With ATV3 anticipation, should I keep my blu-ray mkvs or attempt a 1080p transcode?

[knemonic]

Just thought of another reason to buy movies from iTunes instead of Blu Ray discs. Anyone who bought movies in 720p can now download those same movies from iCloud in 1080p without paying anything extra. So Apple is showing a willingness to upgrade the quality for you over time as they upgrade their own encoding methods.

If you are ripping movies yourself, you would have to rip your entire movie library all over again whenever encoding standards improve to take advantage of higher quality at smaller file sizes. But if you buy from iTunes, you could potentially just let Apple handle all of that and just redownload whenever they offer the higher quality.

That's already the thing I like most about iTunes Match. All the music I bought at 128kbps I was able to redownload at 256kbps. And if Apple offers a higher bitrate or smaller file size at same quality in the future (or lossless even), you can just redownload it.

Sounds like a better way to handle things to me. More future proof and less hassle.

I'll be honest, I can see why Apple is giving the free upgrade to 1080p from 720p, but I can't see them doing this in the future.

This is the reason. People who bought the 720p version of something, if they would of bought the bluray version would have received the 1080p versions, so it is unfair to charge iTunes users to upgrade for what they should have received in the first place.

Now from a a hollywood standpoint, I can guarantee they will not allow this to happen when a new format comes out. When hollywood starts pushing 2k/4k films on a physical media, they will not allow Apple to upgrade people for free to the new format, since hollywood knows they would be missing out on millions, maybe billions of sales to the new format.

This is the reason why you couldn't simply turn in your old dvds to get bluray for free, cause they make so much money off of it.

So Apple will make this exception this time because I am sure hollywood put this in the contracts from the beginning, but I super highly doubt that the negotiations with the hollywood studios will allow this again when the format does change.

 

[newagemac]

It's not just about new formats though. It's also about improved encoding. Apple gets the masters from the studios and encodes them using h.264 so they can be played on their devices. Well the tools they use to do the encodes improve all the time. And a new h.265 standard is supposed to be available in 2013 that reduces the file sizes in half for the same quality or allows you to increase the quality with the same file size.

When Apple adopts h.265, you'll likely be able to download it free from iCloud because it is entirely on Apple's end. The studios have nothing to do with that.

 

[knemonic]

It's not just about new formats though. It's also about improved encoding. Apple gets the masters from the studios and encodes them using h.264 so they can be played on their devices. Well the tools they use to do the encodes improve all the time. And a new h.265 standard is supposed to be available in 2013 that reduces the file sizes in half for the same quality or allows you to increase the quality with the same file size.

When Apple adopts h.265, you'll likely be able to download it free from iCloud because it is entirely on Apple's end. The studios have nothing to do with that.

True, but the instance Apple starts talking about offering 2k/4k versions of studio's content, they will not let Apple give them away for free, guaranteed.

Redownloading content that you have paid for that you should rightfully be receiving 1080p when you purchased hd versions of it are one thing, when the physical replica is the same quality. But the instance studios put out a new physical format with higher res and new features (or if they start offering it in a digital format with higher res if physical media becomes dead), there is no doubt in my mind they will require some sort of upgrade fee or require you to completely repurchase the content.

If you think you will get free format updates to 2k/4k/8k and ultrahd for the rest of your life, you are delusional.