How far are we from seeing Blu-ray quality movies available for download...from iTunes or any other service? I'm wondering what kind of technical limitations are holding it back (hard drive space, internet speeds, etc.). I have Netflix but don't use it often--and trying to get a new release day one requires timing and luck. My local Blockbuster only stocks three or four new releases on Blu-ray, so trying to rent one on the weekend is tough. I'd love to see a company provide Blu-ray quality downloads for rent.
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Blu-ray quality downloads
- Thread starter Wordslinger29
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Internet speeds and the lack of substantial storage for the vast majority of the population are my best guess.
Even HD satllite broadcasts are not as good as BR. We had Ironman from Lovefilm on BR, and there was a problem with the disc. Purely by chance it was also on Sky+'s Anytime service - and so we 'cut' to the Sky+HD version for about 10 minutes, then returned to the BR (scratched by a previous renter or something). The difference was very nearly the same as the difference from VHS to DVD. Astonishing.
I think it will be a VERY long time before we see that quality via the web. HD optical media have as long a life as DVD has had to date at LEAST.
I think it will be a VERY long time before we see that quality via the web. HD optical media have as long a life as DVD has had to date at LEAST.
That's what I was thinking. I guess at this point 1080p downloads would be more of a niche market than Blu-ray itself.
There already are full Bluray downloads available, and they are 25 - 35gb depending on the movie.
Just saying.
Just saying.
What bitrate would you need to get down to the 10 gig range? This is why I am pretty happy with the 720p settings for ATV. They are about 5000 kbps and I'm seeing 3-5 gig files. Seems like a good compromise of quality and file size. I don't care how cheap drives are, at 20-30 gig per movie (even 10), I'm not ready to go to 1080p digital files yet.
At 5Mbps a 720p encode in h.264 is very high quality. 1080p has about 30% more detail than 720p (1920-1280=640 and 1080-720=360) at the cost of double the number of pixels (1 million for 720, 2 million for 1080) so you would think you would need twice the bit rate to encode it but in reality you should be able to get away with about 8 Mbps. However, this will not be as artefact free as Blu-ray which runs about 30 Mbps but should still be very good.