, you have licensed the use of a little bit of their intellectual property. The goal in preventing piracy is to keep out the people who are not part of the neighborhood at all.

I think the main mistake piraters make is misidentifying what they are actually stealing. They are stealing EXPERIENCES, not megabytes. You watch a movie or listen to music to have an experience. The artists and technicians worked hard to create an experience you would enjoy and should get compensated for it, even if you don't actually enjoy it in the end they tried in good faith. The reason walking near an outdoor concert isn't stealing is because the quality and EXPERIENCE of actually being there is vastly diminished so you aren't really experiencing it. If enough people pirate and make that work unsustainable, piraters definitely WILL deprive us honest people of their products. Not to mention all those restrictions you claim to hate, like DRM, are YOUR FAULT, not mine, but I have to live with them, too. I think eventually all entertainment will only exist in tightly managed clouds and no one will be allowed to have local copies that can be then transferred for free somewhere else. We will always need to be connected to the internet to view them. And that's the fault of pirates.
 
I think the main mistake piraters make is misidentifying what they are actually stealing. They are stealing EXPERIENCES, not megabytes. You watch a movie or listen to music to have an experience. The artists and technicians worked hard to create an experience you would enjoy and should get compensated for it, even if you don't actually enjoy it in the end they tried in good faith. The reason walking near an outdoor concert isn't stealing is because the quality and EXPERIENCE of actually being there is vastly diminished so you aren't really experiencing it. If enough people pirate and make that work unsustainable, piraters definitely WILL deprive us honest people of their products. Not to mention all those restrictions you claim to hate, like DRM, are YOUR FAULT, not mine, but I have to live with them, too. I think eventually all entertainment will only exist in tightly managed clouds and no one will be allowed to have local copies that can be then transferred for free somewhere else. We will always need to be connected to the internet to view them. And that's the fault of pirates.

First, thanks for the contribution. I really do love this discussion (not joking, trolling, etc). I think you're on point with that. The experience is definitely the 'product' we should be paying for. Unfortunately there is no practical way of quantifying experience. We don't pay for it that way. Is one $12 novel the same experience as ten music singles? I'm not convinced that 'experience' is the right way to look at this issue, from a legal or economic perspective.

To your point on restrictions, let's separate the different industries (music, movies, print) because those industries entered the digital world at different times and in very different ways.

There is a lesson to be learned from the music industry. They entered digital first with CDs, without even realizing what they were getting into. CDs contained unrestricted and extremely high quality music files. For a time, copying CDs was expensive (low price burners didn't come out for a while), and distribution of illegal copies wasn't feasible (low internet speeds, many people without internet at home). Plus, during this time the industry was involved in some shady business practices (price fixing, etc). They didn't have the foresight and understand of the impact of CD burners, high-speed internet, and MP3 players. Can't really blame them though; they were the first to dive into digital. They sued consumers; consumers backlashed; there was a defacto negotiation between consumers and the music industry in the courts and in public opinion; and we ended up with streaming where the artists make nearly nothing, and the consumers are upset about restrictions. It's a lose-lose.

Movie industry largely followed suit to the music industry; except they saw what was happening to music and put in some restrictions on their digital content. It helped a bit; but not enough. They largely followed the same path, and ended up with slightly better business models in Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc. I haven't heard about movie studios complaining about streaming as much as musicians; so I assume the deal they struck is simply better.

There is also a lesson from the print industry. The print industry (books, magazines, etc) has largely been on the side-lines for this whole mess. They resisted jumping into digital for a really long time. They finally jumped with the Amazon Kindle and Apple iPad; and they are doing pretty good. Piracy is low, relative to music and movies. The reason I think is because the print industry had time to observe music and movies and they learned the lesson: when you jump into digital, you have to do it in a very controlled and consumer-friendly manner. It has to be so much easier to buy a book legally that people won't bother pirating. Amazon did this perfectly: I can read the first chapter for free (like in a book store or library), I can buy it for a reasonable price with one click, I can consume public domain stuff for free from the same interface, and I can use it to access what is in my public library. Apple does it very well too.

Apple is probably responsible for preventing the most music and movie piracy through their iTunes store. But for their consumer-friendly and controlled distribution model, more people would have pirated.

So to your point, the restrictions are needed to maintain that control; but they shouldn't be so restrictive as to be unfriendly towards consumers. In this digital world, we have to look at piracy as competition to beat. Take apps for example: I have thought about pirating an app for my iPhone, but then I just clicked the buy button because it was the path of least resistance: $3 of resistance vs my time and effort to jailbreak and find pirated material). Back in 2002 with music, the equation was different: $15 for a CD containing the songs I want plus time ripping it (assuming the songs I want are available on one CD) vs. my time to find the pirated material.
 
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