iTunes Movies On My 46" TV Look...
...Freaking Awesome!
I am dropping this post on my way out to work so I want be able to respond to anything for another 10 + hrs.
I purchased The Brothers Grimm. I can't tell the difference between it playing from my iPod and watching from a DVD. It even passes the wife test. I assure you, that's a tough test to pass. There are plenty of reasons why $9.99 is too much for downloaded movies, but picture quality is not one of them. You can download with confidence.
I am dropping this post on my way out to work so I want be able to respond to anything for another 10 + hrs.
I purchased The Brothers Grimm. I can't tell the difference between it playing from my iPod and watching from a DVD. It even passes the wife test. I assure you, that's a tough test to pass. There are plenty of reasons why $9.99 is too much for downloaded movies, but picture quality is not one of them. You can download with confidence.
Comments
* newer encoding tech meaning roughly half the bitrate for the same quality
* not having to encode black bars (almost always the case with DVDs unless they are 3:4, same as iTunes, or anamorphic 16:9 exactly) which is not only wasteful for the obvious reasons, but can confuse the codec that's trying to capture a very sudden change from color to black nothingness and waste a lot of bits that way too.
* TV and DVD (particularly NTSC stuff) just isn't as high resolution as you might think and while there's some ingenious stuff going on it's still trying to work around the fact that it needs to display on what is essentially WWII-era technology (plus a lot of the stuff that sells itself as high quality is actually cutting corners and relying on the sizzle to disguise the rather tough steak)
* HDMI connection keeps it all in the digital realm
It might not beat the very best Hi-Def content, delivered via an expensive Blueray disc in a brand new player to a great TV, but on the other hand once all those ducks are in a row for most movie consumers then Apple can just up the bitrate again without people needing to buy a whole new box etc.
OK, how did you get the movie onto your TV? Are you able to burn a DVD? Did you hook it up via laptop? What about commentary track and special features common to all DVDs? (taps foot for 10+ hours waiting for a response)
If you read his post, he tells you he connected his iPod to his TV
If you read his post, he tells you he connected his iPod to his TV
My error. Eyesight is failing... 8)
OK, how did you get the movie onto your TV? Are you able to burn a DVD? Did you hook it up via laptop? What about commentary track and special features common to all DVDs? (taps foot for 10+ hours waiting for a response)
I did not use any type of dock to connect it. No S-video either. Not even decent cabling. I use a garden variety component cable that with a camera. As for the extras that you mentioned, their absence are good reasons why $10 is still too much. I just bought a show to try the experience. The jury is still out on wether or not it is a good service. It took several hours to download over a comcast.net cable connection. I let it run overnight and when I got up, it had stopped due to an error. When I restarted it, it picked up where it left off and proceeded to download at over a megabyte per second. I have never seen a connection that fast. Perhaps it was the time of day. It transfered quickly and easily to the iPod and as I have already, absolutely no complaints about the quality. I will check in on the thread from time to time but I off to find someone who has tried the games. Those new iPod games represent my kind of gaming. If you have experience with them, please comment. Don't feel like you are hijacking the thread.