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iTunes HD videos low bitrate, include iPod-ready versions - Page 2

post #41 of 97
9/10/08 at 9:35pm
edit: Pipped by JeffDM.
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post #42 of 97
9/10/08 at 9:50pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by GregAlexander View Post

The studies I've seen basically resulted in
1) BluRay (or HDDVD) are the best
2) AppleTV HD next best
3) HD mpeg4 next (on cable or satellite)
4) HD mpeg2 (via FTA or cable)
5) DVD
6) AppleTV SD
etc etc
That would agree with my experience too. I haven't used MS Xbox.

I watched the free episode of Monk last night on my Apple TV, and the quality was without a doubt below broadcast HD and in my opinion not as clean as an upconverted DVD. Lots of artifacts, lots of noise, and short on sharpness. Previewing the free episode of Heroes, the same appears to hold true.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TenoBell View Post

You are also able to burn iTunes media files to DVD if that makes you feel more secure.

Buying it on Blu-Ray, thusly getting the highest quality possible and a copy that won't one day spontaneously combust, seems like a greater advantage than instant gratification. With current broadband limitations and the time/money it takes to safely archive your purchases, this whole HD over the internet thing just seems premature to me. Especially if people want to get their money's worth out of that expensive HDTV they bought.
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post #43 of 97
9/10/08 at 9:51pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffDM View Post

It can be burned to DVD as a data file. It would not be burned as DVD-Video. I think it defeats the point of digital media, to not have to manage a bunch of discs. I'm a lot better at managing pressed DVDs than I am burned discs.

I'm just pointing this out as an option if one feels they cannot trust the stability of HDD storage. If I were to use the burned disk route, its easy to print pictures and labels on the disc to help organize them.
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post #44 of 97
9/10/08 at 9:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cory Bauer View Post

Buying it on Blu-Ray, thusly getting the highest quality possible and a copy that won't one day spontaneously combust, seems like a greater advantage than instant gratification. With current broadband limitations and the time/money it takes to safely archive your purchases, this whole HD over the internet thing just seems premature to me. Especially if people want to get their money's worth out of that expensive HDTV they bought.

Maybe you haven't experienced this, but discs are not a fool proof solution. Discs can get scratched or corrupted which causes errors in the playback.
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post #45 of 97
9/10/08 at 10:00pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by TenoBell View Post

Maybe you haven't experienced this, but discs are not a fool proof solution. Discs can get scratched or corrupted which causes errors in the playback.

Blu-Ray's are pretty darn scratch resistant. I use Netflix, and I haven't had a Blu-Ray yet that showed up with anything resembling a scratch on it. Still, if one disc gets scratched you're out twenty-five bucks. When a hard drive fails, and it's got all of your digital purchases on it, you're out hundreds if not thousands of dollars and your entire movie collection. Yikes! The only way I have to worry about that with Blu-Ray is if my house burns down or gets robbed, and insurance covers that

Oh, AND they look 4-5 times better
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post #46 of 97
9/10/08 at 10:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffDM View Post

Maybe "get info"? I see two downloads, though I would think that Apple would stack them or hide one in a way that it doesn't cause confusion where someone would delete a duplicate.
...

Is it really that size? Does it say that with "get info"? Apple doesn't seem to show the res numbers on the store. It doesn't make sense to use that res and give it 3x the data rate.

Nope--Get Info shows only one file, and Command-R to Finder shows only one as well.

I definitely downloaded the HD version (it had the HD logo) but apparently got the SD version (alone) instead.

Since it's the free episode, I'm downloading again to see if I get HD this time.

(Yes, Get Info shows 853x480--which I don't think is HD, but it's better than widescreen TV shows used to be which was 640x360. But the file size is still the same as ever--around 500 MB for a 1-hour episode... 43 minutes with commercials removed.)

EDIT: Nope. I downloaded the free Galactica episode (MAJOR SPOILERS in it so be warned) twice from the show's HD page, and got SD (only) both times. Just one download appeared, 853x480, 521 MB.

Anyone know how to obtain the HD version?

TIA

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post #47 of 97
9/10/08 at 11:15pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cory Bauer View Post

Blu-Ray's are pretty darn scratch resistant. I use Netflix, and I haven't had a Blu-Ray yet that showed up with anything resembling a scratch on it. Still, if one disc gets scratched you're out twenty-five bucks. When a hard drive fails, and it's got all of your digital purchases on it, you're out hundreds if not thousands of dollars and your entire movie collection. Yikes! The only way I have to worry about that with Blu-Ray is if my house burns down or gets robbed, and insurance covers that

Oh, AND they look 4-5 times better

Well yes I would say its mostly rare for a DVD to get scratched to the point of not working. My point was that it can happen. On the same token its not as if HDD frequently fail either. Generally we commonly keep far more valuable information stored on HDD than on DVD.

Their are a couple of different reasons a HDD can fail that does not necessarily mean the data is lost. In most instances the data can be reclaimed.

To keep this from dragging on too long. We can acknowledge that their are pluses and minuses to both solutions. Without the need to overstate either one.
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post #48 of 97
9/10/08 at 11:23pm
Not sure what's happening for other folks but it is downloading the HD & SD versions of the free shows at the moment ... free HD ep of 'In Plain Sight' is 2.2Gb compared to SD version of 712Mb ... not sure why it's not finding SD version of Galactica but HD version is coming in at 1.38Gb ...

edit - only allowing 3 simultaneous downloads on my 20Mb Virgin cable connection - SD ep of Galactica 513Mb

edit 2 - just used 'get info' in iTunes and says HD Galactica episode is 1280 x 720 ... 'inspector' in QT player says the same !!

Jon
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post #49 of 97
9/10/08 at 11:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by pixelcruncher View Post

No it won't. If downloads of lower quality are successful, why would they increase the quality?

You're thinking too much about cable. Done right, Apple would increase the quality, but for a price. Imagine iTunes HD Plus! Give it a few years and see.
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post #50 of 97
9/10/08 at 11:50pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by pixelcruncher View Post

Precisely my point. The quality will not improve if the current level of compression is acceptable. Those who say "it'll get better" are just wrong.

No sir, you are. Acceptable is a transient state in this regard. It works now, but won't tomorrow.
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post #51 of 97
9/10/08 at 11:53pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by nagromme View Post

EDIT: Nope. I downloaded the free Galactica episode (MAJOR SPOILERS in it so be warned) twice from the show's HD page, and got SD (only) both times. Just one download appeared, 853x480, 521 MB.

Anyone know how to obtain the HD version?

I am getting two files of said episode, 1.38GB and 521MB. I don't know how I would try to fix your problem, other than trying to redownload, maybe using a different computer.
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post #52 of 97
9/11/08 at 12:00am
Quote:
Originally Posted by TenoBell View Post

Well yes I would say its mostly rare for a DVD to get scratched to the point of not working. My point was that it can happen. On the same token its not as if HDD frequently fail either. Generally we commonly keep far more valuable information stored on HDD than on DVD.

Just because a lot of people do it, doesn't mean it's a good idea. Drive failures happen just frequently enough that it's simply a bad idea to depend on one drive to store important information. Even if only one in ten people ever experience a drive failure (but I think this is a very low figure), that drive is most likely storing their only copy of what they put on it. If it's a lifetime of writing, family photos, purchased media or whatever, it's gone.

Quote:
Their are a couple of different reasons a HDD can fail that does not necessarily mean the data is lost. In most instances the data can be reclaimed.

How and at what cost? I've not found any way to recover data from most drive failures, but I've never bothered to send them out to a service.
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post #53 of 97
9/11/08 at 12:05am
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism View Post

Apple needs their own RAIDed home server or RAIDed Time Capsule. Windows Home Server is pretty damn nice for an implementation of Windows. The fan on my HP Home Server is louder than I'd like, but beyond that I have no complaints.

I built mine, and agree 100%. Windows Home Server is good, but I would much rather a Mac of some type. WHS lacks official h.264 support, would Apple make this mistake? I think not.

I tricked Windows Media Player 11 into installing to stream to the 360 h.264 content - well, after tricking WMP11 into loading the .mp4s into the library. Works great for movies though.

* At the moment I think I won't buy an Apple TV until there is an Apple home server solution on the other side. DVR capabilities would be appreciated too.
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post #54 of 97
9/11/08 at 12:09am
Quote:
Originally Posted by nagromme View Post

Nope--Get Info shows only one file, and Command-R to Finder shows only one as well.

I definitely downloaded the HD version (it had the HD logo) but apparently got the SD version (alone) instead.

Since it's the free episode, I'm downloading again to see if I get HD this time.

(Yes, Get Info shows 853x480--which I don't think is HD, but it's better than widescreen TV shows used to be which was 640x360. But the file size is still the same as ever--around 500 MB for a 1-hour episode... 43 minutes with commercials removed.)

EDIT: Nope. I downloaded the free Galactica episode (MAJOR SPOILERS in it so be warned) twice from the show's HD page, and got SD (only) both times. Just one download appeared, 853x480, 521 MB.

Anyone know how to obtain the HD version?

TIA

Have you updated to iTunes 8.0?
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post #55 of 97
9/11/08 at 12:24am
Quote:
Originally Posted by nagromme View Post

Nope--Get Info shows only one file, and Command-R to Finder shows only one as well.

I definitely downloaded the HD version (it had the HD logo) but apparently got the SD version (alone) instead.

Since it's the free episode, I'm downloading again to see if I get HD this time.

(Yes, Get Info shows 853x480--which I don't think is HD, but it's better than widescreen TV shows used to be which was 640x360. But the file size is still the same as ever--around 500 MB for a 1-hour episode... 43 minutes with commercials removed.)

EDIT: Nope. I downloaded the free Galactica episode (MAJOR SPOILERS in it so be warned) twice from the show's HD page, and got SD (only) both times. Just one download appeared, 853x480, 521 MB.

Anyone know how to obtain the HD version?

TIA

Read the update in this article from MacWorld. Apparently this is a bug in iTunes 8 and they offer a work-around.

It's about halfway down the page.
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post #56 of 97
9/11/08 at 1:19am
Quote:
Originally Posted by wraithofwonder View Post

Have you updated to iTunes 8.0?

Yes.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac-sochist View Post

Read the update in this article from MacWorld. Apparently this is a bug in iTunes 8 and they offer a work-around.

It's about halfway down the page.

Thanks! Looks like HD downloads don't work with the Shopping Cart. I'll turn off the Cart for that one download.

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post #57 of 97
9/11/08 at 3:26am
We're talking television programs here. None are broadcast in 1080P as they are all 1080i or 720P, depending on network. BluRay Disc is a movie-only format so I don't know why anyone would be trying to say Apple is making a mistake by not offering TV shows with BD quality. They don't exist anyway.
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post #58 of 97
9/11/08 at 4:42am
Quote:
Originally Posted by skottichan View Post

Plus with cable broadband talking about monthly caps, companies like Apple will have to keep bandwidth usage low.

The argument could be made that Comcast is being anti-competitive with these caps: heres what I mean:

1: Apple sells HD content, so does comcast, Comcasts HD content, transmitted as MPEG 4 data just like Apples, Comcast packets don't count against the cap.

2 same with Vonage and other VOIPs

3 same with NETFLIX, xboxlive, HULU, Revision 3 etc

4: in many areas COMCAST is the only internet choice available: therefore they would be locking these areas out of rich media on the net: forcing the use of their arguably inferior and most certainly more expensive premium services like VOD and VOIP.

That is the sort of thing the Justice Dept may look at if enough big companies get riled up.
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post #59 of 97
9/11/08 at 6:31am
I wonder why AppleTV can't display some form of iTune's visualizer while playing music? It would be cool for parties on a massive HD TV. (If it can embarrass me and tell me how).
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post #60 of 97
9/11/08 at 6:49am
Quote:
Originally Posted by pixelcruncher View Post

I work in television on HD sports programming. A two-hour show can approach 1TB in size and it is amazing to watch on a $20,000 HD reference monitor, Apple compresses that down to 4GB. What you see when you watch material on one of our "HD" networks is a joke. What you are downloading from iTunes isn't HD anything. It's the same size as an HD frame, but it's compressed all to hell.

I work in HD TV production too. However, I don't agree totally. I love watching ATV HD movies on a large HD TV compared with the crud we've suffered for decades from standard NTSC. (remember the snobbery about various NTSC qualities )
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post #61 of 97
9/11/08 at 6:50am
Quote:
Originally Posted by digitalclips View Post

I wonder why AppleTV can't display some form of iTune's visualizer while playing music? It would be cool for parties on a massive HD TV. (If it can embarrass me and tell me how).

I'd opt for improving the search of music files first.
But a visualizer would be cooler instead of pre-installed flower pics.
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post #62 of 97
9/11/08 at 7:56am
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffDM View Post

Just because a lot of people do it, doesn't mean it's a good idea. Drive failures happen just frequently enough that it's simply a bad idea to depend on one drive to store important information.

Well look at the reality. We all store very important information on hard drives. Outside of its possibility, how many people do you know actually have lost important information in a drive failure?


Quote:
How and at what cost? I've not found any way to recover data from most drive failures, but I've never bothered to send them out to a service.

Their are so many moving parts in a drive that can fail. Many of them can fail without causing damage the information stored on the platter.

Yes it can be quiet costly to recover the data.
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post #63 of 97
9/11/08 at 9:26am
Quote:
Originally Posted by bigdaddyp View Post

I would love to comment on the quality of the Hd. downloads but unfortunately I can't. Itunes downloads both the Hd. version and the standard version of the show. Unfortunately itunes can not find the Hd version.

This happened to 2 of my first 15 downloads. A quick hard drive search for the title recovered it. Double-click played, and when I closed the show the "!" symbol that first identified the problem went away. Not sure why it happened, where the file went (I should have looked, but after selecting it worked I (perhaps stupidly) stopped worrying about it), or how to prevent.

Not sure if you faced the frozen machine issues I did while downloading, but after I was forced repeatedly to restart my Mac, I wasn't surprised to have a couple hiccups in the files once all was said and done.

Good luck!
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post #64 of 97
9/11/08 at 10:28am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hudson1 View Post

We're talking television programs here. None are broadcast in 1080P as they are all 1080i or 720P, depending on network. BluRay Disc is a movie-only format so I don't know why anyone would be trying to say Apple is making a mistake by not offering TV shows with BD quality. They don't exist anyway.

Blu-Ray is not a movie-only format. Television Series are also available on Blu-Ray, and most (if not all) are presented in 1080p (even though they're only broadcast at 1080i or 720p).

And it's not a mistake on Apple's part that their HD content is nowhere near Blu-Ray quality; bandwidth and end-user storage capacity limitations wouldn't allow them to offer such a thing even if they wanted to. It's just important that people realize that when they're paying for internet-served HD, they're making a serious trade-off in quality for convenience. And considering it takes longer to download and sync to your Apple TV than it would to take a trip to Best Buy, it's not really all that convenient anyhow.


Quote:
Originally Posted by TenoBell View Post

Well yes I would say its mostly rare for a DVD to get scratched to the point of not working. My point was that it can happen. On the same token its not as if HDD frequently fail either. Generally we commonly keep far more valuable information stored on HDD than on DVD.

Their are a couple of different reasons a HDD can fail that does not necessarily mean the data is lost. In most instances the data can be reclaimed.

To keep this from dragging on too long. We can acknowledge that their are pluses and minuses to both solutions. Without the need to overstate either one.

But every hard drive will fail, it's only a matter of time. And when software repair fails, data recovery from a terabyte-or-more drive can cost tens of thousands of dollars! Which is why keeping all of your $20-a-piece eggs in one inevitably-exploding basket is a bad idea. Couple that with the fact that you're settling for a fraction of the quality, and I question why anyone would purchase bulk HD content online at this stage in the game.

When the internet is ready for fast 25GB-per-movie downloads, and terabyte-sized solid state storage is cheap — or Apple lets you freely redownload lost purchases — then diskless HD delivery will make sense.
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post #65 of 97
9/11/08 at 10:45am
Apple needs to take steps to make data backup painless

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post #66 of 97
9/11/08 at 10:51am
Quote:
Originally Posted by nagromme View Post

Apple needs to take steps to make data backup painless

If only there was some app that would let you go back in time to grab files that you mistaken throwaway or to restore from an external drive. In only...
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post #67 of 97
9/11/08 at 11:12am
What's this talk about saving space by not doing 1080p for TV shows? What about 1080i? 1080i is actually more information than 1080p. 1080p typically refers to 24fps while 1080i refers to 60fields or 30fps.

I suppose that TV shows shot on film could be unmolested 24fps all the way from filming to our eyeballs. But somehow I suspect that we'll be getting the 30fps version from Apple anyway. And it wouldn't matter either because pretty much nobody has a 72hz or 120hz display in addition to the proper software and supply chain to do 24fps. Hell, even the vast majority of 120hz TVs don't do proper 24fps.

But I could be wrong... Iis any of the iTS content at 24fps? If not, comparison to 1080i would be better than to 1080p.
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post #68 of 97
9/11/08 at 11:20am
Quote:
Originally Posted by TenoBell View Post

I don't understand how this helps. Bandwidth is fine for SD downloads, HD is the problem.

Blockbuster is testing kiosks in their stores that burn DVDs for rentals, vs. keeping excessive inventory in stock. You don't think having Apple kiosks in every grocery store, post office, corner store, airport, Starbucks, McDonalds, Target and Wal-Mart would be a great idea?

If you could browse their content and quickly download directly to your device from these kiosks, there could be a huge amount of incremental business just waiting for Apple to pick up.

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post #69 of 97
9/11/08 at 11:33am
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpamSandwich View Post

Blockbuster is testing kiosks in their stores that burn DVDs for rentals, vs. keeping excessive inventory in stock. You don't think having Apple kiosks in every grocery store, post office, corner store, airport, Starbucks, McDonalds, Target and Wal-Mart would be a great idea?

If you could browse their content and quickly download directly to your device from these kiosks, there could be a huge amount of incremental business just waiting for Apple to pick up.

We already get music from Starbucks (as well as any open WiFi) so a Kiosk would be a great idea. Especially in airports. They could even sell iPods and accessories in vending machines. The Kiosks could even be more complex, being run by a single employee who is the center oyf an circle of many iTS terminals. These machines could even have fast chargers built in. Besides the impulse buys of bored travels Apple gets to help entrench their ecosystem in a way that Sony, SanDisk, Creative and MS can't compete with.
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post #70 of 97
9/11/08 at 1:11pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dfiler View Post

But I could be wrong... Iis any of the iTS content at 24fps? If not, comparison to 1080i would be better than to 1080p.

Pretty sure Apple's HD content is 24fps, just like the broadcast. Anyhow, the quality issue with internet-served HD content isn't that it's 720p instead of 1080i or 1080p, but rather that it's bitrate is like 4mbps instead of 25 - 35mbps like Blu-Ray.
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post #71 of 97
9/11/08 at 1:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cory Bauer View Post

But every hard drive will fail, it's only a matter of time. And when software repair fails, data recovery from a terabyte-or-more drive can cost tens of thousands of dollars! Which is why keeping all of your $20-a-piece eggs in one inevitably-exploding basket is a bad idea. Couple that with the fact that you're settling for a fraction of the quality, and I question why anyone would purchase bulk HD content online at this stage in the game.

Very true a hard drive will fail given enough time. It comes down to how often do these failures actually occur to the point of causing such serious problems.

The shift is already well under way with music. Its becoming more and more common for people to store all of their albums on hard drive and forgo buying physical media. So far after seven years we have not heard common horror stories of music collections being lost to hard drive failure.

Quote:
When the internet is ready for fast 25GB-per-movie downloads, and terabyte-sized solid state storage is cheap or Apple lets you freely redownload lost purchases then diskless HD delivery will make sense.

Also most people rent movies rather than buying to permanently own. Renting forgoes the need to store media long term.
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post #72 of 97
9/11/08 at 1:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dfiler View Post

What's this talk about saving space by not doing 1080p for TV shows? What about 1080i? 1080i is actually more information than 1080p. 1080p typically refers to 24fps while 1080i refers to 60fields or 30fps.

60 interlaced does offer more temporal resolution but does not account for any other factors that make a good image.

Quote:
I suppose that TV shows shot on film could be unmolested 24fps all the way from filming to our eyeballs. But somehow I suspect that we'll be getting the 30fps version from Apple anyway. And it wouldn't matter either because pretty much nobody has a 72hz or 120hz display in addition to the proper software and supply chain to do 24fps. Hell, even the vast majority of 120hz TVs don't do proper 24fps.

24fps is actually below the threshold of persistent vision. Which means its too slow to fool your brain into thinking you are seeing natural motion. You will see the flicker of still images.

Even if the original file is 24fps, the playback is at 48 fps and higher.
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post #73 of 97
9/11/08 at 1:32pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by TenoBell View Post

Well look at the reality. We all store very important information on hard drives. Outside of its possibility, how many people do you know actually have lost important information in a drive failure?


I have known several. I personally would have lost considerable information of my own if I didn't have a backup system.


Quote:
Their are so many moving parts in a drive that can fail. Many of them can fail without causing damage the information stored on the platter.

Yes it can be quiet costly to recover the data.

Then I would consider that "not really an option" except for those people where money is no object, for whom have no excuse to not have a backup system.


Quote:
Originally Posted by TenoBell View Post

The shift is already well under way with music. Its becoming more and more common for people to store all of their albums on hard drive and forgo buying physical media. So far after seven years we have not heard common horror stories of music collections being lost to hard drive failure.

In fact, I've seen several such stories come up on different forums. What a lot of them end up doing is recovering what they can from their iPods, begging for people to tell them what they need to do to retrieve those files.
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post #74 of 97
9/11/08 at 2:03pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffDM View Post

I have known several. I personally would have lost considerable information of my own if I didn't have a backup system.

In fact, I've seen several such stories come up on different forums. What a lot of them end up doing is recovering what they can from their iPods, begging for people to tell them what they need to do to retrieve those files.

I've acknowledged that it can and does happen. But this is no evidence to its frequency. I would say 90% of the people I know own one or more computers. Everyonce in a while I hear of someone saying their HDD crashed. It likely somewhere around 200 computers and someone has an HDD problem every couple of years.

Is this anymore a problem than loosing media from scratched, corrupted, or lost discs. Which also can and does happen.
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post #75 of 97
9/11/08 at 2:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by TenoBell View Post

Well look at the reality. We all store very important information on hard drives. Outside of its possibility, how many people do you know actually have lost important information in a drive failure?




Their are so many moving parts in a drive that can fail. Many of them can fail without causing damage the information stored on the platter.

Yes it can be quiet costly to recover the data.

I lost 1 GB of priceless pictures as well as 5 years worth of work few years back when I used to use PCs due to HD a crash. The funny thing was that the crashed HD was a 1 year old secondary HD not the OS HD. I know it was my mistake and that's why now I am backing up to TC, External HD, and MobileMe. My wife thinks I am paranoid
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post #76 of 97
9/11/08 at 2:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by TenoBell View Post

I've acknowledged that it can and does happen. But this is no evidence to its frequency. I would say 90% of the people I know own one or more computers. Everyonce in a while I hear of someone saying their HDD crashed. It likely somewhere around 200 computers and someone has an HDD problem every couple of years.

Is this anymore a problem than loosing media from scratched, corrupted, or lost discs. Which also can and does happen.

As an IT manager, it is quite common for people to come to me when their home or work computer is on the fritz. A few times every year I have to tell people that their data is lost unless they want to spend big bucks on recovering data from their failed harddrive. Only one guy, a free-lance designer, has decided to send their home computer's drive in for recovery. Apparently he had some valuable projects on it that justified the cost.

Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean that it is uncommon. Most people just live with the loss and don't go around bragging about it.
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post #77 of 97
9/11/08 at 3:03pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by TenoBell View Post

60 interlaced does offer more temporal resolution but does not account for any other factors that make a good image.



24fps is actually below the threshold of persistent vision. Which means its too slow to fool your brain into thinking you are seeing natural motion. You will see the flicker of still images.

Even if the original file is 24fps, the playback is at 48 fps and higher.

The interlacing you see on most TV shows is that of normal frames split perfectly into two fields. Only live broadcasts are every temporally accurate individual fields... and i'm not sure if even that is true anymore. For one, any show shot on film has no greater temporal accuracy by going the interlaced route. (most primetime scripted programming)

Next, while you are correct about 24fps being too slow for convincing motion pictures, it isn't played back at 48fps except in movie theaters with real projectors. These projects do flash the same frame twice in succession. However this isn't true for any other type of display. Other displays just hold the image for a 24th of a second. Except that most displays don't have a refresh rate that is a multiple of 24. Granted phosphorous glow of CRT screen elements do decay in brightness between scans. But they aren't really flashing the frame twice either.

Anyway, how this pertains to iTS is that I'm curious which content is at native frame rate. Are any shows encoded at 24fps. (not that I have a display that is capable of temporally accurate playback of 24fps content. (the iMac and mac portables aren't capable)

It would be nice though if apple were forward thinking enough to provide iTS video content at native frame rate, knowing that someday people might be able to take advantage of it.
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post #78 of 97
9/11/08 at 3:07pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cory Bauer View Post

I watched the free episode of Monk last night on my Apple TV, and the quality was without a doubt below broadcast HD and in my opinion not as clean as an upconverted DVD. Lots of artifacts, lots of noise, and short on sharpness. Previewing the free episode of Heroes, the same appears to hold true.

I have to admit I haven't downloaded a TV show, just movies.
I'm also wondering if you definitely got the HD version - or did you purchase via the shopping cart which seems to be sending people the SD version (as discussed 10-15 posts above).

The quality of broadcast FTA changes in different areas too. As I understand it, the cable networks recompress FTA HD to a lower bitrate, while the broadcast FTA is usually clearer. In Australia we get about 12Mbps MPEG2 on FTA HD, and I think that's compressed on the fly during transmission. In comparison iTunes' HD is 4.5Mbps MPEG4, pre compressed.
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post #79 of 97
9/11/08 at 3:26pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dfiler View Post

Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean that it is uncommon. Most people just live with the loss and don't go around bragging about it.

This is all mostly based on perception. But I don't see it as being that much of a problem. If hard drive failure were all that common, general use of computers themselves would be an unreliable roll of the dice. Most computers are in use for years with no hard drive problems.

This can go across any mechanical device that can break at any time. Some of them do, but for the most part quality mechanical devices are reliable and last for a long time.
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post #80 of 97
9/11/08 at 3:29pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dfiler View Post

The interlacing you see on most TV shows is that of normal frames split perfectly into two fields. Only live broadcasts are every temporally accurate individual fields... and i'm not sure if even that is true anymore. For one, any show shot on film has no greater temporal accuracy by going the interlaced route. (most primetime scripted programming)

I really don't get the controversy over 1080i vs. 1080p. Interlaced scan was adopted in 1939 because if they scanned the screen once in 1/30 of a second (or worse yet 1/24) they had to use a phosphor with such long "linger" that thrown baseballs looked like comets, for example. So, they scanned the screen 60 times per second, odd lines then even, so they could use faster-decaying phosphors. The advantage of interlacing is relevant only to CRTs. With LCDs and other modern display panels, that stay the same until they're updated each frame, it doesn't matter what order they're scanned in, and there's no advantage in updating them twice with the same information. I think people need to revise their thinking to catch up with the new technology.
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