HD PS3 downloads - Rate your experience

I downloaded an SD movie, 27 dresses, $3.99. We started watching immediately, as it downloaded the 1.9 Gigabyte file, 2 hour movie. Quality seemed equivalent to a good SD-DVD, no compression artifacts. I think the mbits/sec were somewhere between 1.6 and 2.0 mbits/sec.

My beefs
o 24 hours expiration. Not long enough to watch the movie a 2nd evening
o no captions
o Didn't bother me as much, but the source was 2.35:1, filmed on anamorphic 35mm, but cropped to 16:9 on the download. The blu-ray and the SD-DVD are 2.35:1, not 16:9.

I have typically been an AppleTV user for most of my time, recently swapped to the PS3 to see what it has to offer. Not quite there yet. Not Quite Blu-ray quality, almost like a really good sd-dvd upscaled. Will need sometime yet. thats the great thing with the PS3, its software upgradeable, so ill stick with apple rentals for the time being, and then make the switch over to PS3 if/when it gets all of its act together.

Not bad PQ as other's have stated but still needs a (psuedo) "ownership" option for the movies (like TV has) to be more compelling. It would seem that Sony could at least offer this on it's own movies.

As a rental service it's ok.

started download and attempted to play movie while streaming to my PS3. as download speed was too slow, it could not be viewed so I allowed the download to complete. unfortunately, because I had started watching the movie, the 24hr clock started. when I went to actually view the movie 2 days later, it said my viewing period had expired. I will never again purchase a movie from playstation network. whomever decided to start the 24hr clock BEFORE completion of the download was a total idiot.

They do offer a purchase option on some selections--some are only available for purchase. Some are only available for rent and some are available for both. I haven't seen any HD purchases though.

I downloaded The Bank Job early Sunday evening just to try it. It was encoded in variable bit-rate AVC at 720p (presumably at 24 fps, like Blu-ray) at an average 8 Mbps with a 200-somethng Kbps stereo AAC soundtrack. Decent PQ, appreciably better than upconverted SD DVD to my eye with very good sound quality, though I sorely missed having a surround track. On the Xbox Live Video Marketplace, many movies, both HD and SD, have surround sound and you can tell whether they do from the selection menu. I can't find anywhere in the menus at the Playstation Store where it details sound format, just the language the sound is in.

I started watching the movie yesterday after it finished downloading at about 7 PM. I got distracted and didn't get back to it until I thought about today at around 6 PM. I started watching and it and thought that I'd be fine, when promptly at 7 playback stopped and I was informed that the content was expired . I wasn't all that pissed, since I was considering renting the Blu-ray anyway (the various British accents were thick enough that I was missing significant bits of dialog--if I'd been watching on disc I would have watched with subtitles, the lack of which is another pet peeve of mine about downloads). I do think that since I started watching before expiration that I should have been allowed to finish.

I also didn't care for the price of the rental--it was $5.99 for 14 days/24 hours--Xbox Live Video Marketplace rentals run a dollar less, and many of them have surround sound. It wasn't a bad experience, but I won't be renting anything more from the Playstation Store until (a) I can tell which movies have surround sound (if any do) and (b) the price drops a bit. I'd love to see that 24-hours-after-start-of-playback viewing time limit be abolished, but the fledgling online movie download business seems to have standardized on it.

I thought PSN video store had the same basic restriction model as Xbox MarketPlace which is that TV shows and other non-movie content may have a "limited license" purchase option but movies are strictly rental. I'll have to browse thru the HD video section again to check.

I rented an HD movie on PSN and have rented a number before on Xbox Live and looking thru the selection I never saw an HD movie I could buy. Now Sony does seem to have more options for SD movies and maybe you're thinking about those being for sale but they look pretty high priced compared to SD DVD's which can commonly be had super cheap so the value for me would be HD movie purchase.

The PS3 would even have an advantage there because of the hardware swap option.

So far though it seems for HD movies both services are rental models. I only rent when I'm ready to watch right then so it's still a viable option at times although I'm not using very often since usually I find better options avalible in the market.

I'm not "thinking about those being for sale"--they are for sale, regardless of whether they're a good deal or not. From this Sony PR:

So, they're for sale in the exactly the same sense as (only TV episodes) on the Xbox Live Video Store and TV episodes and films at Amazon Unbox, CinemaNow, MovieLink, etc. You pay one price and may watch the download as long as you like and download it again as many times as you like, with some degree of binding to the machine that you originally downloaded it on and/or to the account with which you purchased it.

In the entry for a film there are options with prices ("SD", "SD Rental", "HD Rental")--the options that are marked rentals are rentals; the other options are for purchase. If you want to find out what things you can purchase, there's a filter on the top page of the video section of the store marked "Purchase" (and another marked "Rental" which will show you all the things with rental options). What I haven't seen is an option for HD content other than "HD Rental". Like XBLVS, all of the TV series episodes are purchase-only (all apparently for $1.99 an episode, regardless of length, also like XBLVS), but unlike XBLVS, none of the TV series episodes is available in HD. There wouldn't seem to be any HD content for purchase, period, television episodes or theatrical releasee films.

Of course, they just started a couple of months ago; they may eventually offer some HD purchases.

Yes I saw those for sale since they 1st started. I was thinking of HD content however. My point is though that even if considered as SD content I thought most are priced rather high when compared to the utility of a standard dvd which has no machine binding and often comes with special features etc.



The purchase filter is a nice touch which I hadn't notice. Thanks for pointing it out. I'd like to drop a TB drive in one of my PS3's which could make a few purchases tempting.

I also didn't realize they weren't selling HD content yet even on TV. Perhaps that is part of their commitment to protect blu-ray.

Sony need to fix this problem ASAP. I would be pretty pissed if I paid and downloaded something only to find out if I deleted it I could not download it again.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...youre-out.html

That's ridiculous and completely non-competitive with the XBL Video Store. I own a bunch of TV episodes purchased from XBLVS and can delete and re-download them at will. This is exactly how purchases on download-to-PC systems like Amazon Unbox, CinemaNow and MovieLink work (I think that MovieLink was recently purchased by Blockbuster). If you purchase content you have the right to download it again forever.

Microsoft even recently introduced a system for moving the licensing for downloaded purchased content (video and games) to another system.

VOD is pretty lame.

PSN movie downloads have been a good experience overall. The best thing is that with the PSN I usually max out my 50mbs FIOS connection so HD titles are downloaded quickly.
With Xbox Live the download speed usually varies between 40mbs and 50mbs while PSN is usually maxing out my 50mbs connection.

Not available in Canada, so I guess that counts as a bad experience.

Even if it was available, I'd have trouble swallowing some of the prices. $4 to rent a 20-minute episode of Xam'd? I can buy box DVD sets of most other anime series for less than the cost of just renting that series.

Downloaded SD "Parent Trap". Video was 16x9, a little soft. Data rates 1-2Mbs. Not too bad. Planning to grab Green Mile or something like that for an HD test. I'd like to see more "classic" titles. Two weeks seems like plenty of time to me.

This experience definitely doesn't cause me to want to give up holding an HD disc in my hand.

We downloaded the HD (1080p) version of Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated film. The video was great, but the audio was only 2 channels (sterero).

I had the Blu-ray in my kids Netflix cue and it came a couple of days later. It had either 5.1 or 7.1 sound.

In contrast, most movies on Xbox Live are 720p, but have 7.1 sound. Most of the HD movies available on DirecTV On Demand are 1080 and have 5.1 sound.

I am not planning on downloading HD video on the PS3 again unless they get 5.1 sound.

Who wants HD video with SD audio?!

I could be wrong, but I really don't think that there's any 1080 video in the PS3 store. What's your indication that it was 1080?

Yep I tried Iron Man in HD and had the same reaction. The PQ was okay but lack of at least 5.1 is just ridiculous. If I recall the last time I downloaded a major release over the 360 that had 5.1. Even TWCs SD movies on demand have 5.1 even if the picture quality is dreadful.

I can forgive 2 channel streams with Netflix seeing as the HD service is new, free and streaming, but when I pay $6 and wait four hours the audio needs to be there.

On the Xbox Live Video Store, 11 of the top 20 movies has a 5.1 soundtrack for the HD encode (including Iron Man); all but one of them has 5.1 for the SD encode as well. A twelfth title Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, only has an SD encode, but it has 5.1. The other 8 have stereo soundtracks for both HD and/or SD encodes.

I was able to download HD movies playable in PS3 and 360 for free. They were being shared at a community sharing forum. They are in Vob files and the only problem is that you can't fast forward or reverse them. But anyway, it's free so it's OK.

rrrrrrrr

It's never ok not to be able to Fast forward or rewind. Even if they paid me, it wouldn't be worth it.

I don't think that you're gonna see a lot more quality in HD movies in the Playstation Store. They might offer 5.1 sound eventually, but they really want people who are picky enough to want highest quality to buy or rent Blu-ray discs. The highest available download quality would currently seem to be from VUDU, but you have to invest in a dedicated player.

I tried PlayOn and it didn't work for me instantly, so I shrugged and gave up on it. I wasn't that enthusiastic about the idea to invest $30 in it, so I didn't put any further effort into making it work.

Iron Man? Vudu box arrived a week ago, and Iron Man was the first movie, in 1080/24p with DD5.1 on my separates basement projection system on a 110" screen. What can i say I was awed, better than some BD/HDDVDs i own. Of course, the two negs are the 4 hour download times on a 4Mb pipeline for HDX (Vudu's proprietary format) and the lack of DTS-HD MA.

Right now Vudu is way ahead of the competion, although for the average Joe watching analog cable on their "big screen" this may be irrelevant, which may kill Vudu. They just slashed MSRP from 299 to 140 on their box, hope they don't VOOM away

This is why AppleTV, Xbox, and PS3 may have it going for them.