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720P & 1080P Comparison here

I

InsightsIE

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 29, 2008
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After taking me bloody hours to download the pilot TV episode of Ringer again in 1080P (I think iTunes servers were busy) Below are the quality differences between 720P and 1080P.

To be honest it doesn't look "Amazing" The 720P bit rate is around 4.2MBps, as you can see below 1080P is around 5.2MBps
 

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As i said, they seem to just up converted the video, which in some cases like worse then the 720p one.

I was hoping the 1080p file would be close to 10gb. But i was wrong.

Disappointed
 
Yea but what's the MAX Mbps? This is what I want to know. Can I encode my own movie files at 10-15Mbps? Will the new appleTV play it?
 
Guess we wont know before the 16th of march.

also going to try to re encode some of my mkv's with iflicks, just to test it out when i get the new apple tv.
 
Our bads, it seems that all HD iTunes downloads are going to be "1080p" however some will be well lets say more 1080p than others for example.

Below are two images of itunes tv shows that are currently airing. We know that Ringer looks upscaled. But examine the text on both pictures. What do we notice? :)


"HD: includes 720P, 1080P (Downloading 1080P)"

Although to me that's just confusing as Ringer is downloading in 1080P.
 

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Well that's a little disappointing. I have some self made 720p rips that are 7Mbps+ that play wonderfully on the ATV2. I was hoping Apple's 1080p rips would be higher.
 
That was always going to be the case though wasn't it? The quality of HD shows on the Apple store has always been a kind of middle ground which I'm guessing is arrived at by some sort of balance between quality and size. Meanwhile anyone who's done their own encoding knows that quality can vary massively and that just saying something is 1080p doesn't necessarily mean its going to be better quality than one done at 720p.

But now Apple can say the ATV supports 1080p which is what everyone wanted right?
 
That's a port...No real difference at all...True 1080p has to be SHOT in 1080p, and there a very few TV outfits doing it. The equipment costs$$$

Formula 1 motor racing is one that springs to mind, and newer film and TV series.

Look at the date of the programme before you buy...To avoid disappointment the 720 version will probably be just as good.

That will change over time.
 
Plenty of TV shows and most movies were historically shot on film, which has more resolution than 1080p.
 
GeekOFComedy said:
After taking me bloody hours to download the pilot TV episode of Ringer again in 1080P (I think iTunes servers were busy) Below are the quality differences between 720P and 1080P.

To be honest it doesn't look "Amazing" The 720P bit rate is around 4.2MBps, as you can see below 1080P is around 5.2MBps
Click to expand...

Not a very fair comparison when you post the 720p image as a 1.4MB lossless PNG and the 1080p as a 166KB compressed JPEG:rolleyes: Not saying one is better than the other, but if you're going to post images for people to compare then at least post them both as lossless.
 
roidy said:
Not a very fair comparison when you post the 720p image as a 1.4MB lossless PNG and the 1080p as a 166KB compressed JPEG:rolleyes: Not saying one is better than the other, but if you're going to post images for people to compare then at least post them both as lossless.
Click to expand...

Didn't realize. I thought in photoshop i saved the 1080p as png as I have to open the DRM in quicktime 7 pro, print as pdf and open pdf in photoshop just to get a still. But believe me, quality is the same.

AS much as I hate to admit it, grain looks good. The 720P had grain while the 1080P doesn't but the 1080P appears "Chunkier" but still looks the same.

And Ringer just came out last September to current along with Good Wife S3.

----

With that I read how Apples using new encoding and I can confirm in most shots the quality looks the same but the new 1080P does REALLY WELL in low light shots. The clearer picture is deffo on the 1080P screencap I got.
 

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Last edited:
Is there much of a difference between iTunes 1080P and Blu-Ray? will it be a lot or very noticeable.
 
peterjcat said:
Plenty of TV shows and most movies were historically shot on film, which has more resolution than 1080p.
Click to expand...

True. So when the studio releases a Blu Ray, they scan the original negatives at a much higher resolution than 1080p. For instance, the movie Baraka (shot on 65mm film) was rescanned at over 8k horizontal, then downsized to 1920x1080.
 
GeekOFComedy said:
Didn't realize. I thought in photoshop i saved the 1080p as png as I have to open the DRM in quicktime 7 pro, print as pdf and open pdf in photoshop just to get a still. But believe me, quality is the same.

AS much as I hate to admit it, grain looks good. The 720P had grain while the 1080P doesn't but the 1080P appears "Chunkier" but still looks the same.

And Ringer just came out last September to current along with Good Wife S3.

----

With that I read how Apples using new encoding and I can confirm in most shots the quality looks the same but the new 1080P does REALLY WELL in low light shots. The clearer picture is deffo on the 1080P screencap I got.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the new pictures, I always find hair a good place to look for detail, and looking at the two new images you posted there looks to be no more extra detail in the 1080p encode than in the 720p encode. Infact it looks like the 1080p encode is just an upscaled version of the 720p version:(
 
I encoded a 1080p version of my Blu Ray of National Lampoon's Vacation using the Apple TV Preset at pretty much defaults, it was shy of 11 mipps and around
7.65gb, ok for streaming to ATV, better than the original at 17gb, but do we really want to be putting a 8gb movie , even on a 64gb iPad? Lower res 720p might be more economical. Reason Apple should've released a 128gb model.
 
Here's a "Hair" photo snip of both 720P and 1080P. The 1080P is a tiny bit more saturated.
 

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Thanks, so "Hairs" what I did (get it:D)

I upscaled your 720p image to 1080p and then cropped it to compare with the true 1080p version. There is no extra detail in the true 1080p version when compared to the upscaled 720p version, infact I'd say the upscaled 720p version has a more film grain look while the true 1080p version is softer and has lost alot of the film grain quality.

upscaled_comparison.png
 
rick98761 said:
It will be very noticeable. A bluray is going to have about 5x the bitrate of these videos.
Click to expand...

Depends on your screen. If you're watching on an iPad, nope. An LCD computer or laptop screen? Not really. If you own a 50+ inch Pioneer or Panasonic plasma, then absolutely yes.
 
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