A Comparison of Skyfall on iTunes, Vudu, and Blu-ray - Page 2

very cool info, but where's Ralph's official blu-ray review?

Couldn't agree more. I feel the same about music too.
Great review though, thanks OP.

What sound format do the streaming services offer? This is a big factor for me.

Most VUDU titles are available in Dolby 5.1 and a very select few are Dolby 7.1. I think Netflix and Amazon are both only Dolby 5.1...

I have to agree that you'd be typically hard pressed to tell the PQ difference of VUDU HDX vs Blu-ray on a 55" TV. I have a 55" (largest screen that I have space for) and I can hardly tell the difference. VUDU is perfectly fine for my situation and I could see that if you have a really high end setup with projector that streaming quality would never be enough to satisfy...

I would choose VUDU over iTunes any given day, but sometimes the quality can vary between titles and encodes, as mentioned in the review....

Wow, DD5.1. How 1990s.
Also same quality as a DVD rip (bit wise not format wise of course)
All for the sake of a week's time?

It is MP3s all over again just this time its movies vs music.

Lets just fast forward to the "flac" version of this nonsense.

Fascinating. So if the network slows for any reason, quality goes out the window. I'm so glad Blu ray is an option.

Well that is why I don't stream, I want the the best sound I can get as well as best picture. Unfortunately most younger people don't care about either, so I see blu ray going the way of the dodo

I'm not young and do care about both. That said, in my neck of the woods we have redbox or buy the disc at Walmart or Target. So when titles are not available at Redbox or I don't feel like making the 5 mile drive in the dark of night or pouring rain, Vudu is great.

I don't really want to pay $20 for every movie I want to see on Blu-ray. I watch from about 9-10' on a 70" LCD and find that Vudu PQ is really close to Blu-ray for most movies. Sound is where I've been a little disappointed though.

Once they are able to stream in DTS HD or Dolby True HD, that will hasten the fall of the physical disc for many.

Any idea about the file sizes involved from iTunes & vudu?

Most people in general don't care about quality. A lot of people of all ages have made comments to the effect of not caring about HD (!!!). Meanwhile, I hate SD (other than DVDs, which usually look great), and I am very picky about quality, which is why I use VUDU HDX a lot, as opposed to other, inferior formats. On my 60" screen, it looks perfect. Comcast, not so much. Not caring about Blu-ray has no connection to not caring about quality. VUDU HDX is visually and auditorally the same as Blu-Ray, even if close-up shots show the lossyness of the compression. I don't care about Blu-ray because physical media is irrelevant for most markets. I buy some specialty stuff (railroad videos) on Blu-Ray, because I can't get them digitally, but other than that, it's all digital unless someone brings a disc over. I won't waste my money on Blu-ray, and I really like the Roku's remote, as opposed to the atrocious user experience that is pretty much any modern Blu-ray player. We clearly are going away from physical media. It still sticks around for game consoles, and specialty programming, but other than that, it's steadily declining as people realize how archaic it really is.

Doesn't the Blu-ray copy have only a 5.1 native sound format? Do the streamers offer 7.1?

VUDU on Roku is 7.1, except that there are only like 20 movies that are actually 7.1, and most of them are junk. Everything else is 5.1.

Nice write up. It clearly shows that streaming sucks

A 30gb mkv bluray rip is really close to original bitrates, which would be pretty much on par with the original. I'm not really interested in a comparison between two examples that are prertty much identical, I'm hoping to see what the 8gb standard compressed bluray rip compares to the original.

8gb 1080p rips also happen to be the most common size on torrent sites.

What ? Are you claiming you can tell the difference between Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby TrueHD 5.1 ? Let me guess, you post in the "No double blind test" forum on Head-Fi...

Sucks ? No. Good as BD ? No. More convenient than BD ? Yes. Is that worth it ? Only you can decide.

Codecs will become ever more optimized allowing improved video and audio in a smaller and smaller package. Streaming is the future. We will all laugh at content distribution via disks in the future just like we have done in the past with mini disc, dat, cassette and vinyl.

The prolem is the future is not here yet. I'll wait until streaming to be identical to BD before I move on to streaming; on the other hand, bu he time streaming equals BD quality, we'll have 4K.

Pixel peep? Hahahaha! There is no need for pixel peeping. The macroblocking as shown on the suit and softening of the overall picture is so blatant my wife asked "what's wrong with the movie?" And this is when I viewed it on my 55" from 12 ft away!!!

iTunes doesn't count because for the price of iTunes movie (rent or pirchase), I can rent/buy the actual blu-ray disc for even lower price!

One thing that impressed me here is the reviewer bought an itunes copy,... then bought a vudu copy,... then bought a Blu Ray that (may have) came with 4 versions: Blu Ray, DVD, Itunes, Vudu.

For a total of 6 copies.... wow.

I was thinking about this because my Blu Ray came with 4 copies and my neighbor asked to borrow the DVD. I was all sure,... I got 3 other copies!

-Brian

I can on well recorded sound tracks, but to be fair those lately have been far and few between.
So I guess it doesn't matter on say "The Notebook".

...and like many over at head-fi (haven't been there in a while) I can tell the difference between a 128bit mp3 and flac.
If you can't. good for you since you are saving a ton on $$$.

But SQ aside, I can easily tell between 8-10Mbit encoding vs 30-40 on hard media with 1080p material.
If you are happy paying for crap. more power to you.

I just won't and can wait for the media release.

So is this the one you put into that 50-y anniversary box set or that'll be a different release?

I was a vudu custumer since the very first days,I still own a original vudu box ,but I had lost my interest on vudu since walmart owns the company.

but talking about itunes, vudu and other streaming service I had seen the same movies on different streaming services but sometimes the same movie can look better on one service than the other or the opposite.


maybe is they way is encode?

odd because i have the same speeds and mine is always 5 bars. I use the vudu native app through my 80 inch sharp and it looks extremely impressive to me.
Its also have a complete ISF calibration though.

I think the quality difference is quickly becoming as small as whether you cleaned your glasses before you started viewing. Also, I don't buy the large screen makes everything of lesser quality stand out (much greater). I have a 120 inch image and the seating distance is roughly 1.25 - 1.50 times the screen's width. If you are actually watching a movie you can't stare at a small portion of the screen and study it enough to notice you are losing detail!

 

It's hard enough to take in the entire image. Sure just like convergence issues (much larger than the image differences here?) if you stand a foot away from the screen and A/B them you'll probably see a difference. Sure I want the best but at some point one has to admit the experience is the same... many will never as they refuse to accept reality and need to believe they are above it...satisfying their belief that their standards bring them a superior experience.

Edited by Charles R - 2/15/13 at 11:13am

Based on what I see here Blu Ray is by far the version I want to watch. Folks complain about wasting money on Blu Ray- really? Here in NYC it's far cheaper to buy a 14.99 or a 19.99 Blu Ray and enjoy it in the peace and quiet of my apartment on my 50inch Kuro vs going to the Theater with obnoxious sneezing, coughing, cell phone checking public. I would rather not waste my time- my $$ goes to Blu Ray.

Blu Ray also beats iTunes due to the 24 hour rental window. There are many times when we need to turn a movie off and come back to it later.

I can buy a Blu ray on Amazon, keep the digital copy- sell back the disc and most times it ends costing me the same as a rental.