But in terms of watching a movie and enjoying it, the differences you're talking about are very minor.
Perhaps to you, but not me. If there's banding (it becomes even more obvious when video is actually playing as the bands will move around) that can be very distracting and suddenly remind you you're watching a series of moving pictures and this pulls you out of the story.
High picture quality enhances the immersion of the viewer in the film. It's poor picture quality that is distracting and can lead to your brain focussing on the picture quality instead of the story.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jragosta
subtle pixel differences.
We're not talking about subtle pixel differences. We're talking about massive, glaring differences. If you can't see the banding in that last comparison shot, then lucky you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jragosta
Some people are willing to trade off minor quality differences for convenience. It's really none of your business.
Perhaps you should go back and re-read the post you were responding to? The guy wasn't complaining about that. Yes, some people are willing to trade quality for convenience and that's great if they want to do that.
The problem comes when people claim that the quality of iTunes 1080p comes close to matching blu-ray when clearly, it does not.
Solip- I usually like all you post- but you're way wrong here and supreme is dead on. You cannot measure the difference on a 23"- who watches movies on a 23"? 15 year olds?
On my 50" plasma, the different between a DVD or HD (720p) programming and Blu Ray isn't completely night and day. But on my 100" hd projector in my pitch black media room, I notice every artifact out there- banding, aliasing, halos, edge enhancement, etc.
If people can't notice it- you either haven't watched a calibrated (which you can do yourself- Disney has a great disc called world of wonder) high end television, OR, you just don't notice things like that. If its the former- you're missing out. If your the latter- I'm jealous of you. . One of those "ignorance is bliss" kind of things (and I don't mean that negatively).
I love movies. Love them. It's one of my biggest passions- movie watching. For guys like me- digital media has a long way to go.
And for jrag- great picture quality doesnt make a bad movie good. But it absolutely makes a good movie better, and a great movie jaw dropping. That's like comparing the same movie in SD on an iPad, and then watching it in my media room (or a theater). Same movie- totally different experience. Complete immersion is something to be desired- and convenience really hurts the art of cinema in some cases. I only watch "popcorn flicks" on my iPad.
Solip- I usually like all you post- but you're way wrong here and supreme is dead on. You cannot measure the difference on a 23"- who watches movies on a 23"? 15 year olds?
On my 50" plasma, the different between a DVD or HD (720p) programming and Blu Ray isn't completely night and day. But on my 100" hd projector in my pitch black media room, I notice every artifact out there- banding, aliasing, halos, edge enhancement, etc.
If people can't notice it- you either haven't watched a calibrated (which you can do yourself- Disney has a great disc called world of wonder) high end television, OR, you just don't notice things like that. If its the former- you're missing out. If your the latter- I'm jealous of you. . One of those "ignorance is bliss" kind of things (and I don't mean that negatively).
I love movies. Love them. It's one of my biggest passions- movie watching. For guys like me- digital media has a long way to go.
And for jrag- great picture quality doesnt make a bad movie good. But it absolutely makes a good movie better, and a great movie jaw dropping. That's like comparing the same movie in SD on an iPad, and then watching it in my media room (or a theater). Same movie- totally different experience. Complete immersion is something to be desired- and convenience really hurts the art of cinema in some cases. I only watch "popcorn flicks" on my iPad.
You most certainly can. Here is one example from a 23" display.
Surely I don't need to mention which is the iTS and which is the Blu-ray disc.
What you and Supreme are talking about is a larger display with larger pixels... but you sit farther away than from a PC monitor. What you guys are doing is comparing the monitor itself to a better display, but that's not what is in question here. The question is how iTS 1080p compares to 1080p found on a 50 GB Blu-ray disc. All this talk of it being calibrated by trained koalas eating free range eucalyptus is irrelevant to what is better or worse (i.e.: a comparison).
Exactly why I only bought 2 BR discs.. after owning over 500 DVDs.
Optical media is dying. Everyday there becomes less and less reasons to continue using optical media or storage. Combine the instant gratification of movie purchases/rentals thru iTunes, the convenience of watching that movie with iCloud from anywhere with a decent internet connection and the 95% quality of BR.. and its a no brainer decision for me.
Exactly why I only bought 2 BR discs.. after owning over 500 DVDs.
Optical media is dying. Everyday there becomes less and less reasons to continue using optical media or storage. Combine the instant gratification of movie purchases/rentals thru iTunes, the convenience of watching that movie with iCloud from anywhere with a decent internet connection and the 95% quality of BR.. and its a no brainer decision for me.
This is exactly my story as well. I've got a collection of hundreds of DVDs and a blu-ray collection just 1/100 of that size.
I prefer the quality of blu-ray but convenience has trumped quality. Apparently for me, "good enough" has been achieved.
The one last hurdle to me is price. An iTunes download really needs to be cheaper than the Blu-ray.
In many cases those cheaper blu-rays are done at cost or even below as a loss leader to get you to go and buy other stuff from said place. That isn't the case with iTunes
Quote:
That's not to mention all the movies studios haven't released to iTunes for sale in HD.
There are current contracts for cable etc that must be honored as well as just needing to do the appropriate prep work. Some of the movies you listed are so old that they probably need to digitize the original film to do a 1080p
How the hell can you say that the iTunes 1080p video "nears" Blu-ray after looking at that?
How often do movies have giant screens of black for you to look at. They don't. They are all colors and change and movement. So who cares what a screen you are going to see for perhaps 1/10th of a second looks. unless you have the ultimate case of OCD perhaps
This is my issue with this whole comparison. They are looking at still shots out of a moving medium. These images are going to fly by the eye in a fraction of a second so people won't be noticing the appearance of one screen. Show us the comparisons as they are meant to be seen, moving.
Also, remember that not everyone wants absolutely perfect. They were fine with the 720p so all they are going to care about it getting a better version for free. And if Apple does it that way now as they improve the files, we are likely to get another free 'upgrade'. That's impressive right there since they could have tagged a couple of extra bucks on the files and made us pay that to upgrade our purchases like they did with music.
How often do movies have giant screens of black for you to look at. They don't. They are all colors and change and movement. So who cares what a screen you are going to see for perhaps 1/10th of a second looks. unless you have the ultimate case of OCD perhaps
Some of Up's beauty is certainly lost when you see LINES IN THE SKY where the file jumps directly from one color to another, I'll tell you that.
That Philips one looks pretty nice. It's kind of pricey and I read that it's not even being sold in the US.
Hopefully in the future, more manufacturers will start releasing more TV's and monitors with an ultrawide format specifically for movies and that the prices also come down. 16:9 is not for movies, it's basically for tv series.
You honestly think that cinemas show "Blu-ray disc quality" content? Not, you know, 4k because they're a CINEMA?
The vast majority of Digital Cinemas are still 2K which is only 2048x1080, not exactly a substantial difference compared to BD with a resolution of 1920x1080. Yes, I will grant you 4K, but until there is a home format that actually delivers that type of quality, be it download or physical media, it is still a pipe dream. BTW: 4K is available for home already, and there are processors and receivers with 4K scaling, but without true 4K software, there will be limited benefits for home use.
They are showing the exact same still. So the comparison is fair.
The comparison is fair for that particular clip of video, but you still cannot extrapolate that in any meaningful way. Even MPEG II will get you great video quality at modest bitrates if all you watch is slow moving anime or something similar. Throw a fast moving action movie with high dynamic range and lots of video frames with small details at it though, and it absolutely falls apart.
Generally speaking, with current state of the art encoders and codecs, the quality difference between a 20 Mbps or higher video stream or a stream with 1/10th the bitrate will be huge, to the point even my grandma would be able to tell the difference. There's simply no argument possible here.
i'm curious about the size of the Blu-ray STREAM directory for '30 Days of Night'. the article, from what i understood, stated the capacity of the physical disk and not the size of the AV stream(s) of the film itself.
What you and Supreme are talking about is a larger display with larger pixels... but you sit farther away than from a PC monitor. What you guys are doing is comparing the monitor itself to a better display, but that's not what is in question here. The question is how iTS 1080p compares to 1080p found on a 50 GB Blu-ray disc. All this talk of it being calibrated by trained koalas eating free range eucalyptus is irrelevant to what is better or worse (i.e.: a comparison).
Stills actually will show less quality different. A smaller Bit rate during movement will show even more disparities and make it more obvious. Yes- you sit further away than a computer monitor, but in several cases (most I would say)- people are either too far away to notice a difference, or too close and notice too much. But if you are at the ideal distance on a 23" and on a 100"- what would be easier to see with the naked eye- a 1" halo, or a 5" halo? (and I'm being conservative making it a direct size difference- it would actually be bigger on a larger screen)
i'm curious about the size of the Blu-ray STREAM directory for '30 Days of Night'. the article, from what i understood, stated the capacity of the physical disk and not the size of the AV stream(s) of the film itself.
Likely around 30 gb on a dual layer disc. Some movies, like Avatar- take up all 50gb and have no special features. Approx. 49gb are the movie itself. Other movies can take up less- but on average around 30 for a dual layer.
You can make a technical comparison to Monster cables over other cables to find Monster are technically superior but that doesn't mean you'll get a perceptible difference in quality over generic cables... which is what matters. Hence my comment about it being useful to be compared because a perceptible comparison is what people know, not a technical one.
That's a strawman argument. We're not comparing analog audio cables here, but video encoding quality, and the quality difference between content encoded with the same encoder and codec, but significantly lower bitrate is enormous, and easily quantifiable. I gave a very concrete example that supports this statement, which is that even with my relatively modest AV setup (only 42" with a midrange AV receiver and speakers), I can tell the difference between a Blu-Ray disc and a downloaded version of the same movie at half the bitrate within seconds. Since I don't have superhuman senses, I think you can safely assume most people will be able to do the same. iTunes 1080p content is even (a lot) lower bitrate.
Personally, If I were to stream stuff from iTunes, judging from the file sizes mentioned in the article, I would probably pick the 720p version, because chances are it will look better than the 1080p version at these bitrates.
Quote:
Then even if one is perceptibly better the consumer has to factor in cost and convenience to see if it's worth their trouble. The greater the difference in quality the easier it is to warrant a greater difference in cost and lowered convenience.
Sure, but that's not the point here. The point was that iTunes content does not come close to Blu-Ray content, nothing more, nothing less.
unfortunately, strawmen arguments do litter the forums, here and elsewhere (most likely)
Blu-ray has several years left in its ife cycle providing, to the general consumer in first world nations, the best video and audio experience. for those who don't care, iTunes is a great alternative.
You saying Arstechnica is an unknown webpage with no credibility? This is completely wrong. You may not be familiar with it but it is an excellent technology site.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andysol
Umm yes. It's Understandable that a pro-apple site would quote an unknown webpage with no credibility (kind of like digitimes). When cnet or a real place reviews it, then we'll talk. The fact they did it on a 23" monitor, and said Dolby digital 5.1 is comparable to dts-hd is really the biggest joke I've ever heard. Insanity.
Comments
But in terms of watching a movie and enjoying it, the differences you're talking about are very minor.
Perhaps to you, but not me. If there's banding (it becomes even more obvious when video is actually playing as the bands will move around) that can be very distracting and suddenly remind you you're watching a series of moving pictures and this pulls you out of the story.
High picture quality enhances the immersion of the viewer in the film. It's poor picture quality that is distracting and can lead to your brain focussing on the picture quality instead of the story.
subtle pixel differences.
We're not talking about subtle pixel differences. We're talking about massive, glaring differences. If you can't see the banding in that last comparison shot, then lucky you.
Some people are willing to trade off minor quality differences for convenience. It's really none of your business.
Perhaps you should go back and re-read the post you were responding to? The guy wasn't complaining about that. Yes, some people are willing to trade quality for convenience and that's great if they want to do that.
The problem comes when people claim that the quality of iTunes 1080p comes close to matching blu-ray when clearly, it does not.
Solip- I usually like all you post- but you're way wrong here and supreme is dead on. You cannot measure the difference on a 23"- who watches movies on a 23"? 15 year olds?
On my 50" plasma, the different between a DVD or HD (720p) programming and Blu Ray isn't completely night and day. But on my 100" hd projector in my pitch black media room, I notice every artifact out there- banding, aliasing, halos, edge enhancement, etc.
If people can't notice it- you either haven't watched a calibrated (which you can do yourself- Disney has a great disc called world of wonder) high end television, OR, you just don't notice things like that. If its the former- you're missing out. If your the latter- I'm jealous of you.
I love movies. Love them. It's one of my biggest passions- movie watching. For guys like me- digital media has a long way to go.
And for jrag- great picture quality doesnt make a bad movie good. But it absolutely makes a good movie better, and a great movie jaw dropping. That's like comparing the same movie in SD on an iPad, and then watching it in my media room (or a theater). Same movie- totally different experience. Complete immersion is something to be desired- and convenience really hurts the art of cinema in some cases. I only watch "popcorn flicks" on my iPad.
Without quoting all the posts:
Solip- I usually like all you post- but you're way wrong here and supreme is dead on. You cannot measure the difference on a 23"- who watches movies on a 23"? 15 year olds?
On my 50" plasma, the different between a DVD or HD (720p) programming and Blu Ray isn't completely night and day. But on my 100" hd projector in my pitch black media room, I notice every artifact out there- banding, aliasing, halos, edge enhancement, etc.
If people can't notice it- you either haven't watched a calibrated (which you can do yourself- Disney has a great disc called world of wonder) high end television, OR, you just don't notice things like that. If its the former- you're missing out. If your the latter- I'm jealous of you.
I love movies. Love them. It's one of my biggest passions- movie watching. For guys like me- digital media has a long way to go.
And for jrag- great picture quality doesnt make a bad movie good. But it absolutely makes a good movie better, and a great movie jaw dropping. That's like comparing the same movie in SD on an iPad, and then watching it in my media room (or a theater). Same movie- totally different experience. Complete immersion is something to be desired- and convenience really hurts the art of cinema in some cases. I only watch "popcorn flicks" on my iPad.
You most certainly can. Here is one example from a 23" display.Surely I don't need to mention which is the iTS and which is the Blu-ray disc.
What you and Supreme are talking about is a larger display with larger pixels... but you sit farther away than from a PC monitor. What you guys are doing is comparing the monitor itself to a better display, but that's not what is in question here. The question is how iTS 1080p compares to 1080p found on a 50 GB Blu-ray disc. All this talk of it being calibrated by trained koalas eating free range eucalyptus is irrelevant to what is better or worse (i.e.: a comparison).
Optical media is dying. Everyday there becomes less and less reasons to continue using optical media or storage. Combine the instant gratification of movie purchases/rentals thru iTunes, the convenience of watching that movie with iCloud from anywhere with a decent internet connection and the 95% quality of BR.. and its a no brainer decision for me.
Exactly why I only bought 2 BR discs.. after owning over 500 DVDs.
Optical media is dying. Everyday there becomes less and less reasons to continue using optical media or storage. Combine the instant gratification of movie purchases/rentals thru iTunes, the convenience of watching that movie with iCloud from anywhere with a decent internet connection and the 95% quality of BR.. and its a no brainer decision for me.
This is exactly my story as well. I've got a collection of hundreds of DVDs and a blu-ray collection just 1/100 of that size.
I prefer the quality of blu-ray but convenience has trumped quality. Apparently for me, "good enough" has been achieved.
The one last hurdle to me is price. An iTunes download really needs to be cheaper than the Blu-ray.
In many cases those cheaper blu-rays are done at cost or even below as a loss leader to get you to go and buy other stuff from said place. That isn't the case with iTunes
That's not to mention all the movies studios haven't released to iTunes for sale in HD.
There are current contracts for cable etc that must be honored as well as just needing to do the appropriate prep work. Some of the movies you listed are so old that they probably need to digitize the original film to do a 1080p
I want the highest possible picture and sound quality with no compromise and at this moment in time it's Blu-ray (and for the near future as well).
You are not the world. Not everyone expects perfection (as you define it). So this will be fine for them.
How the hell can you say that the iTunes 1080p video "nears" Blu-ray after looking at that?
How often do movies have giant screens of black for you to look at. They don't. They are all colors and change and movement. So who cares what a screen you are going to see for perhaps 1/10th of a second looks. unless you have the ultimate case of OCD perhaps
This is my issue with this whole comparison. They are looking at still shots out of a moving medium. These images are going to fly by the eye in a fraction of a second so people won't be noticing the appearance of one screen. Show us the comparisons as they are meant to be seen, moving.
Also, remember that not everyone wants absolutely perfect. They were fine with the 720p so all they are going to care about it getting a better version for free. And if Apple does it that way now as they improve the files, we are likely to get another free 'upgrade'. That's impressive right there since they could have tagged a couple of extra bucks on the files and made us pay that to upgrade our purchases like they did with music.
How often do movies have giant screens of black for you to look at. They don't. They are all colors and change and movement. So who cares what a screen you are going to see for perhaps 1/10th of a second looks. unless you have the ultimate case of OCD perhaps
Some of Up's beauty is certainly lost when you see LINES IN THE SKY where the file jumps directly from one color to another, I'll tell you that.
That Philips one looks pretty nice. It's kind of pricey and I read that it's not even being sold in the US.
Hopefully in the future, more manufacturers will start releasing more TV's and monitors with an ultrawide format specifically for movies and that the prices also come down. 16:9 is not for movies, it's basically for tv series.
It is already happening...
http://www.vizio.com/ces/cinemawide/overview
You honestly think that cinemas show "Blu-ray disc quality" content? Not, you know, 4k because they're a CINEMA?
The vast majority of Digital Cinemas are still 2K which is only 2048x1080, not exactly a substantial difference compared to BD with a resolution of 1920x1080. Yes, I will grant you 4K, but until there is a home format that actually delivers that type of quality, be it download or physical media, it is still a pipe dream. BTW: 4K is available for home already, and there are processors and receivers with 4K scaling, but without true 4K software, there will be limited benefits for home use.
They are showing the exact same still. So the comparison is fair.
The comparison is fair for that particular clip of video, but you still cannot extrapolate that in any meaningful way. Even MPEG II will get you great video quality at modest bitrates if all you watch is slow moving anime or something similar. Throw a fast moving action movie with high dynamic range and lots of video frames with small details at it though, and it absolutely falls apart.
Generally speaking, with current state of the art encoders and codecs, the quality difference between a 20 Mbps or higher video stream or a stream with 1/10th the bitrate will be huge, to the point even my grandma would be able to tell the difference. There's simply no argument possible here.
What you and Supreme are talking about is a larger display with larger pixels... but you sit farther away than from a PC monitor. What you guys are doing is comparing the monitor itself to a better display, but that's not what is in question here. The question is how iTS 1080p compares to 1080p found on a 50 GB Blu-ray disc. All this talk of it being calibrated by trained koalas eating free range eucalyptus is irrelevant to what is better or worse (i.e.: a comparison).
Stills actually will show less quality different. A smaller Bit rate during movement will show even more disparities and make it more obvious. Yes- you sit further away than a computer monitor, but in several cases (most I would say)- people are either too far away to notice a difference, or too close and notice too much. But if you are at the ideal distance on a 23" and on a 100"- what would be easier to see with the naked eye- a 1" halo, or a 5" halo? (and I'm being conservative making it a direct size difference- it would actually be bigger on a larger screen)
i'm curious about the size of the Blu-ray STREAM directory for '30 Days of Night'. the article, from what i understood, stated the capacity of the physical disk and not the size of the AV stream(s) of the film itself.
Likely around 30 gb on a dual layer disc. Some movies, like Avatar- take up all 50gb and have no special features. Approx. 49gb are the movie itself. Other movies can take up less- but on average around 30 for a dual layer.
You can make a technical comparison to Monster cables over other cables to find Monster are technically superior but that doesn't mean you'll get a perceptible difference in quality over generic cables... which is what matters. Hence my comment about it being useful to be compared because a perceptible comparison is what people know, not a technical one.
That's a strawman argument. We're not comparing analog audio cables here, but video encoding quality, and the quality difference between content encoded with the same encoder and codec, but significantly lower bitrate is enormous, and easily quantifiable. I gave a very concrete example that supports this statement, which is that even with my relatively modest AV setup (only 42" with a midrange AV receiver and speakers), I can tell the difference between a Blu-Ray disc and a downloaded version of the same movie at half the bitrate within seconds. Since I don't have superhuman senses, I think you can safely assume most people will be able to do the same. iTunes 1080p content is even (a lot) lower bitrate.
Personally, If I were to stream stuff from iTunes, judging from the file sizes mentioned in the article, I would probably pick the 720p version, because chances are it will look better than the 1080p version at these bitrates.
Then even if one is perceptibly better the consumer has to factor in cost and convenience to see if it's worth their trouble. The greater the difference in quality the easier it is to warrant a greater difference in cost and lowered convenience.
Sure, but that's not the point here. The point was that iTunes content does not come close to Blu-Ray content, nothing more, nothing less.
That's a strawman argument.
unfortunately, strawmen arguments do litter the forums, here and elsewhere (most likely)
Blu-ray has several years left in its ife cycle providing, to the general consumer in first world nations, the best video and audio experience. for those who don't care, iTunes is a great alternative.
Sure there is, motion picture is. Infinite resolution because there's no pixels.
Likely around 30 gb on a dual layer disc.
thanks for the information because it helped me, in part, to find this http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...postcount=2145
DISC INFO:
Disc Title: 30_DAYS_OF_NIGHT
Disc Size: 32,538,062,347 bytes
Protection: AACS
BD-Java: Yes
BDInfo: 0.5.6
PLAYLIST REPORT:
Name: 00001.MPLS
Length: 1:32:26 (h:m:s)
Size: 26,455,007,232 bytes
Total Bitrate: 38.16 Mbps
VIDEO:
Codec Bitrate Description
----- ------- -----------
MPEG-4 AVC Video 24926 kbps 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
AUDIO:
Codec Language Bitrate Description
----- -------- ------- -----------
DTS-HD Master Audio English 2792 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 2792 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit)
Umm yes. It's Understandable that a pro-apple site would quote an unknown webpage with no credibility (kind of like digitimes). When cnet or a real place reviews it, then we'll talk. The fact they did it on a 23" monitor, and said Dolby digital 5.1 is comparable to dts-hd is really the biggest joke I've ever heard. Insanity.