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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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 !!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 )
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.
Comments
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Have you updated to iTunes 8.0?
Yes.
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.
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.
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
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.