AppleTV vs. Vudu vs. Amazon/TiVo vs. Playstation/Netflix vs. Xbox Live vs. Comcast HD - Page 2

Indeed. They are worse than illegal divx files. I am not sure why, their HD stuff is decent.

One reason, Fit2Run, is that there are HD movies available from Comcast VOD andApple that aren't yet on Blu-Ray. Another reason is that on-demand services like Apple TV HD downloads and Comcast VOD allow you to watch something without having to wait for the disk to arrive from NetFlix.

Moreover the AppleTV is more than an HD download device. It also stores your music and photo libraries for convenient playback/display on your home theatre system, something a Blu-Ray can't.

All that being said, I plan on buying a BD player one or two generations down the line when all the quirks in them have been ironed out because what a BD player lacks in convenience, it certainly makes up in quality of output. My original post was simply a comparison of Comcast VOD and Apple TV HD downloads. It wasn't a slight of BD or meant to insult any of you BD "fanboyz."

Good point. It is the choice of the programming service, not Comcast, as to what's OAR and what's not. Still, although some Comcast VOD in HD is OAR, most of it isn't and so far all of the Apple TV HD movies that I've seen have been in OAR.

I'm also not saying Apple TV HD is perfect. Some of the available films lack DD 5.1 -- Ratatouille (!!) for instance. And if your network tends to slow down, or you're getting throttled by your ISP, you might want to build up a 30-45 minute buffer before watching. I was just saying that for those of us to whom OAR is important, it's an option to consider.

What's OAR?

OAR - Original Aspect Ratio

The aspect ratio of HDTV is 1.78:1 and is full wide screen. Some movies are 1.85:1 and are also shown in full wide screen. However, most movies these days are 2.35:1 and if shown in OAR on an HDTV would have black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Some networks chose to show these films full wide screen so they crop the films to 1.85:1 so you are no longer seeing the full image. Naturaly, made for TV HD movies and programs are 1.78:1.

btw, for reference, full screen SDTV is 1.33:1.

Thanks!

It's pretty simple: the SD material is the same as what people buy or rent on iTunes for iPhones and iPods. Since Apple only officially supports video at 640x480 on these devices (I believe the iPhone/iPod touch technically support more), the company can't go above that if it wants the video files to be ubiquitous.

That's a hard limit, and it means that widescreen videos have to run at lower than SD if they're widescreen (for example, 640x360). Apple is starting fresh with HD and so can go to a true 1280x720 resolution along with better encoding if necessary.

I gotta say after downloading my first VOD from XBOX Live, I am pretty impressed. After years of being on the bleed edge of technology I have lost my taste and have sat out this latest format war. I am starting to side with Steve Jobs that the format war has been over for some time and VOD is the winner. I like not being tied to membership programs and buying additional boxes. The VOD feature of XBOX is a side benefit, I bought this for a gaming system. Adding the mp3/pitures/videos from my PC network and this I have been very happy. I am also reasonably surprised in the video and audio quality. HD movies look and sound great.

for xbox 360, what are the video download formats?
I went to http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/marke...tv/default.htm
I see a few different video formats, but 240 and 360 and 480 seem most common. They put "480" as HD, and "240" as SD and "360" sometimes SD sometimes HD. Which of xbox's formats is equivalent to standard anamorphic widescreen DVD resolution (480x720)?

I have both the PS3 and TWC on demand, and watched "The Bucket List" a couple of days ago. This time, we went with TWC high definition on-demand. And the PQ was just great!!! I really enjoyed the extra resolution over DVD quality that the PS3 SD version would have had. As a bonus, the TWC on-demand movie came with captions.

TWC on demand and PS3 download movies we've recently watched
TWC HD, "The Bucket List", and "Lions for Lambs"
PS3-SD, "The Cooler", and "27 Dresses"

At this point, the PS3 store has about 450 selections, so it is becoming pretty viable. TWC has about 40 selections, including most new releases. More selections are available in SD. The Sony menu is superb, compared to the TWC menu.

Sometimes, I figure DVD quality from the PS3 is good enough, and is usually a couple of bucks cheaper than the TWC HD version. With our bandwidth, the PS3 SD version is available almost instantly, but we don't have enough bandwidth for the PS3 HD version instantly. A typical 2 hour HD movie might be a 4-6 hour download. I haven't seen captions on the PS3 downloads I've watched.

For the PS3, "27 Dresses" was a 16:9 crop from 2.35:1, but since that was in SD, the PQ was actually really good. "Lions for Lambs", TWC-HD was also a 16:9 crop from the 2.35:1 anamorphic source, so the PQ was not nearly as good as "The Bucket List", TWC-HD. I thought the PQ was equivalent to the SD 16:9 crop of "27 dresses" from the PS3. For both download services, there's no way to tell when a movie will be OAR or a 16:9 crop from 2.35:1, or open matte. For PS3 downloads, neither movie we watched had captions.

The PQ on "The Cooler" on the PS3 was also very good. The PS3 SD downloads at 2 mbits/sec, seem to match standard definition DVD at 5 mbits/sec, perhaps due to improvements in codecs in the past 10 years.

TWC also has standard definition movies on demand, usually $2 dollars less than their HD versions. These are either 640x480 4:3 or 640x360 letterboxed, so either you get a 4:3 crop, or mediocre letterboxed quality. Also, the TWC mpeg-2 compression shows more motion artifacts than the slightly lower bit rate PS3 compression. The PS3 standard definition downloads are 720x480, SD-DVD quality, and usually cost the same as TWC's standard definition downloads, so I would always pick PS3 SD over TWC SD.

The PS3 remote has better fast wind features, and chapters, and 120x, and is more functional than TWC on demand's "slow" fast forward. That same remote is much better at navigating the PS3 menu's. TWC needs a major overhaul on their user interface design.

At this point, I like the PS3 service -- keep the selection growing! Sony needs someway of allowing more than 24 hours if you start watching an HD download and realize that the download isn't keeping up with the movie. Also, they need to offer captions. Other's have noted that the PS3 doesn't have dolby 5.1 audio. That's not an issue for me personally, we're happy using our old two channel stereo system. But I would think for PS3 HD, the extra bandwidth for dolby 5.1 would make sense.

For 1.85:1 movies, TWC HD on-demand is almost blu-ray quality, so the TWC service has the advantage for HD -- but only if TWC offers movies in OAR. This is especially true if the movie was filmed anamorphically, and doesn't have the resolution to support a high quality 16:9 crop. Also, if you've got the big screen 1080 TV, which we do, than there's nothing like the experience of a wide screen 2.35:1 high definition movie.

You have misunderstood the web page. 240, 360 and 480 are the prices in Microsoft Points. They equal $3, $4.50 and $6.

The format has been mentioned before in this forum. As I recall, it is 6.8 Mbps VC-1, 720p. Sound is 5.1 for some titles and stereo for others (this is up to the content provider).

I don't know what the PS3 movie store's format or bit rate is. I assume it's AVC. Can someone with a PS3 tell? Do the movies have 5.1 sound?

The Canadian XBox Live movie store has partially caught up to the U.S. movie store. I counted 225 movies available last night. It wasn't clear to me which studios might have been missing. This is a big improvement compared to when the movie service first came to Canada.

The XBox website currently lists 583 movies for the U.S. movie store.

It would be nice if the OP table was replaced with current info (including PSN).

From what I have seen Vudu looks much better than AppleTV. The DD+ aspect of Vudu is also attractive. The Vudu user interface was also very intuitive.

UNfotunately the VUDU box doesn't bitstream the DD+. It transcodes it to DD before being output from the box.

If you have specific questions related to the VUDU box or service, I'm happy to help.

Patrick Ellis
Sr Product Manager, VUDU

I am inclined to create the official/accurate table and maintain it as a FAQ. Let me take another look at what it will take and I will append tomorrow.


PM to OP sent re: updating and maintaining the table.

how is that unfortunate?

Thanx for the info buddy...............

Because DD+ allows for a higher bitrate than DD. So if the box had the capability to bitstream it would have the possibility to have better audio quality than a DVD. But since it only has HDMI 1.1 it can't bitstream the DD+. It has to be transcoded to DD before output from the box.

OF course this doesn't make the VUDU box any less useful. It's all about convenience and the VUDU box is about as convenient as you can get for HD VOD.

With HDMI 1.1, it could also be unpacked to LPCM and sent over HDMI, without the conversion from one lossy format to another.

I don't think the box has that capability.

Blu-ray uses dolby-digital 640kbps, which isn't dolby digital plus, but which is a higher bit riate than standard dvd which is limited to dolby-digital 448kpbs or dolby-digital 384kbps. DD/640 works fine transmitted on the older optical toslink; I assume on hdmi as well.

DD/640 isn't loosless, but is perceptually transparent. Maybe someone would know which dolby digital bit rates vudu supports.

I'm not sure what the rate is, but with DD+ you can definitely get a higher bitrate which can sound much better than DD can. DD+ at 1.5mbs sounds much better than DD at 640kbs. They do not sound the same.

Perhaps you are you comparing the higher quality audio against DVD, which is limited to DD 448 kbps?

There is a slight audible improvement going to DD 640, but I haven't seen any links to double blind tests with level matched material where listeners were able to reliably pick out the lossless track versus the DD/640 track. Sticking with DD/640 makes sense given the download bandwidth limitations and given the hardware support for DD/640 on older non hdmi 5.1 surround sound systems.

I have no problem with them sticking with DD, that was their decision and it makes sense.

I read this awhile ago and gave up trying to always get TrueHD or measure bit rate. Even in my best set up (which is nowhere near a professional set up), I might hear a little difference switching between high/low bitrate DD but it's not something I can't continue listening to.

http://www.hemagazine.com/node/Dolby...compressed_PCM

anyone know about this new format

What would you like to know?

Patrick Ellis
Sr Product Manager, VUDU

Vudu got a nice write up by David Pogue in today's New York Times

Question about differences with XL unit: aside from larger HD: what are the differences?

I would use with RTI remote but would not mind using an IR emitter

Compared to the BX100, the XL has a 1TB Drive (vs 250GB), which is good for permanent storage of 500 SD titles vs 50. Additionally, the XL has an optional software package that enables IP control and HD output (up to 1080i) over the Component outputs where they are otherwise limited to 480p. IR control is available on both boxes with the IR kit.

Patrick