Today I was listening to a podcast, and the guy was talking about how he tried a couple of High Def movies from the new Marketplace Video thing. He said that the download for them was 6 gigs. I was pretty suprised by that, cause HD-DVD is 25 gigs, so I'm guessing they have to use alot more compression to get the movie to only 6 gigs. I'm guessing that there has to be some picture quality loss to go with that. Maybe some sound loss too. I understand that the movies on Marketplace are only 720p, so that helps, and they don't include any of the special features or anything else, but still, it seems awfully small to be high quality. I'm never going to pay the outrageous price to see them myself, so can somebody comment on the quality in comparison to HD-DVD? Like has anybody done a A,B comparison test on the same exact movie on both HD-DVD and on the Marketplace in High Def?


By the way, I have the HD-DVD add on, and I love it, it works great and I'm very happy with it. I rent movies all the time via Blockbuster online, and I think the HD-DVD add on is a tremendous value.

HD DVD is 1080p encoded material.

Video Marketplace is 720p encoded material.

There is more compression so a little more loss of quality but the material is of lower resolution encode to start with which cuts down on file size.

From what I've heard the quality of the downloaded movies are very good.

HD DVD is 1080p encoded material.

Video Marketplace is 720p encoded material.

There is more compression so a little more loss of quality but the material is of lower resolution encode to start with which cuts down on file size.

From what I've heard the quality of the downloaded movies are very good.


Also you only get the movie nothing more.. HD-DVD has lots of extras like deleted scenes, alternate endings, trailers and more.. Granted not all have as much extras but it adds up..

The easiest way to find out is to download one and see for yourself.....

From my experience, the quality of HD content on the marketplace varies. V for Vendetta looked quite good to me, while Superman Returns had lots of odd artifacts in dark areas. The episodes of CSI that I downloaded looked just as good as what I get through TWC NYC, even though on the 360 they were 720p (upscaled by the 360 to 1080i) and what I get on CBS is 1080i to begin with. But the kind of contouring artifacts I saw in Superman Returns were not present at all in CSI.

For whatever reason I am very reluctant to d/l any movies that are not available in HD, even though everything would indicate they should look a little better than a DVD. But HD stuff seems to be a bit hit-or-miss. I don't have the HD-DVD drive nor a standalone HD-DVD player, so I can't compare, but I would think the 25 gigabytes you are talking about is likely to be the maximum capacity of the medium as it is now, not the size of the movie file. Also, as mentioned above, HD-DVDs often contain a lot of extras, including video commentary, extra scenes, and so forth, while the HD downloads on XBL Marketplace contain only the movie and nothing else. Further, the various soundtrack contents in different formats are on the HD-DVD movies including (I'm not sure about this exactly) lossless, compression free multitrack sountracks, whereas the d/l's on the marketplace contain only a DD 5.1 sountrack. It adds up.

I think the above have explained it pretty well. I would only add that HD DVD's are either 15G or 30G's, not 25G's.

I think the above have explained it pretty well. I would only add that HD DVD's are either 15G or 30G's, not 25G's.

Supposedly Toshiba is developing a 51 GB HD-DVD in order to say that they're bigger than Blue Ray discs.... from what I've read though, the current HD-DVD players wouldn't be able to read such a disc so I'm not quite sure why they would put it to production, unless it will be for backup purposes only.

I played a couple market place HD movies on my optoma hd70 and was not blown away. looks good but not wow good...could be my projector though.

They look pretty good. more like an average looking HD-DVD probably. they added more HD movies

Beerfest (HD)
The Descent (HD)
American Haunting (HD)
See No Evil (HD)
Cecil B. Demented (HD)
Requiem for a Dream (HD)
Wickerman (HD)
Lady in the Water (HD)


including these non hd

Skyland (Episode One free through 1/29)
Wild World of Spike
An Inconvenient Truth

I've tried downloading HD movies via Live and I'd say they're about on par with HD Cable. Maybe a little bit worse. The stations that broadcast in 1080i, like HBO, Starz and CBS, tend to look a bit better than the HD movies from MS, which (from my limited experience) tend to show artifacts more. They're no where near as good-looking as either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, but I'm using a 1080P display so my experience should be weighed by that.

HD-DVD movies (encoded with VC-1 at 1080p24) run as low as 11GB while the video marketplace movies are encoded at 720p60 with a more aggresive compression ratio.
Quality varies due primarily to the nature of the original film. A 20 year old movie like Clash of the Titans isn't as likely to look as good as a six-month old movie like V for Vendeta. Similarly, a fast moving action flick like Superman Returns is more likely to exhibit artifacts than the slower-paced Unforgiven, which looks great.
You milleage *will* vary.